If I worked in a video game company, do I get to play lots of video games?

I'm glad to hear you love games! It definitely helps to love games if you are going to work on them.

This is a great question! The answer is: yes and no. If you are in QA/Testing you would get to play the game you are assigned to a LOT. Your job would be to play the game over and over looking for problems (we call them "bugs"). When you find them, you enter them in a bug database so someone else can fix them. The down-side is, sometimes the game is really broken, especially early-on, so it can be frustrating playing a game that keeps locking up or crashing. And you won't always get to choose the project you are on, so you might end up playing a game you don't like (that is why it helps if you just love games in general).

If you are not in QA, you are encouraged to play the game you are assigned to as much as possible. However, normally, you have a lot of other things to do, so you are only doing limited testing in the area that you are specifically working on. For example, if you are an engineer or an artist, you build something and then you test it. Then you fix the bugs you see and test it again.

In addition, several times a week we encourage everyone to stop what they are doing for 30 min and just play our game like a normal gamer would. This helps us find bugs, but also helps us find things that don't feel right.

You are also encouraged to play other games like the game you are working on. If the games are similar to the game you are working on, it's definitely ok to play that at work (it's called competitive analysis). However, at some point, everyone just has to focus on getting the game they are working on out the door, so we have to stop playing other games.

Hope this helps!

-Matt

Making videos games is generally a pretty creative and fun atmosphere. Most people in the industry I have met are here because they love making and playing games, not just because they happened to fall into it. That can lead to a misconception that working at a game company means playing games most the time. At the end of the day you have ship a product out to your loyal fans and that is a lot of work that requires discipline and sticking to a schedules. There are often lots of activities, playing games included, that you can do during the day and no one is going to give you a hard time about them (creative environment and all) however personal time management plays a huge role in how much time you will actually have to take part in them. Finishing your work and keeping commitments made to your team makes is always priority number one.

But even if you aren't playing games all day, the environment is still great if you love games and being around people who share you passion. Having a casual chat about GTA or which Mario game is the best is a great way to spend a day in my opinion.

I would ask yourself what you enjoy about playing video games so much. Testers do play a lot of video games. However, you're performing the same tasks in the game over and over again. There's not much progression as you focus on one area and areas are still a work in progress. This repetition is a lot different than say casually playing Call Of Duty. You also don't get to choose which games you play, so you might be stuck with games you're not interested in.

However, if you don't mind repetition, you're great at following directions, and you have an eye for detail, then it might be right for you.

It really depends on what you enjoy. In our advertising operation department, you do get to play all Zynga games but you will need to watch out for the ads we have. If you enjoy simply playing the games, advance the levels and engage with advertising components, ad ops department does allow you to have all these. The trade off is sometimes you can't not playing the games you don't like though. Hope this helps.

I never thought that majoring in business / accounting would get me a job in the end that lets me play games. You don't have to be a developer, QA, etc., to be able to play games at work. As a revenue accountant at Zynga, part of my job requires me to play games and not just the usual beta testing of any new games but existing games. For revenue recognition, we have to play Zynga games to understand what items are being sold, how they're being used, etc., in order to properly assign the life of the item. It is very interesting to be able to play games and determine how the revenue for that game will get recognized. As there are more and more gaming companies, there's more opportunities to go the accounting route as well :)

In my experience I did not get to play lots of games but we did get to play a couple. What we did do was test one particular thing in a single game for months.

Of course you do get the play a lot of games! As a matter of fact, you should play a lot of games because it's important to know what your competitors are working on. In addition, it's always good to know what are the latest and great mechanics out there.

Being in the gaming industry is not just about playing games, it's also about making games better. You get to talk to players and figure out what they like and what they don't like. You get to figure out how to make a better experience for them. Within the gaming industry, there are different positions you are do - engineering, art, marketing, customer service, product management, project management and etc. You'll need to figure out where your passion is and where you best fit.

So yes, you have to play all sort of games, especially the one you making! That's the only way to make the best game :)

I try to play as many games as I can, because I love games! Also, it's very important for me to understand what is happening in the industry - what my competitors (and friends) are making, what new developments or game styles are becoming popular, and also to see how other people solve some of the problems in their game designs in interesting ways.
But in order for me to play as many games as I should for my job, I need to be creative with when and how I can play. I play a lot of games on my phone when I'm waiting for other things or riding the bus. I stay up late after the rest of my family has gone to sleep and play games on my computer or console for an hour or two late at night (sometimes I'm too tired to stay up for this one). I'm generally too busy at work to play games that much (though I do find five minutes here and there to sneak into Castleville Legends or Dojo Mojo real quick!)
For me, making a game is kind of like playing one. It's a huge puzzle to solve, and every project that I work on gives me new skills to apply to the next project. There's exciting times when things come together really well, then there's long drawn out "grindy" times when it can feel like a bit of a slog. There's huge problems to solve (Boss Fight!) in every game, and lots of fun little things that you can think of to make the game better.
It's important, too, to balance playing games with living your life. Games are fun and great, but real-life is out there too, and if you don't have experiences in life you're not going to have anything to share through a video game that you make.

I got into the industry because I believed it was a way to make money based on my love of playing games. I was both right and wrong. I DO get to play a lot of games, but it is more often playing after hours to broaden my horizons, but I spend far more working on the game I am making and related competitive products.

So, yes, you certainly play a lot of games, because staying ahead of the market is core to being a valuable asset to your team. But no, it is rarely "Come to work, play games, go home."

Hope that helps, and I have to conclude that I have never been happier than I am making games professionally, but it is because the job itself is rewarding. That is far better than just getting to play games.

Good luck!