Is it really possible to get paid to play games?

According to the Entertainment Software Association’s annual report, the video games industry is worth around $9.5 billion dollars each year in the US alone. Worldwide the industry is worth over $50 billion per year.

That industry is reliant on not only talented teams of developers (designers, programmers, artists..) but also on testers – what they call Quality Assurance.

The reason is simple. With PC or console games costing $50 or more, the buying public expect those games to be relatively bug free. With a modern game consisting of hundreds of thousands of lines of code, multiple levels, and hundreds of features it is almost impossible to test for every conceivable outcome in house… that’s where game testers come in.

A game tester will begin working on a game project once it reaches around 50 – 70% completion. At that point the game will be “playable” and the tester’s role will be to play the game over and over, logging bugs and errors, and giving feedback to the development team.

Tasks such as playing a level repeatedly are very time consuming, and the programmers simply don’t have time to do enough of it. That’s why games publishers hire enthusiastic games players to carry out their testing – and they pay well for it!

So yes, you really can get paid to play games!  Find out more by downloading How To Become A Game Tester