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