Hey there folks, I got some exciting news to announce: I got a new job at PlayDots as a Quality Assurance tester! If you don’t know what a Quality Assurance tester is, that’s pretty much what a “playtester” does. If you don’t know what a “playtester” does, I’ll let Ron Gilbert explain:
Playtesting usually happens one-on-one or with very small groups of players. You’re often watching testers as they play, taking notes and generally being very quiet (if not behind one-way glass). Your main goal is to see how a player approaches the game, where they spend their time and where they are confused and get stuck. Back at Lucas, and I believe it started with Indy, we would have Pizza Orgies. After work, the whole Game’s group, plus friends and family would get together, eat pizza and everyone would pay the game for a few hours, then we’d have a large group debrief discussion. These were great because everyone got to chime in and build off other comments.
So that’ll be pretty much what I’m doing for PlayDots, makers of Dots and TwoDots, which are casual mobile games that are similar to games such as Bejeweled and Candy Crush. I finally broke into the Video Game Industry! Hooray for me! 😀