Ben-DutkaLast year, Sony announced an open casting call for their new reality show, "The Tester," and since, thousands of gamers have submitted their name for a chance to become a PlayStation game tester.
Well, as revealed over at the PlayStation Blog , the final cast of 11 contestants is now set: ages range from 22 to 36 and professions that include used car salesman, student and paramedic. Sony has partnered up with reality television maestro 51 Minds, a studio that has been responsible for the likes of "The Surreal Life," "Rock of Love" and other hit shows. "The Tester" will be hosted by model and host of online music shows, Meredith Molinari, and there will be a total of eight episodes in the first season. Lastly, the panel of judges has also been confirmed and this features SCE Release Manager (and former tester) Brent Gocke and David Jaffe, Director and Lead Designer of the acclaimed God of War and Twisted Metal franchises, and founder of Eat Sleep Play. And where will you find "The Tester?" On the PlayStation Network, of course, which will continue to grow with such original content in 2010. The prize for the winning contestant is a job as an official PlayStation tester and a $5000 bonus. Gotta love those signing bonuses.
If you want to learn more, visit the show's official site , where you can read up on the cast, judges, hostess, and extra info. Who hasn't wanted to test video games for a career?
While I detest reality shows, this is further proof of gaming going mainstream. Good luck to the contestants, but I don't really envy them. Sounds like a dream job, but I get the feeling if I spent all day trying to force a game to break down, I wouldn't ever want to play them for fun.
PlayStation… it only does and has everything! 🙂
Q!
"i am home"
@ qubex
sweet avatar
You shall not pass!
Lol thanks, guys… yes I drew him.. took me three hours and its pencil on A4!
Q!
"i am home"
what's the premise behind the show? do they play games the whole time, or are we stuck watching them fight over who didn't wash the dishes ala "the real world"?
They get to fill in for a week as an NBC executive in one challenge. 😉
Who else here thinks David Jaffe will be the "mean judge"?
Simon Cowell of the gaming world?
I can see it 😛
"F*** you I don't give a sh**" – Jaffe
😀
Does anyone else find it odd that the "prize" is essentially a job as a QA tester? Sure the 5k bonus is nice, but I have a feeling that once whoever wins settles into the job, the reality won't be so great…
Agreed, it will probably be a ton of head against desk pounding and not wanting to look at a video game at the end of a long stressful day.
EDIT: on the plus side the winner could probably become a cracker jack sweater knitter in all the time they won't want to play games.
Last edited by coverton341 on 1/21/2010 2:53:07 PM
Wow… overweight and proud to show it! Good for them man.
Proud to show how unhealthy they are? Um ya…cool
don't testers play the same level(s) for hours on end so as to eliminate any glitches?
It's good that they have people who do that for the benefit of the gamer, but as a job I'd say it's not for everyone.
Yeah that's a lot of what they do, which is how you can tell that Bethesda doesn't employ any testers 🙂
I hope for the season finale of this show that David Jaffe will announce the new Twisted Metal game for PS3.
David Jaffe broke into the gaming industry 15 years ago as a game tester. Who hasn't said they'd love to get paid to play games all day?
I'm pretty curious about this, they obviously have to pick some one who can elicit all sorts of stuff to break a game and is good at gaming. Not everyone has the gumption to beat Killzone 2 on elite mode, but I bet a game tester does.
By the way, anoyone see Grandma's Boy? rent it. hilarious.
That movie is awesome. Oh crap. Now I got that kid's robotic voice stuck in my head. Damn you!
David Jaffe did break into the industry starting out as a game tester but what happened to the thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people that worked as testers at the same time as him?
While on the surface it sounds all sunshine and puppy farts to play test games all day the harsh reality of it is you put in insane hours doing the same, repetitive, repetitious, superfluous, redundant, and repetitive tasks and it is less "playing" and more working.
It is a cool gig if you go into it knowing what to expect but if you think you are going to hang out and play PS3 all day you are going to be sorely disappointed.
IDK coverton….that doesn't sound like work to me.
No one is going to feel sorry for the guy who has to painstakingly look for glitches and play a level over and over again to make sure it works right.
Hell, people do that in private matches all day to find map exploits just to dominate a round.
I'm also not too sure about hundreds of thousands of testers. There's not that many developers and usually a finite amount of testers that are getting paid to test. I'm sure monster.com doesn't list it as a job in demand.
