Oh, You Play Video Games All Day
Usually when the uneducated public (including your family) finds out about your game industry
career you’ll end up being pigeonholed into one of several game job stereotypes they’ve heard of. Generally it is that you’re a tester and find bugs, or just play video games all day. If you’re lucky you won’t lose their respect when you tell them
Obviously this isn’t true, most testers end up focusing on one specific area of the game, or several specific areas and at best get to actually play for 30 minutes a day during lunch of the latest and greatest before it is released. For instance I played Halo 2 before it was out, which was enjoyable.
Unfortunately there isn’t really much of a way to fix this. Many people will have some difficulty understanding that you do real work, I suspect it is even more difficult if you are like me and enjoy fixing bugs. A lot of people I have met don’t seem to understand that they too could have enjoyable careers if only they tried.
Hopefully as the ignorant people die off and are replaced with new models they will be more familiar with our chosen profession, or at least won’t ignorantly imply we don’t do real work. Granted I don’t haul garbage all day.
