Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Linbog

Cmon you don't have to exaggerate here:
1 designer, 4 coders, 5 artists and 90 QA

On a slightly more serious note, why does every studio have Test Lead or QA Manager positions advertised and never a Tester or non-lead QA position?

Because the good to great ones (and the one I am hoping accepts here who is off the charts) find the 'non-leads' and testers based on this immeasurably huge contact list they keep.

Great testers are as hard to find as any other person in this industry from what I have learned. People that run these departments have lines into people that are great at this stuff and lean on them heavily.

Their resumes, testers and non-leads, is an indicator of their talent just like anything else.

I know I have no ambition to have our internal team be comprised of people that have never done this before. Being a good tester is a hard job, it's where the rubber meets the road in the "I'd love to play games for a living" debate.

[Vatoreus]

but how does one start in the industry? Where can you get your beginning as a tester?

[Twobit Whore]

Apply for entry level QA positions at a local software developer. It's shit wages and you have to live in expensive areas where companies are located.

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by Vatoreus

but how does one start in the industry? Where can you get your beginning as a tester?

You put in a resume when companies put out calls for testers, which happens a lot. I am sure Danuser and Ryan know where to keep an eye on for this sort of thing.

[Vatoreus]

Cool, I was just honestly curious, because I'm in school right now and hoping to get into the industry when I graduate and was wondering where the best place to start looking was. I know entry level positions and what not, I just never see companies looking for basic QA positions when I'm looking.

[holymight]

Originally Posted by Vatoreus

Cool, I was just honestly curious, because I'm in school right now and hoping to get into the industry when I graduate and was wondering where the best place to start looking was. I know entry level positions and what not, I just never see companies looking for basic QA positions when I'm looking.

Best bet is to just find a QA position through Indeed (All QA tester jobs | Indeed.com). You might be able to find a party-time job doing tesing as well so you can do it while in university. A lot of QA positions requires specialized knowledge in the field so it won't be that easy.

[Gallenite]

Originally Posted by Vatoreus

Cool, I was just honestly curious, because I'm in school right now and hoping to get into the industry when I graduate and was wondering where the best place to start looking was. I know entry level positions and what not, I just never see companies looking for basic QA positions when I'm looking.

Here's a hint that might help:

If you have a local game developer/publisher that you have your eye on, assuming you don't have any personal contacts there, look up their number, give them a call, and ask to speak to someone in HR.

Alternately, if you need a name first, search game credits (e.g. mobygames) for a recent game they've made until you find an HR person's name. Most larger companies list everyone and their dog in the credits.

Ask that person which temp agency they use to staff their QA/CS/other entry-level dept that interests you, then contact the temp agency directly.

Good luck.

[Cowbell]

So can I assume that since Scott posted in Curt's thread that he will be lead designer for 38 studios ?

[Gallenite]

Originally Posted by Cowbell

So can I assume that since Scott posted in Curt's thread that he will be lead designer for 38 studios ?

Please only assume that Scott continues to read these boards and still enjoys offering random tips to people where he can.

While I was at SOE, I'd have (generally) PMed the answer. I've done that a dozen or so times with other industry-type questions, instead of posting in non-EQ2 threads.

But, since I'm no longer employed by "the competition," I don't mind posting in any thread that I damn well feel like.

(And I suspect that Curt wouldn't have minded either way.)

[Cowbell]

Perhaps I should have just put a big smiley at the end of my last post. I really didn't think you would be working for Curt based on posting on his thread.

[Tyen]

Hartsman for '08

[Gordish]

I'd also recommend knowing as much as you can about the game/product that the company makes.

It's not a requirement but in my experience having knowledge of the game helps you a lot in the interview process. They (QA Management) usually get excited to see someone who will be up and running with a smaller learning curve.

With as important as QA is, if you have little experience on your resume your knowledge of their product will give you a better chance at getting your foot in the door.

I guess thats true of most jobs but QA always seems to get regarded as, "Cool I can play games for a living." and not really taken like a serious job.

[Draegan]

I wish I could be young again and be able to afford to work as a slave with slave wages because it could be fun to work on video games.

[Ikia]

Originally Posted by Gallenite

Here's a hint that might help:

If you have a local game developer/publisher that you have your eye on, assuming you don't have any personal contacts there, look up their number, give them a call, and ask to speak to someone in HR.

Alternately, if you need a name first, search game credits (e.g. mobygames) for a recent game they've made until you find an HR person's name. Most larger companies list everyone and their dog in the credits.

Ask that person which temp agency they use to staff their QA/CS/other entry-level dept that interests you, then contact the temp agency directly.

Good luck.

Ahhh where were the FOH boards when I was just graduating with a shiny new CS degree and I wanted to do this for a living.

[spronk]

Originally Posted by Maxxius

Please oh please hire plenty of coders. I refuse to play another game where you are told that the coding can't handle change "such and such."

This has little to do with number of coders, instead it has to do with the senior engineers (architects, tech leads, whatever other titles you want to use) who create the frameworks for the game.

MMOs are very different from other games, when you design Gods of War or Guitar Hero you pretty much know what the game is going to do and can create a underlying framework that is optimized for your game. Whereas in MMOs things can change dramatically and rapidly, and creating a rigid underlying system can hurt horribly later on down the road - for example, Tabula Rasa had to scrap years of work (combat engine issues I believe?) and essentially restart.

MMO engines tend to become messier and messier, as you try to kludge on things that were never thought about when you first started working on it. You can get a pretty good idea of how well the internal engineering processes work at a game (or any) company by their patches - WoW, when it first was released, had tremendous bugs every patch and always seemed to be 1 step forward, 2 steps back. Now of course they are much better. LOTRo has always seemed to have good patch releases. Funcom is, well, in a class by itself (lol).

This is primarily why its so important for MMO companies to hire outstanding netcode, graphics engine, patching engine, and combat engine senior engineers when they start (and i'm forgetting some), since the frameworks they design have such a massive impact on every thread of the game throughout its lifetime.