Martin J Baker

Video Game Tester. The job title alone conjures up images in most people of the perfect job where people sit in a room (that looks just like their living room), eating junk food, and bad-mouthing people over Xbox LIVE all day (alternatively, the facebook ads would lead you to believe that all game testers are twenty-something females). In reality that's the life of someone who actually does play video games all day which, despite what people may say to me when I tell them what I do for a living, is not the life of an actual video game tester. What it really entails is hours and hours of loading, playing (often for a very short amount of time, depending how far along the development cycle the game you're testing is) and crashing, loading the game up again and trying to reproduce the bug so that a series of concise steps and a general bug report can be written.

While that may sound a little tedious, all that is balanced out with the fact that you'll be given the opportunity to help shape the games of the future. If you're working on a game early enough in the development you may even be able to suggest a feature that will make it into the game. You never know, the opportunity is there though. If you're reaching for that first difficulty step onto the ladder that is the games industry, you would do well to read on.

Click here to read the rest of my article at GamersNexus.com

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Games. Ever since the dawn of time people have played games, sometimes as a form of competition, sometimes as a display of dominance, or sometimes just to simply pass the time. What happens if you don't enjoy the game you're playing, though? Do you continue anyway, hoping that something will "just click?"

Maybe you should stop playing altogether and find something else to do?

Or... you could be cool. You could just stick two fingers up to the authorities, tell them you're not glued to the predetermined ruleset of their game, and that you're going to make your own game from within the overarching constraints of theirs. That's how we got Rugby League, that's how we got Pool, it's even, to use a more modern analogy, how we got Counter-Strike (Half Life Mod), Team Fortress (Quake Mod), Defense of the Ancients (Warcraft III / StarCraft Mod), and many others.

So where's the fun in that?

Click here to read the rest of my article at GamersNexus.com

You wouldn't believe how tempted I was to write a screen resolution here the moment I started typing "New Years Resolution", I resisted the urge though. Which is a good thing. Perhaps I've actually grown as a person...

No, that's too scary.

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One of the major things that annoys me about the general news media is how it blows things way out of proportion. Blaming movies, music and video games for violence in youths. While any violence at all can bring out the violence in another person they must have latent anger within them in order to express it at all. A video game can't turn a person that's never had violent tendencies into a murderer. It's not just not possible.

More details after the jump...

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Updated on Friday, April 23, 2010 at 12:23PM by Martin J Baker

As some of you may, or may not, know. I'm a beta tester for Realtime Worlds' upcoming Massively Multiplayer Online game APB (All Point Bulletin). The game is a classic 'Cops and Robbers' style game where you pick your side and complete missions for your given faction. A lot of the fun, as with any MMO, comes with the player interaction which Realtime Worlds have got down to a tee in APB.

More details after the jump...

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