needed information

[bladr50]

I'm looking into becoming a game tester, unfortunately all the information I have found has been for the most part useless. I would like to know the following if possible.

1)Are there any college classes I have to take.
2)Are ther any classes that I should take.
3) I would like to start as a tester and move into another area if possible, the problem is that I am not much of an artist or any king\d of drawing as a whole. Any sugestion on what I should look into, also what coolege courses should I have done in said job.
4) would it be possible to make a living off just being a game tester.

any information would be helpful
thank you in advanced

 

[Doc]

1,2) Dude, you just play video games...
3) Starting as a tester is a bad idea if you want to move to "other areas". The best ways to get in are to either get on a mod team for a PC game, and learn to build games that way, or to go to school for it like most people. It's either a two or three year tech school, then you're all nice and ready to go make video games. They usually help you get a job, too.
4) Yeah, but probably not a very comfortable one.

 

[bladr50]

What would I be doing in the tech school even though I'm not any good at drawing

 

[Doc]

Video games are a complex machine, man. There's programming, graphics design, storyboard, ect, ect. There's so much you can do, you just have to go to school man.

 

[Mirage]

As somebody who simply plays games there is a good chance you won't get picked as a game tester. The main reason for that is that there are several others who have more qualifications (i.e. programming, design, etc skills) who will be better at letting the developers know what bugs are found.

Game testing might sound fun but honestly unless you love playing the same game over and over and over and over (yeah..) and over and over again, it might not be as fun as you thought. Game testers generally stick to one game for the longest time until all the bugs are gone.

Even if you are testing a few games at once the chances of you being in charge of testing a mainstream game like Halo 3, GTA4, etc are next to impossible. Big development houses test their own games with their own employees. As a game tester you would be most likely testing games that nobody will ever buy because the games are so low budget that the development company can't afford to hire their own staff to test.

Moral of the story is get hired by a development company to test their games exclusively. Otherwise you'll be testing the games that never sell a single copy.