Hey dudes, after reading several posts I decided that the best way for me to get involved in the field of game development was to be a beta tester then slowly work my way up. Right now I''m 14 years old and currently know several elements of game design and grew to know and love worldcraft, and i am just starting to learn modeling. If any of you have any information in becomming a beta tester (just for a summer job) and what i need to do... anything would be greately appreciated, thanks!!

I was 14 when I started C++ (well, 13, but I couldn't get 'Hello World' to work, so I quit at it for about a year, and went towards WorldCraft...Suppose we have a lot in common )
I'm currently 15 and learning how to create windows games (its hard, but you catch on quickly).
BTW, my friend and I tried to get jobs as beta testers (we'd be really good too, we never do whats expected, and try to go outside the boundries In just the last month, we found a bug in Dave Mirra Prostyle what-ever (for gamecube) that lets you get 600,000 points in wipeout (hint, its in the train level ), and found a bug in SUPER SMASH BROTHERS (I never thought I'd see the day!)... and a few other games (driver 2 etc.), but I wouldn't want to waste your time with long and boring stories). Anyways, we couldn't find any jobs, so we gave up and started working on WorldCraft maps...He can't map...and neither of us knows how to make textures (if anyone knows a good tut plz tell me), and we're both pretty bad modelers (although I can make a little man made out of circles ), so we gave up; I'm planning of making a map of my school for Counter-Strike over the sunmmer (if I can get good textures, that is. I spent a month trying to make my last map - 3 1/2 weeks of it was just finding textures, and putting them all into one gigantic wad with Wally)

EDIT: Finding bugs in Driver 2 isn't that hard (theres plenty to go around - go off the road just about any where you can see through the ground...Go into the stadium and you can walk into the crowd and fall through the floor...Ram into a building hard enough and you'll go through it - everything is all (how can I put this) reflection-y (its hard to explain, you have to see it for yourself)). Lets see...any game made by infogrames has tons of bugs (well so far Robot Arena and Survivor are HORRIBLE online, we're playing over the LAN and we're always off-sync).....
"I've learned something today: It doesn't matter if you're white, or if you're black...the only color that REALLY matters is green"
-Peter Griffin

Edited by - matrix2113 on March 11, 2002 6:19:34 PM

NO, dont make a CS map of your school!! you''ll get arrested and people will write all sorts of crazy things about CS saying how violent it is... make a map of something else

Just an advice: if you expect people offering you a beta tester job here on GameDev (very unlikely), then I would recommend creating an account with another name. You''re not looking very professional right now.

heh heh, an AP commenting on someone else''s handle... it may be mrpoopypants, but at least he spent the thirty seconds to register!

At least AP is not offending...

It was me BTW, I forgot to type the PW in.

guys come on, i am not kidding around... if you have any info on being a beta tester please post it, not about my name.. i''m not neccesarily looking to get a job through gamedev, just looking for info on it...

thta''s a DAMN good name! I wish I had thought of it....no sarcasm...I swear...no really....GAWSH!

The Light shine on you

quote:
i''m not neccesarily looking to get a job through gamedev, just looking for info on it...

The problem is, that you won''t get a job in the industry at 14 years. No matter what kind of job, it''s just impossible at that age. Beta testing may seem ''easy'', but it definitely can be a very hard job. It''s not only about spotting bugs, it''s also about identifying them: how can I reproduce it, what can cause it, what are the correlations, the special circumstances, is it hardware dependend, etc. Just pointing out "there is a bug !" isn''t enough. Good betatesters are hard too find, and require lots of experience. And even if one is a genius, you just can''t have that experience at 14.

I think there was a recent thread in the help wanted forum about exactly this issue, the guy was also 14, if I''m not mistaken. Have a look at that one, could be helpfull.

thanks a lot!!