Writing a Cover Letter to a Video Game Developer

When applying for any job, you’ll likely need a cover letter to introduce yourself, outline your desire to work for a company and describe what you can bring to them as a unique applicant. In the case of the video game industry there are very specific things you should and should not do when applying for a job.

What Not to Do in Your Cover Letter

A cover letter is designed to show the reader why you are applying, what your goals are in the position, and how you will bring something unique to their company. So, it is not designed for you to provide advice on their future game line-up, ask questions, or gush about how much you loved their last blockbuster.

Specifically, it is important to stay on topic. When writing a cover letter for a game developer, avoid making any direct comparisons between game companies. The only thing I would say is okay here is mentioning genre or specific titles that this developer has produced, but only in the context of your career goals.

For example, if your goal is to one day be a lead systems designer on an MMO and you are applying to NCSoft as a game tester for their newest online game, you should specifically outline how Guild Wars has been such an influence in your search for a career in the field. Avoid saying that you think Guild Wars needs a central hub or that it should incorporate more Warcraft style quests (which would be awful, by the way). Stick to the job and how you’re a good fit.

What to Include in Your Cover Letter

As for what you should specifically mention in your cover letter, start with the exact reason why you are applying. Honest is important here, but avoid saying anything that will marginalize you. Declaring that you really like video games and want to get paid to play them gets your application tossed in a pile with a thousand other gamers who won’t be considered.

Honestly ask yourself, why do I want to be in the gaming industry, and then answer the question in a professional manner. The developers want to know that you’ll treat the job as a job not as a hobby that you get paid for. They also want to know that you have long term ambitions in the industry – this will ensure you work hard and stay dedicated in the face of long hours and potentially demanding deadlines.

With so many applicants every year, the gaming industry is tough to land a job with. However, with a good cover letter that sets you aside from casual gamers and teenagers seeking their dream jobs, you’ll eventually land that magical interview that can lead to the job you’ve always wanted.

Writing a Bug Report as a Video Game Tester

Video game testing is about a lot more than just playing new games before they are released. In fact, a good chunk of the job involves writing and reading technical reports that clearly outline the bugs in the game. Specifically, you must be able to clearly identify a problem, outline how it occurred, and under what circumstances you were able to make it reappear.

When You’ll Write Reports

Bug reports are written throughout the process, usually between builds when you are completing any given test case. While you must follow the walkthrough or checklist provided in a test case, if you do find a bug, you will stop your progress and focus heavily on the bug and what causes it. This might occur in the alpha, beta, or QA stage and should be treated with priority in all three cases.

Writing Your Bug Report

Just finding a bug in the game is not enough. You must be able to identify how the bug occurred, what circumstances are needed to recreate the bug, and most importantly, what the bug does to the game. Programmers are working with millions of lines of code and need to know where the bug is mostly likely to have an impact. The more data they have, and the easier that data is to interpret, the faster they can pinpoint and fix the bug.

The bug report will also be read by a lot of people before it ends up in the bug database, so it’s vital that you are clear in a way that can be understood not only by the programmer, but by production leads and directors as well.

Part one of a bug report will describe the bug. It might be that a wall disappears when you put on a certain tunic in a game. If this happens, the bug report would start with “northwest wall of city in Big City disappears when putting on Bright Tunic.”

The second part of your report, however, is the most important. It needs to be concise and to the point – no adjectives or descriptions beyond the exact actions you took to create the bug. This should be written as a numbered list that lays out exactly what happens from start to finish in generating that bug.

You may also be expected to learn the IBM ODC system to classify bugs. This not only helps to prioritize the bugs as they arrive, but to pinpoint where in the code they appear. As a tester, programming skills can be very handy for this exact reason.

What’s the Goal of Video Game Testing?

Video game testing is the dream job for millions of game fans around the globe. Players around the world look desperately to invest time into their careers so they can start playing video games and getting paid for it. Sounds like a pretty sweet gig, right? Well, before you also get caught up in the dream, consider what the game testing field really involves and how much energy and time you’ll need to invest in it before you get started.

What Game Testing Does

To start, game testing is not done for players to determine if they “like” a game. Studios can find people perfectly willing to do this for free and most of them don’t even bother due to budgetary concerns. Some major games like Halo or Call of Duty might go through screenings and panel reviews, but most games are handled purely internally and that means you need to actually get hired by the developer before you become a tester.

