How employable are game testers?

CareerExplorer rates game testers with a B employability rating, meaning this career should provide good employment opportunities for the foreseeable future.

Are game testers in demand?

The demand for games testers is tied closely to the overall demand for games themselves. The complexity of those games also impacts the number of opportunities for testers, since more complicated games require more hours of testing to achieve marketplace readiness. The games industry entered an extremely robust period of growth in 2012 and there are no indications that its momentum is slowing. Because it is impossible for developers and programmers to identify every bug, almost every new, unpublished video game needs third-party quality assurance testing before going to market. Perhaps surprisingly, games testers rarely work remotely and instead conduct their tests in environments controlled by game owners and developers; this is to prevent testers from stealing and/or illegally distributing unpublished games. As a result, game testers who live on the West Coast or in the Northeast, where video game development is centred, will have better job prospects. Games testers work can be cyclical. It is not uncommon for developers to base their release schedules – and temporarily heightened need for games testers – around industry events like the annual GDC (Game Developers Conference), console release cycles, and holiday consumer demand. Despite these cycles, with more than half of all Americans playing video games in some form and developers constantly creating new games, opportunities for games testers will remain strong.