Hey all!
Everyone seems to be hiring around the place.
Did you apply anywhere? Did you get an interview?
If so, how did it go and what interesting stories do you have?[:D]
Im chipping in with some info here that ive said many a time ( purely my oppinion )
Programmer: You dont *need* qualifications - some hands on demo evidence of a game demo that youve written will suffice if it kicks ass. Trouble is it may not kick ass without the experience and knowledge a computer science degree ( or similar ) might bring you.
Artist: You definately dont need qualifications - but your art needs to speak volumes of your capabilities - again unless your extremely self motivated you might need some fine arts courses to get you to this level.
Ive seen highly qualified ( on paper ) individuals have below average demo reels and on the flipside artists with zero qualifications come up with some amazing pieces of work.
Designers: Tough one - being able to clearly illustrate your points / design goals through clear layouts is a massive bonus here. Get used to using programs like excel / word / powerpoint / project and present your ideas. Ultimately Words are only good when pictures arent available, and pictures are only good when live footage isnt available As much visual stuff as possible to give a visual aspect to your ideas.
You must be an avid gamer, played hundreds of games - even ones that suck - and you also must be a prolific knowledge sponge. Read everything from philosophy to natural sciences, psychology to geography. Absorb it all. THe more knowledge you have the better equipped you will be when tackling that new idea of yours.
Bottom line: Words mean *almost* nothing. Actions and results are *almost* everything.
Getting experience for QA is almost just as difficult as getting experience as a coder/artist/designer IMO.
Having an understanding of how games are made will always place you above the others. Knowing some basic programming and how a games code typically flows. Knowing how an artist creates their models and animations. These are all skills that will make your bug reporting more usefull to the developers as you can clearly point them to the problem.
A good tip is at your next QA interview I'd suggest bringing in some "Home - Made" bug reports. By that I mean simply sit down and play some of your favourtie games... or better yet that companies games! and find some bugs. The most important thing about bug reporting is describing the reproduction steps. Try to get it down to only the needed steps and write it in such a way that someone who has no idea about the game could correctly follow your steps.
For example..
1) Run "BestGameEver"
2) At the main menu screen hold down the CTRL button and move your mouse over the Start button.
3) Application will crash.
debug Log and screenshot have been attached.
Never do..
Game crashed whilst I was clicking the button.
Hope that helps. Good luck with it all AntZ
Mdobele
QA at Auran.
quote:Originally posted by Mdobele
A good tip is at your next QA interview I'd suggest bringing in some "Home - Made" bug reports. By that I mean simply sit down and play some of your favourtie games... or better yet that companies games! and find some bugs.
Mdobele: thats an excellent way to show your bug / testing skill is to show up to your interview with some home made reports. It also confirms what Hazard said:
quote:Originally posted by HazarD
Words mean *almost* nothing. Actions and results are *almost* everything.[/b]
good way to show what you can do, thanx for the help guys, i've got basic knowledge of programming, modeling and animation (very basic) and my reproduction steps a very good. So i guess some examples on paper are also the best way to show how well you can do it.
Well tomorrow im off to Qantm for the IGDA Masters Classes, goin to the Design and Production sessions and maybe buisness, so that will help me learn more cant wait.
Thanx Guys
Agreed. Also remember that at times, QA can be a very repetitive job. Make sure you can explain to someone how you can 'keep on track' through a task you may not enjoy.
For example, let's imagine you're testing WOW. How can you be sure that every piece of armor on every character class looks correct through every animation (walk, run, fight, death, riding, etc...)
Now the game allows custom made and decorated armor. Think about doing nothing else but going through equipment screens and animations for a week or two solid.
How would you go about it? How would you plan your tests? How could you track them? How could you make sure you'd covered all the combinations? What if covering all combinations would take a year, but you only have a week?
If the testing took every day for a week (40hrs), could you keep on track and working? Have you ever had any job or work in which you've HAD to keep on track like this? (even if it's painting fences, making sandwiches for 8hrs for a footy club, or some such)
I'm really really not trying to say that QA isn't able to be satisfying and fun, but you have to be confident that you're up to the non-fun bits.
See you at the master classes tomorrow! I'll be hitting the first 1/2hr of design then off to code!
hmm I know what you mean about repetiion and keeping on track about doin jobs that you dont enjoy (over and over again) my last job was with a subcontractor for holden they created and produced some interior parts for the holden coupe` and GTO's for chrysler. for 1 and half years I did the same job everyday as a proccess worker, it was rreally boring but Im manage to stay there, that was until I moved up to queensland
An easy way to keep on track is to think about jobs that you have had and think "I could always be doing that.." I remember working in a Bottle Shop Drive Thru and I would never do it again. Pisseasy work, great pay, boring job. I don't mean boring as in i'm not interested though, there was just no work to do, they all bludged and I had more hours on my shift than the workload. So I would finish my work in two hours and be forced to sit around for another 8. I got payed for it but I would rather be working hard.
Besides when you are actually doing QA you should use tables to keep check on what you have tested, maybe doing some on released games would be great to stick in your portfolio. For the last few days I have been purposely testing GTA:SA for PC and writing up reports. I will take the best two and put them in before moving onto another game until I have 6 reports from 3 games. I am also working on my first Design Document, so all this should show for something.
hey AntZ QANTM's Programming course I noticed has writing and design as part of their curriculum. Maybe you should look into that?