Last edited by JPBooch on 1/21/2010 3:06:16 PM
Point taken but I have done testing for Topware when they were in Novato before they moved to Rohnert Park and I have a buddy who works out at Lucas Ranch testing and I will readily admit that the pay was good, I will also say the days were long and tedious and seriously at the end of the day I hated looking at my system. Same with my buddy at Lucas, he gets paid great money but he is hardly ever around and now all he does is go to the gym, which in hindsight isn't such a bad thing for him as he has lost a ton of weight but I digress.
I feel sorry for em, I wouldn't want my favorite hobby to be ruined.
Ha ha. While I was reading comments, I thought of the same movie lol.
Its a great and funny movie.
I'm looking forword to see this new show.
Hope its gonna be worth watching…
Oh……. my….
As long as it doesn't become some boring reality show like we always see on tv(which is when I turn on my PS3 and switch to HDMI1), then it might turn out fun. A physical challenges like a final epic gunfight, in which the last man standing wins the prize, that's the sh*t right there.
I think its going like the big bang theory with more games and less humor.
but it would be kinda fun if they get into troll fights .
Last edited by Oxvial on 1/21/2010 3:15:02 PM
Anybody remember the TV show Nickelodeon Arcade back in 1992?
I remember that show, the would play that Postman, Paperboy like game.
One question that comes to mind is:
Since this will be a "T.V. Like Show", will I be able to download it in Canada??? or will I be barred from this aswell?
Hey! Who allowed you guys to have the internets up there? Get back in your caves and play your atari 2600's.
It does suck that you guys are part of North America but don't enjoy any of the benefits that the United States do it seems. It's almost like we think we are North America…
HEY! Did you guys get the new Firmware update? You can finally transfer data from one PS3 to another via an Ethernet cable, that makes me giddy, YAY!
Can you share games that way?
Does not say, heres the link, http://w w w.us.playstation.c o m/Support/SystemUpdates/PS3/PS3_315_update.html#data_transfer
You're excited about this now? This has been out for over a month.
Yeah I read that, but I haven't bothered to update my console until now, so it was great for me. I have 3 in the house and a "friend" who has the same music interests in me, so this is an easy way to share our photos of each other and our music.
Old news.
Old news or not JMO was simply offering something new to him, nothing wrong with that. He's a good boy.
And Jawknee simply stated "Old news" Nothing wrong with that either
this looks kinda dumb, but hey, its just little ol' booze's opinion. dont beat me down for it.
Last edited by booze925 on 1/21/2010 5:11:29 PM
Lame.. 0_o
Change your pic again, I dare you.
I accept your dare x_x
I'm not sure if this show's going to be a good thing or an ugly one.
But damn, the host of The Tester, Meridith Molinari, sure is one cute hottie.
She's a model, was the host of a few music sites, Vlazemetal.com, Rockremedy.com, Songwritersstage.com, and Audiofrequency.com, and also played an FBI agent on the TV show, Numbers
She did a funny contraceptives commercial too:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Meredith000M#p/c/AB7E9F8399808B57/0/aRRMV9XUYH4
Plus Meredith has also done some music video's, including this one where she's appearing almost nude(pasties & flesh colored bottoms) in…..
"Dawn of the Dead"(right after the 2:40 mark),
http://www.youtube.com/user/Meredith000M#p/c/3C025F9C9A15F4AD/0/5AJoRggrExQ
I think she's too pasty-white looking though, she needs to go out & get some nice tan lines.
She's all right. Not my cup of tea but I can see the cuteness factor.
Good for them, hope they still love games after a while. lol
Ben@
Guess Meridith's no Amy & what's her name,huh?
LMAO
mmmm could be interesting, hopefully this could spread out as a "live demo" of yet to be released games.
id rather be a developer though.
creating the masses is much more rewarding and enjoyable than playing.
Wasn't Ultimate Gamer a gaming reality T.V. show? Sponsored by Microsoft and Samsung, a group of people lived in a L.A. apartment for a couple of weeks, and each episode they would all play a genre specific video game, and then act out certain actions from that genre in real life. For example one week they played project gotham racing and then went out in real cars to see who could drift the best. The two bottom placed people in each episode would battle it out in the game in Samsung stadium in front of hundreds of people. The winner of the whole thing got prize money and to become the face of the World Cyber Games.
The challenges and massive egos, complete with plenty of insults made the show worth watching.
Infact the girl named 'Star' in this show is actually Ciji from 'WCG Ultimate Gamer'. Her Xbox tag was starslayer.