Okay, so you’re hired, now what are you going to expect from the company and your work. Please note that most of this only applies to huge corporate (publisher/certification, not developer/studio) testing facilities, smaller companies which will treat you much better:

1. You will probably not make enough money to live off of. If you’re lucky you are young and your parents live nearby to the game testing facility. If you are even luckier you don’t have any life outside of games because I can assure you that the hours will destroy it if you dedicate yourself to this task. Most likely you will be brought on in October to test that Barney game and it must be tested and rejected until it stops getting rejected in November in time for a Christmas launch.
2. There will be fifty more games as terrible as the Barney game, each of these will resubmit many times until they pass and go gold, all vying for your time. Most companies are pretty good about managing your time, especially as you get into specific sections of testing.
3. Many testers will only be testing one part of the finished product. For instance at one company I worked at, I spent all of my time testing memory cards and hard drive saving/loading. For instance I’d fill up a memory card and make sure that the game properly errored out and allowed for a way around that which matched the technical requirement for all games on the platform. Very rarely did I actually play a game at that company while working on specific areas of the game’s compliance.
4. Take the health insurance if you don’t have it otherwise. This job will suck your health away, if you can afford to go without the extra 2 bucks an hour, (even if it means you can’t afford Madden this year), get it. Most places give you free soda, and then you’re paying the dental bills out of your ten to thirteen dollars an hour.
5. You will be unceremoniously fired at some point. They may say they just don’t have any work right now, or something like that. This happens, if you didn’t vomit all over the testing facility they’ll probably ask you back at some point. Microsoft is still trying to recruit me for testing jobs in Washington state and I moved to California nearly a year ago. They need warm bodies who are smart enough to not do dumb things, but they only need them for a few months at a time and as cheaply as possible.
6. Don’t do any dumb things, don’t post about how you’re testing Halo 3 on forums. You make it worse for yourself and everyone else. Even after you get fired like I said you will. Most likely you will be called back, just as I said. If you’re sticking to it, you can get through it. This is a very unstable time to be video game QA, there are no unions, and video game QA is generally treated horribly. A friend of mine at a huge game company mentioned how his company too has a huge cave full of warm stinky bodies pressing buttons. This is how large companies generally test games and it will probably continue to be this way. Hack it or find a smaller company that doesn’t treat you like dirt, seeking revenge will only ruin any chance you have of ever getting a job again.
7. This will take a lot of time, you won’t be anything but QA for at least three years unless you already have a portfolio of released games (free or otherwise as long as they are of a good quality) that you have contributed to code-wise. Your sourceforge.net project with eight lines of code and an eight page design doc in the CVS doesn’t count.
8. Ceaselessly look for another job if you aren’t at a nice, smaller developer. Obviously do not do this while you are at work.
9. At some point one of these companies may have a representative that says something totally ridiculous. Once I sat in an cave full of tester noobs getting told how we would be punished if we were five minutes late coming back from lunch. This same person then warned everyone in the room to not use the rest room for too long, I’m not joking, this despicable behavior will happen. At the same place, they threatened every room full of testers with lawsuits and firing if they ever mentioned what game they were testing, saying that somebody had already leaked information (nobody had, this was just a scare tactic).
10. Another company that shall go unnamed had their temp service yell (and by yell I mean loud, mean, drill instructor not-kidding yelling) at everyone who was interviewing for testing positions warning that if we did get jobs and were ever 1 minute late to work we would be fired immediately.
11. The terrible stories in 9 and 10 are both different companies, both are large. Every one of these companies probably still does this kind of thing. Yes, I’m bitter, but at least I can contribute my experience to yours before you get into this. Testing is indeed rewarding, I enjoy every bug I find, especially when they get fixed.
12. If you are in a smaller company, get approval for, and only then do other interesting tasks. I’ve set up wiki servers and the like. I also evaluate software for the testing department when I can. This is all good real world experience, which will look great on your resume and help with moving on up.

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