“Acclaim” is offering open beta positions for it’s online action-bot title, BOTS. Allowing the player to create their own robotic characters with unique powers and transform abilities, BOTS allows players to take part in a wide variety of free-range robotic PvE and PvP combat throughout many gameplay sectors. Acclaim are currently looking for beta testers using the Windows XP platform, no word on a Mac OS X or Linux version is available at the moment (unfortunately).

Read more: Bots homepage | Acclaim Bots open beta announcement

Western-themed animmo Bang! Howdy is currently in an open-beta phase and looking for more players to test their game and services. The gameplay is a hybrid of turn-based and realtime strategy set in a 3d wild west setting, with lovely 3d toon-style artwork. Currently there are hundreds of special ‘playing fields’, dozens of unique units and 10 scenarios (missions I guess?). Currently the developers are working on adding new towns and new scenarios as testers test through the current missions.

Read more: Bang! Howdy

After some recent expansion last year by Sega UK, The Guardian games blog opened their comments as a mini-form for games testers to comment and talk about their experiences working in games testing. There were quite a few responses with varying degrees of satisfaction, with many complaints about mis-management, lack of respect and generally low-wages, however, many speak about the great experiences they had working with testing, experiencing project environments and moving up within the ranks of the industry.

Quotes and link after the jump…

Read more of “Testing experiences from the front-lines of games QA“

I had been looking for this for quite awhile, but finally just found the URL to link to. Jokesters UK-Resistance took a swipe at an ad looking for games testers to “play games all day long!!” (presumably from EA) and decided to have a little fun with it. They created a short list of reasons NOT to take this position, which touched wider-ranging problems that most games testers end up coming away with after experiencing the industry. It’s all in good fun folks, honestly…

[Don't be a games tester!]

The crazy Texans who run Phenix Rising and the Armadillo Podcast (an iTunes favorite of ours) conducted a short interview with celebrity games producer Richard “Lord British” Garriot, covering his penchant for haunted houses and talking about his upcoming MMOFPS for NCsoft, Tabula Rasa. Richard is probably most well-known for creating Ultima, the epic and influential RPG as well as for sometimes getting up on stage during performances of Riverdance.

[Interview with Richard Garriot | Richard Garriot @ Wikipedia]

Quite possibly one of the best gaming magazines out there (subject to some discussion), Edge Magazine recently took a look inside quality assurance in the games industry. Definitely one of the most in-depth reports into QA, Edge ponders whether it’s worth getting in to QA in it’s current state within the industry. That being a position that often times lacks any form of respect from team-members in other departments, features low wages, and is not always the springboard into game design or programming like many seem to think it is. With the current financial difficulties many publishers and studios are experiencing and the overall lack of true commitment to a trained, respected and well-paid QA department around the industry, I tend to ask myself, is it all still worth it?

A Bug’s Life @ Edge Magazine

Gamasutra has recently published an excellent beginners article from Mark Mencher, founder of GameRecruiter.com and formerly of Microprose, 3DO and Spectrum Halobyte. In it, he introduces the role of games producer and covers quite a bit of what is needed to actually gain the position of games producer and the qualities needed to be an effective games producer / project manager.

So you want to be a producer @ Gamasutra | GameRecruiter.com

Tom Sloper is a legend within the industry and gives out amazing advice to those interested in any parts of the games industry. He also is a champion of games quality assurance and is more than happy to give advice to those in need of it. In lesson 5 of his giant on-going industry site, Sloper introduce aspiring designers and testers to the world of games testing.

Testers - The unsung heros of games @ Sloperama

During the world cup, several publishers and hotels worked together to help keep the players from getting too bored around Germany while sitting in their hotel rooms. An interesting story that came out of that is the Kempinski Hotel Falkenstein and Atari teaming up to offer the Brazilian team five Xbox 360 debug kits and pre-release copies of Test Drive Unlimited for them to play around with in-between World Cup matches. No doubt they provided valuable feedback to Atari.

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Back in 1999, Nick Ferguson wrote an article entitled, “Everything you wanted to know about being a game tester” for Loony Games, a blog which was at one point connected to Blues News. In the article, Nick addresses the usual misconceptions of being a games tester, from the usual “you play games all day” to people thinking game testing is a springboard into the industry. Overall it’s a quick 3 page article on game testing, with some good information for future game testers which still ring true today in 2006.

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