Gearing Up

Remember when you first sat down with your very first JRPG? Remember the part where you didn't know how leveling or equipment worked, so you just wandered out into the wilderness with your bare hands and a loincloth and got horribly mauled in a comical fashion?

That taught you two lessons: Talk to everyone, and don't go out there until you're ready.

Fast forward to the present. You want to be a tester. You have some idea of what you're getting into, and you decide you still want to give it a shot.

The easiest way to get hired onto a testing team is to (1) be good friends with someone in a position to hire you there, and (2) be available when they have an opening. But since that's not usually an option, especially when you're just starting out, you'll probably have to do it the hard way: Send out resumes.

Familiarize yourself with all the game publishers and developers in your area, and apply to as many of them as you can. Most professions' advisors will tell you it's common courtesy to send only one resume at a time, and wait for a response before you send another, but seeing as how a response can take months (if it happens at all) in this business, I say send them all out at once.

(By the way, for the unfamiliar, developers are the ones who actually build the games, while the publishers write the developers' paychecks, supervise them to varying degrees, and distribute the game once it's done. Some of the larger publishers, though by no means all of them, have their own in-house development teams as well; EA, for example, or Activision.)

Publishers tend to have larger test teams than developers do, so your chances of finding an open position are best with them (though if you're lucky enough to land a gig as a developer's tester, the hands-on experience you earn there can be great for your long-term prospects).

Here's your first big hurdle: Any developer, or publisher, of any appreciable size will have dozens, if not hundreds, of would-be tester resumes in its pile by the time yours gets there. And those with past professional testing experience almost always get first priority when it comes to calling people up for interviews.

If you don't have any prior testing experience, it'll be an uphill battle just to get your foot in the door. But there are ways to better your chances. Like:

Getting a degree. It doesn't have to be a comp sci degree, or anything particularly game related; not for a tester position, anyway. Getting a degree shows that you can finish what you start, and that's a point in your favor, whatever you major in.

Working on homebrew games. You don't need much technical knowledge to put together a homebrew game (though, if you have any, that certainly helps; put it on the resume too!). In this day and age, plenty of utilities are out there to help creative types make their own games without much coding know-how. RPG Maker (either the console or PC versions, though the PC versions are much more robust), Klik-and-Play (my old favorite), and Multimedia Fusion are only a few of the many these days. Use them to get a feel for how games are put together, what kind of bugs can appear, and how to make those bugs happen on a consistent basis. (If you can also learn to fix them while you're at it, so much the better.)

A homebrew game doesn't have to be a solo project, either; you can sign on with an existing project, especially as a tester (who doesn't want free testing?) and practice that way. Hundreds of communities are out there online to bring homebrew teams together; get out there and join a few.

Proofreading. Proofread your own resume, sure, but also cultivate a skill for proofreading other people's work. Good text editing is a valuable skill for a tester; some games are full of typos, and it takes a knowledgeable proofreader to root them out before the game ships. If you can do that well, you can show that you can find and correct mistakes, and do it in a way that not everyone can do. If you've done it in any sort of professional capacity, such as for an office job or school newspaper, mention that too.

Knowing another language. Being able to edit English well is a rare talent, but if you've got a second language under your belt, so much the better. The worldwide gaming community is growing more tightly knit all the time, and that means that more and more games include multilingual support. For North America, the three main languages are English, French, and Spanish; for Europe, English, French, Spanish, Italian and German. Japanese is another prominent language, of course, and some games also support Dutch or Portuguese. If you can read and/or speak any of those, with at least acceptable fluency, then you've got a definite edge over those who can't.

Getting published. Do you have any published writing out there? Even for school publications, it counts; they're looking for people who can write well, and any publication credits you have point toward that. If anything you've written has won any sort of awards, so much the better; you can put "author of the award-winning story 'Such and Such'" without necessarily having to mention that the award came from your community college.

Developing other office skills. A tester needs to be proficient with Word at the very least (the higher the functions you're familiar with, the better), and may also need experience with FileMaker or Access. A lead tester can make his or her job much easier with some skill in Excel. Get to know as many of them as you can, and practice your typing while you're at it. If you can type over 50 words a minute, mention that on the resume as well.

Having distinctive hobbies. The "hobby" section tends to go last on a resume, or close to it, because it's less important than your work experience and other qualifications. However, it can help to show how creative and talented you are, especially if your hobbies include any kind of music, writing, film, or other such creative endeavors. Active hobbies, such as motorcycle riding or rock climbing, can also portray you in a positive light. The hobby section's minor, but don't neglect it, as it might give you that extra push.

Knowing your line of work. Putting "lifelong gamer," or words to that effect, on a tester resume might sound trite and obvious, but it's still important. If a resume shows no particular interest in games, it's likely to get put aside in favor of one that does. You'll need to know all you can about games in general, and about the company's games in particular.

Now, it's possible that none of the above applies to you. If not, you can send a resume without any of those things, or any prior experience, on it; it does occasionally happen that a company will need people immediately, and will simply hire whoever applies at that moment. But it's rare, and your chances are much better if your resume's got some meat on it. If it doesn't, now might be a good time to learn a new skill or two; nothing says you have to apply for a tester position right now, and the skills above will help you in all kinds of ways even if you end up in another line of work.

Once you've sent your resumes, follow up with each company, about once a week, to make sure that you stay on their radar. It may be weeks or months before they call you, and they may never call at all. But if you do all of the above, you'll maximize your chances.

Of course, getting that call is just the end of Step One, Step Two being the interview. Next time, we'll talk about that.