Most of gamers have, at least once in their life, wish they
could create their own games or at least become game testers.
How would you describe the job of a game tester ? I'm pretty
sure that 90% of gamers would answer something like "Hmm, you
sit in front of a big TV, having the pad in one hand, some
snacks or soda in the other, go through the game, beat it once
and for all and yell whenever something weird occurs, like
blackscreens or something ". Well maybe not that cliche, but
something close to it, right? Here are 5 preconceived notions
about game debugging that you should forget about right now 1. I have to beat the game and report bugs I find on the way Well, this is not wrong, all in all, but it is just a little
part of your work. Rather than playing the game, you will rather
explore it, test its limits and try all kinds of crazy things.
In fact, you will spend most of your time trying unsane things,
like pressing buttons in different orders in various places,
trying to reach super high scores, trying to reach unreachable
areas and doing the same actions again and again to check the
consistency. In the end, you will maybe spend about 10-20%
playing the game, and, in order to save you time, you will have
to use walkthroughs and cheat codes developers will provide you,
killing much of the game's fun factor. 2. Still, I have pretty much freedom when I play No. Usually programmers know well what kinds of things can cause
problems. In most of cases, you will be given a list of things
to do/check/try. It can be something like "at first go to that
place and use all your objects, then try to see if the character
can go through the wall when you press the buttons in that
order...". So, basically all you have to do is follow
instructions and report what you find. Oh, and for each
instruction you will likely need to report what happened, even
if it is "nothing special". It may sound very "mechanical", but
it really is the best way to debug a game seriously and
thoroughly. 3. Reporting bugs is simple It depends what you mean when you say "simple". Reporting a bug
is not just like writing "Sometimes the character disappears
behind the wall" in your report. You will need to report very
accurately the steps to reproduce, what happened exactly, check
whether the bug appears "randomly" or not, sometimes copy some
weird character chains displayed by the debug machine, etc..
Simply reporting a bug in your report file can take up to
several minutes, even for "minor" bugs. 4. I have to focus on bugs that make the game crash or display
weird things Definitely, if such bugs exist, you'd better find them. But it
is actually not that frequent to find "major" bugs. Before
developers send theirs games for debug, they usually check them
a little bit, with the eyes of a "normal" gamer, to make sure
the real big problems are sorted out before games are tested in
depth. Bugs you will find will usually be minor display issues,
mistakes in the games' texts, consistency issues and the like.
In the case of a RPG, for example, it means you will have to
talk to ALL the people in the game almost every single time
something happens, make sure the text displayed is gramatically
fine and consistent with the rest of the game. I hope you're not
the kind of gamer who likes skipping dialogs as interesting as
"Nice weather, isn't it ? Oh please let me tell you about my
little doggy who is really a good boy blabla" ;) 5. This is a job for hardcore gamers! Not only. Developers like having various kinds of people testing
their games, as they see things with different eyes. A "casual"
gamer may try or see things a core gamer would not. Moreover,
you really don't need to be skilled to test games. As said
before, you will very likely have access to all the walkthroughs
and cheat codes you may need to beat the game in a timely
manner. Rather than having fun playing games, testers who debug
games will rather have a very methodical approach and follow a
clear path. This job also requires excellent reading and writing
skills. That said, debugging games is still quite an interesting
a job. While trying things here and here, you will understand
how the game was meant to be played by the developer, what logic
is behind all the code, and somehow have an eye at what is
happening "behind the scenes", which always is a great pleasure
for gamers. It is a very good, interesting job, but you should
not expect to spend your days having fun, sitting comfortably on
your chair, flying through AAA games.
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