Skills of a professional player

A tester first of all needs exceptional linguistic skills, both written and spoken, to be able to write clearly and in concise ways. He must be proficient in writing clear algorithms that exactly explain how a series of gaming actions determine an in-game bug, and that describe that bug in detail. Getting used to explaining hard\technical stuff to not-proficient people is a good way to improve these skills.

There are also several kinds of tests that a potential tester can be asked to fulfill in order to be considered for a tester position, such as the paper clip and the building block exercises. You can search on the Internet to find out more about them.

The game tester needs to be good at any kind of game and must be able to play them professionally at any difficulty setting. Game content may vary depending on the difficulty, so the tester needs to be capable of beating games in conditions most players can't. He also must be very proficient with installment and update procedures on different devices and operating systems, in order to check the accuracy of system messages text.

Being proficient in two or more languages, written and spoken, is definitively an advantage, because many tester positions, especially entry level ones, are available for localization testers. Showing the right attitude as a localization tester can give a chance to more desirable functional testing openings within the same company.

A tester must be a very sharp observer and must demonstrate exceptional attention to detail. He needs to be like some kind of bulldog that never gets tired of repeating a game sequence, until he knows for sure what happened in a specific game situation and why. He must have an iron will to keep playing the game again and again, examine the same part over and over, trying everything that can be done in order to trigger any outcome and thus, thoroughly test any fold of the game logic, even after 18 hours of playing the same game. At the same time, he must be an excellent lateral thinker, because he needs to force himself to think out of his own mental schemes in order to exploit all the opportunities offered by the gameplay of the title he's working on.

Localization testing requires a great attention effort, because with speech and writing, we have several cognitive mechanisms that tend to automatically correct errors, such as repetitions and typing errors. You must force yourself to always put all your attention and resources at maximum levels to such cognitive biases.

One example of tester endurance and patience was during the beta test of Faceball 2000 for the original Gameboy. It was the only multiplayer first person shooter for Gameboy. We handed a build over to a colleague's four year old son who dived right into the game. The boy came back a while later, saying he was stuck. Indeed he was in a room with no exit. Upon further analysis, the boy had been running into a corner where two walls met, over and over. Eventually, he popped through the intersection between the walls, into the interior of a pillar. None of the other testers had tried this.