Playing games all day and getting paid for it seems like a dream come true. Working in video game quality assurance, however, is a different matter. While my QA summer job means that I am testing games all day on the Wii, Xbox 360, or PS2, it is not the dream many would imagine. I play one game almost exclusively during my 40-hour week.

While I am not allowed to reveal details about the title I test, I can admit that it can be beaten almost twice in one day. I do enjoy this game, but continually beating it can take some of the fun out of it. Fortunately, I was placed on this title earlier in the testing process so I have been able to watch it improve. One of the most rewarding parts of my job is reporting a bug and seeing it get fixed. In a small way, I can have a direct impact on making the game better.

One of the strangest things about testing is how you can literally do the same thing every day. When I come home, I can list the same accomplishments (beating the game, collecting all the special items, etc.). What separates the days from each other are the experiences that are generated from gameplay, most prominent in multiplayer testing. Even if I find a seemingly fantastic bug one day, I find that nothing compares to the human element in multiplayer testing.

The addition of only one person can make all the difference. The other player can reveal a new play style, making me more aware of the ingrained habits that limit my ability to test the game for the many different types of players who will play the game. It took me over a month before I was shown a small area that I had never known existed. What was common to the other player was a new discovery to me in the game I thought I knew like the back of my own hand.

After being hired as a tester, I began to fear that this job would forever take the fun away from games for me. I once heard an experienced tester explaining how he had crashed nearly every commercial game he had ever played, including Guitar Hero. While my experience as a tester would only last three months, I still feared that I would become bitter toward games, which are inevitably flawed. Like humans, games are never perfect, and the constant pressure of budgets means that many games are released before they are fully ready.

Now that I have spent a few weeks as a tester, I am happy to find that I still love games. Unfortunately, my desire to play console games has diminished greatly, due to my desire to save the strain on my hands and avoid the monotony of doing something that might feel like my job. I get paid to play parts over and over even if they’re frustrating, and I have no desire to experience similar frustrations at home with other games without getting compensated. Fortunately, my DS still feels like an entirely different experience (as it is a portable console) and I have found that I am still excited to play it once in a while. I only hope that I will still feel that way after several more weeks of testing.