Dive right into the thrilling realm of QA Game Tester jobs. Join us as we explore the ins and outs of this crucial role in the gaming industry. In this article, brought to you by 8Bit GameDev Recruiters, we’ll uncover the secrets of game testing, from identifying bugs and glitches to ensuring the highest quality player experience. Get a glimpse into the exciting opportunities, required skills, and career progression paths in the world of QA Game Tester jobs. Join us as we embark on this exciting journey and uncover the essential role of game testers in shaping the gaming experience.

Also, if you want to know what are the other fields in the video game industry, check out the other parts of our game dev roles compendium:

• GAME DESIGN
• ART
• GAME PROGRAMMING
• GAME PRODUCERS

And since we’re talking game development career, take a look at our fresh, juicy, and QA game tester job postings.

Table of contents:

1. What does being a QA tester means?
2. Is QA tester a good start in the game industry?
3. What does a QA tester do?
4. QA Director role
5. QA Lead role
6. QA Tester role
7. Senior QA Tester role
8. QA Automation Tester / Engineer role
9. QA Test Engineer role

What does being a QA tester means?

QA stands for Quality Assurance. As you can imagine – video games are very complex pieces of software. Mix everything player can do with tons of possible hardware configurations (where this particular software is supposed to run). And you’ll end up with plenty of potential errors and issues, which we used to call BUGS.

And guess what – we need ppl who are actively looking for all these potential fuckups before they’ll ruin all fun for players who waited very long and paid their hard-earned money. Then game testers can report these bugs to other team members, so all the errors can be patched up (so hordes of players won’t shred the game to pieces with their negative reviews).

So what you see is a role with much responsibility to bear while being heavily underappreciated.

Is QA tester a good start in the game industry?

It’s definitely a good place to start for people who’re still looking for their place in the game development. The entry threshold is quite low.

And you could definitely learn the process of making games.

It’s not a job for everyone, though. You need to own a mix of being extra thorough, patient, and a hell of a diplomat.

What does a QA tester do?

• Get to know the requirements of the (product) game you’re testing, meaning learn how it’s supposed to work by the design
• Your job is basically to replay the same parts of the game over and over again. (So you see – it’s not about getting paid for playing video games. It’s much more to it. And if your goal is to get money for just playing video games – you might want to reconsider your potential career path.)
• Share with the team that you’ve found some bugs. Aaaand this is where diplomacy comes to work. You need to describe the issues you’ve encountered to the people who did their share of work. The tricky part is that no one likes to hear that their work has some flaws, so you must be extra constructive and professional while sharing your feedback.

QA Director role in the game development

This position is more common in larger game studios or companies that provide outsourced QA services. Where there is a studio that runs a handful of projects simultaneously. QA Director oversees all QA teams in the company structure. This role is more focused on planning. QA Director’s job is to maintain the proper work pipeline, processes, career development, and budgeting.

They’re not testing anymore, although they usually start in the company as a QA tester.

QA Lead role in the game industry

QA Lead is a very experienced Tester who worked on many projects before. Besides being a very seasoned QA, this individual also can manage a team of other testers. Their job is to create and maintain proper work schedules, design high-level test plans, and usually mentor more junior team members.

It’s not uncommon for the lead to also run some game testing.

QA Game Tester jobs in the Game Development

This role’s primary responsibility is to test and play through specific parts of the game to identify all errors. It can be either gameplay, tech, progression, or graphics. After that, they need to create proper documentation of the issues they encountered (bug report) and then test again fixed issues.

Video game testers also create test plans. Test plans explain the objectives, processes, scope of the testing work, and needed resources.

Senior QA Game Tester jobs in GameDev

Senior is a much more experienced game Tester meaning that you might become a Senior. They ofc have more responsibility (paired with a bigger paycheck) than a regular QA on a lower experience level. It means they can be responsible for testing a much bigger chunk of the game, as the whole game mode.

They also might mentor junior Quality Assurance team members.

QA Automation Tester / Engineer role in the game industry

People working as Automation Testers need skills in programming.

Their job is to automate (duh ;)) the testing process. QA Automation Tester’s role is to save as much time as possible by creating the script for specific repeatable actions (compared to how long it would take for a person to complete).

QA Test Engineer role in the video game development

QA test Engineer is basically a programmer whose job is to create and improve needed tools and processes to test the game. QA Test Engineers oversee the entire project from a production pov.

That basically sums up QA testing positions. So if you’re adamant about going the QA and game testing path, you should have basic knowledge about what to expect.

For more game job career advice, see our other blog posts:

• 8 tips for nailing a job interview in the game industry
• Game recruiters are your best allies. Period. Check out why!
• Junior game development job. How to get in?
• Top tips for building a killer Linkedin profile

Also, if you think there’re any quality control roles that we could’ve missed, let us know on our social media!