become a tester (Score 2)

I'm not sure if this was mentioned yet (I scanned through the messages and didn't see it) but one of the easiest ways to get into the game industry is to become a game tester. It is the absolute worst, most thankless, tedious and underpaid job in the game development heirarchy. It sounds cool at first - you get paid like $10-$12 an hour to play unreleased video games ALL DAY LONG! And sometimes all night too! But, you'll quickly learn that playing unfinished video games really sucks, as most of the playability of a game doesn't show up until the last month of development. Big game houses like EA start hiring testers in mass around September, if I remember right. After the Christmas rush, they keep the good ones, and after a few years they get promoted to various associate producer/designer positions if they are liked by the higher ups. I got into the game industry a different way - my girlfriend worked at a coffee shop down the street from a small development group. One day, someone who worked there asked if she wanted a production job. She said no, but told them I'd be interested. My interview went like this: "Do you like racing games?" "yes." "Cool. Do you like boxing?" "no." "Hmm. Well, what kind of music do you like? What about the Pixies?" "Surfer Rosa is their best album." "Killer, you're hired!" My job consisted of running repetitive scripts for programmers, and eventually turned into an art position because I was better at photoshop than I was at math. After two years of working at a game company, all desire I had to play games had been destroyed. The job was fun, but everyone I worked with got totally burnt out on it.