Game testing as a rule is done to rule out all potential bugs in the game. There are three phases of testing, starting with alpha testing to determine major game breaking bugs in the first builds of the game (usually at the 75% completion point). The beta testing phase is done when the game is approaching completion and is used to root out smaller glitches and problems like holes in the floor, broken characters, or missing textures.

Finally, there is the QA phase in which testers will work through menus, levels, and various environments in meticulous fashion to dig up every possible little issue that might arise. As a QA tester, you’ll spend time working through the game on a very minute level. Yes, the game is finished, but you won’t be enjoying the full story arc. You’ll be going through thousands of menu combinations or exploring one environment looking for any possible way to create a bug in the game.

How You Can Use Game Testing

While game testing as a job is not exactly glamorous – it’s entry level pay and tedious work with heavy deadlines – it does open up numerous opportunities to new jobs in the game development field. Many top developers and programmers got their start in game testing, providing needed feedback on major bugs before moving to the big time.

What Jobs Are There in the Video Game Industry?

A lot of people think they can get along in the video game industry. It’s a glamorous thought – spending your days coding a masterpiece of interactive entertainment. But, if you’re anything like most people interested in the video game industry, you probably don’t know what jobs are available or how to get them.

Programming

The most common jobs in gaming are the coding and programming jobs. Someone has to sit down and write the hard code that will power the game. Coding is done in a variety of languages, so you’ll need to be familiar with things like C, C++, and XNA to be effective in this role. For the most part, programmers are encouraged to have degrees. However, not all developers require degrees if you can prove you have the skillset needed to be an asset to the company.

Art and Design

There are an equal number of designers and artists who work closely with the development team as well. These are the people who invest hours of their time into creating the game world in which players will be immersed. While the programmers are responsible for bringing it to life, artists and designers are essentially the world builders – what they create is what the consumer sees.

Writers and Systems Designers

Scripts are needed to focus a game. Not only that, but someone needs to sit down and decide how best to balance the game mechanics. If the game is multiplayer, how does each character perform? Is anyone overpowered or underpowered? These are major issues that can ruin a game experience for players – as a designer, your job will be to make sure nothing goes wrong between inception and application.

Game Tester

At the bottom of the totem pole is the game tester. These are the employees who will sit in a cubicle day in and day out and check for possible bugs, holes, or errors that will ruin the game experience for players. This job can be tedious and it can be very time intensive, especially when you approach a deadline, but it can also be very exciting as opens up a number of opportunities for advancement in the company.

No matter what role you take on in the gaming industry, prepare for a fast paced, high stress job that can be very demanding but that will also vastly reward you and your efforts for years to come.

What is QA in the Gaming Industry?

For most video games, there are three full phases of testing – the alpha stage for internal, major bug testing, the beta stage for catching smaller bugs and prepping the game for full playthrough, and the final QA phase in which small bugs and quality issues are taken care of. This Quality Assurance stage allows the game developers to reduce the chance that there will be any hiccups when the game goes live and is shipped to all the eager fans waiting to play it.

For game testers, the QA stage can be a very frustrating stage in game development. For the most part, all major bugs have been worked out, so the developers and programmers are in the frame of mind that their game is done and ready for shipping. On the other hand, testers are paid to go through it as much as possible and map out any reason why the game is not quite ready yet. So, if you are a tester, this stage of testing requires a great deal of will power and an attention to detail that will help you not only find the bugs, but pinpoint their cause immediately so they can be repaired.

Types of QA Testing

When a game reaches the QA stage, the testers will go through either Static or Ad Hoc testing. The static testing phase will have you going through the game linearly, following specific directions given to you by developers or lead testers. You can then record anything that doesn’t work exactly as it is supposed to. This is the most common form of QA testing as it allows the game developers to check specific sections of the code for problems. It can be incredibly tedious as you go through menu combinations, specializations for characters and modes, and very clearly outlined walkthroughs of levels over and over again.

Ad hoc testing, however, is completely different in that you can play it anyway you want in an effort to effectively break the game. You won’t work toward completing anything. Rather, you might spend hours in a single level trying to find a way to make it break. Remember that there will be millions of people out there playing this game when it releases and they will inevitably find ways to break it – your job will be to break it first so the hole can be filled.

