What EA Wants In A Tester
Jeremy Writes:
I have a couple of questions. First I am attending a community college in pennsylvania for a generalized computer degree and I am also planning on getting my mcse certification. What I am wondering is how can I get into the industry now to gain experience, I heard that testing is an excellent way to get started but what kind of experience are they looking for in testers. I love video games and EA is always been a favorite of mine, if you could tell me anything I would appreciate it.
My Reply:
I dont speak from firsthand knowledge here, but I’ve been told that companies like EA are looking for a few things in their testers:
A high level of familiarity with all of the main platforms: Xbox, PS2, Gamecube, PC, GBA. Its good to be able to say you own all of them and play them regularly.
Good written communications skills. You are going to need to help engineers track down bugs, so the ability to document the steps needed to reproduce the bugs are essential.
Really good gaming skills. You are sometimes being asked to push the game and find bugs that most people would not. In order to do that in a timely manner its important that you are able to play through the game more quickly than the average player. Your interviewer may interpret the number of recent games that and the total games you have every played as a good indicator of how hardcore of a gamer you are.