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Living in an area that Sony has central offices (San Diego) with their testing facilities, I would almost garauntee that Sony would much rather pay some fool minimum wage(and believe me, they do) to come down to their offices and play the game through. They aren't looking for experts. They have no need for experts. In all seriousness, they're almost better off with n00bs, because at least the n00bs will find all the wrong ways to do things, along with any associated glitches. Game testing isn't about getting through the game. It's about playing the same levels over and over and over and over and over and over and over... You get the picture, until you're absolutely SICK of seeing "Neopets: The Darkest Faerie"(Yeah, they tested it for over one month!)
If a 'pro-gamer' goes through the game in a day, that's nice. But quite frankly, the pro is going to run through the title in the same way the programmers did, and the same way they designed it to. Because the programmers made the game witht this in mind, it is the path LEAST likely to contain errors and glitches. So it would almost be completely useless.
If you talk with a lot of the people who get 'paid to play', you'll find that most of them are far from 'pro' they aren't idiots, but they're far from the cream of the crop. Game companies who actually pay for testing want to be able to monitor that employees are actually REALLY testing the games. They want to know that the employees will accidentally find every caveat. They want to know that the employee will have to try it a few times over to get it right. They need that in order to really test the game well.
Remember, most games are not designed for the elite. Because most gamers are not 'elite'. Most are Average Joes with a few extra bucks to blow. And the game has to work for THEM, not just the gamer who can streamline through the title by hitting the checkpoints fastest, and zooming through the game.
As much as I love the film 'Grandma's Boy' I'm knd of dissapointed that so many people think game testing labs are even remotely like that. There aren't tons of gamers lounging around, they don't have big desks, and posters everywhere, and most of them tend to strongly dislike eachother. There is a certain bitterness, because you never know who the company is going to keep on for their next project.
"Its not stupid, its advanced!" - The Almighty Tallest, Invader Zim |