QA testing is a vital stage in game development. It allows the publisher to work out any last minute bugs that can have a negative impact on their public image during a game launch. It is also among the most tedious and stressful periods of game development, so you’ll want to have a patient, detail oriented attitude if you plan on being a QA tester.

What is Beta Testing in the Game Industry?

If you’ve heard nothing else about game testing, you’ve probably heard the term “beta testing” before. This is the phase of testing in which the game is getting incredibly close to launch and players are needed to check on certain features that might cause minor bugs like texture ripping, reset bugs, or other small bugs that can hinder the gaming experience without quite breaking it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there are no bugs in the game that can lead to flat out breaking of the system – that’s always a possibility (even after the game is released), but usually, a good beta test is designed to simulate what real world circumstances will look like when thousands or even millions of gamers pick up a game and play it for the first time.

Types of Beta Testing

There are actually two types of beta testing for video games – the first being the internal round of betas that are done by employees. Most games don’t have open beta testing – rather they have a number of internal beta tests that strive to remove any of the bugs that will make the developer look bad and the game play poorly.

The number one reason that beta testing is done internally is that when you pay someone to check for bugs as they do with beta testers, they get far better results. Certain criteria are followed and the game is broken down into many small parts to make sure nothing is missed. In short, it’s more of a chore than what most people would want out of a game.

So, open testing usually is only done for very large games that will have a multiplayer aspect to them. These games have so much content that they need hundreds or even thousands of outside people to test the system and look for any and all bugs possible. The most common open beta tests are for online RPGs like World of Warcraft that generally have thousands of bugs, even just before game launch. The open beta also allows developers to tweak game balance issues so that the characters are well suited to face each other.

Open beta testing is not always easy to get into, however. Many times there is an application process and players are either chosen based on their computer systems or through random lottery. For those interested in console betas, they do exist, but they are even rarer and usually are relegated to online based games that need heavy testing like Halo or SOCOM.

Becoming a Beta Tester

If you want to be a beta tester, start applying now. Play games frequently, start taking notes of what you see in the game and be ready to showcase your talents when asked. Most people think this is a glamorous job with free game and big pay, but it can actually be very gruelling with lots of small detail-oriented tests. If you’re serious about being a beta tester, be ready for the hard work. It will pay off, but only if you put in what is required by the developers.

What is Alpha Testing in the Game Industry?

A lot of people show interest every year in becoming official game testers – on the payroll of major developers around the globe. However, what exactly will you be doing when you get that job? It’s a good question, because not all testing is actually fun – in fact, it can be downright tedious when a game first starts development.

This is the first true phase of the game that can be “played”. Months and potentially years of development are finally put into an operational build that can be played and subsequently tested. The testing in this phase, however, is not just looking for tiny little bugs that might annoy gamers. It’s designed to act as a rough overview of the game, allowing testers to go through the content and look for bugs that can potentially crash or break the game.

It’s like crashing a car as many ways as possible so you can enhance the safety features. Your job as an alpha tester will be to play the game with an intense focus on bugs that will cause fatal errors and failures in the software. If it completely shuts down, crashes the hardware or worse yet, causes actual damage to the hardware, you not only report the bug, you spend hours recreating the bug so the developers have as much data as possible with which to fix it.

During this testing phase, the lead gaming tester will start developing a bug database for issues that plague a new game. That database will be updated whenever a new bug is found and whenever a fix is tentatively provided by the game’s programmers.

How to Be an Alpha Tester

While beta testing is occasionally made public, alpha testing is always in house. Only hired employees are used to test the game in its infancy as there are very specific requirements for how the game can be tested, what you should look for, how to fill in your reports, and ultimately, how to respond to bug fixes from the programmers.

All that work requires hours of training and practice which can only be provided by the developers of the game. Even if you’ve worked as a tester on a previous game, a new title will usually have its own Alpha testing protocols to follow.

So, to become an Alpha tester, you must develop credentials that can get you into the gaming industry, including but necessarily requiring a degree in programming or game development, and special training with game testing on your own. It seems like a lot of work, but for those looking to land a dream job in game testing, it’s very doable with the right attitude.