My Month In Industry: Week 1

It is the most frequently debunked myth about working in the games industry - that games testers get to sit around and play games all day.  However, that myth is actually true. Now, before I get shouted down by all the enraged testers out there allow me to explain myself. After a week of testing I have done plenty of sitting around and playing games – but there’s a method, one that requires skill, ingenuity and patience. You don’t play the games at all like you would at home.  Being a game tester is like being insane, if you go by that misattributed quote on insanity:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Indeed, game testing is only subtly different; it involves doing the same thing over and over again and desperately hoping there are NO different results.

The game I have been testing is Laughing Jackal’s recently announced Fighting Fantasy game-book adaptation for PSP and PS3: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. After introductions and orientations I was left to get on with it all. 

Screenshot of Laughing Jackal’s recent Fighting Fantasy title: Talisman of Death. 

Fancy a copy? Check it out on the PSN store.

My instructions were deceptively simple:

“Your mission is to visit every page in the game.”

The old British game-book fans of the 1980s are now spitting out their tea at this suggestion as I almost did when I realized the magnitude of it. To visit every page of a game-book is a mammoth task. It involves exploring possible route, replaying outcomes multiple times, intentionally failing tasks and carrying out absurd moves like carrying a bit of cheese through the entire game just to fruitlessly whip it out in the final battle against an evil Warlock.* Doing this is fatiguing and often frustrating, but finding a way to break the game and seeing it fixed is rewarding.

It’s not all doom and gloom. The offices of Laughing Jackal are bright and spacious, everybody’s friendly and there’s a good supply of tea and coffee. My desk is spacious and my chair is comfortable, I’m certainly not working in some dark basement dungeon, staring with bleeding eyes at a screen and being whipped raw by senior management.

I still wonder why they’ve given me such a nice TV, thought it best not to ask.

Although there’ll be plenty of testing to do in the coming weeks I’ll also be getting experience in other roles and projects. I end my first week with a new-found respect for those full-time testers who work long hours to ensure my gaming experience is as smooth as possible.

Next week I answer the following candid questions: What happens when a team submits a new game to the console developer? How do games get their PEGI rating? Why is the ladies toilet closed for deep cleaning? And how long till someone adds me on Facebook?

Get back here on Wednesday 14th, for the answer to all those, and more!

*To those who cried “Spoilers!” I have the following to say: ET goes home, and Deckard kills Roy. Consider the year 1982 thoroughly spoiled for you.