1. Has your job as a video game tester affected your recreational enjoyment of video games?
No, but it has for some co-workers. My girlfriend in particular notices faults in any game she plays now. I can usually separate work from play and ignore faults in things I play for enjoyment, though I do sometimes go back and try to see if I can reproduce issues just out of habit.
2. What are the hours?
Normally a 40 hour week. At one job though it was crunch time so I was pulling 75-80 hour weeks for around 7 months. Worked 50 days once without a day off in-between. Made bank.
3. How long do you spend on any certain game on average?
4. What on your resume do you think was most helpful in getting the job?
My CS degree probably didn't hurt. Though a monkey can do entry level game testing so they don't really care. The interview matters more than the resume. A lot of places also operate on a meat grinder level though, throwing people at a problem until it's fixed, then letting them all go. Game testing has a high turnaround.
5. Do you view this more as a career or just a job?
A job. A career for me is more on the development side of things, this is just a paycheck so that I can do things like eat and pay rent. Testing for the rest of my life is a horrifying thought.
6. On a scale of 1 to 13 how enjoyable do you find your job?
Depends a lot on the project and people. I had a tendency to get into a position where I could get away with literally anything because my work was so good, so that definitely helped (a coworker and I spent a week locked in a room blasting Infected Mushroom and Carcass destroying a game, that was fun) but the job itself tends to be terribly boring and mindless. You also tend to hate anything you work on after enough time (only real exception is Arkham City, but that's only because the devs and game were really good).
Video game testing isn't fun. It's not some promised land. Grandma's Boy is absolutely full of shit (The Core was a more realistic movie for its respective field). It's mind-numbing, it's boring, it's frustrating, but it pays and isn't menial labor.
