As you may notice, I'm new, and I'm curious to hear if anyone here works in the gaming industry as I do.
I've been in the industry for five years or so. My first stint was as a Tester for Vivendi Universal Interactive Publishing back in 2002, here in Dublin (Republic of Ireland, where I live). I was there simply for a summer and worked on the Italian versions of games such as Aliens vs Predator 2: Primal Hunt, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom, No One Lives Forever 2, and I think a couple other minor ones. I did mainly localisation QA, which means testing the language, text and audio of a game, instead of functional stuff (like crashes).
Anyhow, in 2005 I went back to Vivendi, where I stayed until a month ago. I slowly went up to the position of Senior QA Tester and then temporary QA Lead. Eventually I left the company: I was bored with the place, bored with management (although I did have many friends among the QA staff), and with the general asshattery of the company. Moreover, the icing on the cake was the revolving door policy alongside with the low quality of most products, and an extreme obsession with cutting corners. Still, during those two years I worked in many titles, such as Crash Tag Team Racing, 50 Cent Bulletproof (guys, I'm so sorry, but the game got released on time partly because of me... yikes), Ice Age 2, and two of the portable versions of Eragon (I know...). Oh, and a LOT of work on different platforms for F.E.A.R. My last job was leading the team that was testing the first expansion on the Xbox 360.
It was no secret I was looking for another job for ages, though, and finally I got hired by Popcap Games. The treatment is much better, the atmosphere is much nicer (NOT full of alienated loons like Vivendi was), it's closer to home, and the games are better! And management aren't assholes. It's great being in a company where there's simply a good vibe and people are enthusiastic about their work. Here, my title is as a QA Engineer, which is basically a more involved QA Tester. I am in the Localisation section, and look after Spanish SKUs for the games, for the most part. Popcap focus on casual games for PCs, mobiles and iPods, and their games, while simple for some, are of a generally quite high standard. The work here is harder than in Vivendi, that's for sure. But it's really, really worth it.
Downside? Our office is right across the road from the Guinness brewery and the fumes are a bit... yeah. But Vivendi's offices were on a landfil,
literally a pile of garbage, so it's still an improvement!
At any rate, I'm interested to hear if anyone has experiences to share from the games industry. I'll also try to answer any questions people may have about it, although I'm probably not the most knowledgable person out there, but there may be stuff I can tell you anyway, so fire away
EDIT: I should add, that as a Localisation QA Tester, the only skills you need are a) being a gamer and b) being fluent in more than one language. My fluency in Italian and Spanish comes in handy. Of course, by now I've acquired enough experience that I am good at what I do, but it certainly has nothing to do with skills from my university education...