Sweet deal! I have a software QA background too!

A research center? Seems a like they have been taking the Brain Training thing a little to seriously and forgot they make videogames. :P

Hot damn. Travel expenses included? I'm so in.

...although being in the non-gaming software industry, the wages are alot better than that :P

how many hours a week though?

Travel expenses covered? That's not bad.

I expect whoever does go to take a video camera with them for me. To, you know, capture the moment.

Yes, in a heart beat!! Although that language barrier would be kinda difficult for me but the chance to play games is tempting.

@MoogPaul: Mon-Fri, 10AM to 5PM. With an hour lunch a day.

So 30 hours a week.

@MoogPaul: Mon-Fri, 10AM to 5PM. With an hour lunch a day.

So 30 hours a week paid.

It would be pretty hard to live in Kyoto on about 100,000 yen a month, guys.

A warning for all.

I don't know how it is in Japan but in the US, once you become a tester, you're gonna regret it a lot.

I don't know how different things are in Japan...

@MoogPaul: They don't go by hours they go by days. They have no soul

Doesn't sound too different from NOA's normal policy of contract testing. I'd did it for a while. Their base hours are 8:00-5:00 at $10.00 plus overtime, though if the project you're on goes overtime, you might not leave until as late as 10:00 or 11:00 PM. Possibly even midnight, given extremely rare circumstances.

Now imagine pulling 12-14 hour days for weeks on end without a day off. That's how some of those projects tend to go. Not every project sees overtime, but a good chunk of them do, and there's not much that can be done about that. Deadline is looming, the game is still crashing, you're social life is fucked.

However, despite the stress that the job can produce, it's still the best temp job I ever held by far. Heaven help the fools that go into it thinking that game testing is just like playing a video game, though. Oh, those pitiable fools.

Quite an opportunity. Wish I was in the area and wish I didn't have other responsiblities too. Someone will be a lucky son of a.....

@MoogPaul:
From the post: Working hours are Monday to Friday, 10am to 5pm.

Reading, it's so hard.

@FFMUSICDJ: Yeah, I hear from people who have tried it that QA testing in the US is pretty brutal. I have not gotten many recommendations from former beta testers.

@Brian Ashcraft: Now now, be nice, Bash.

Damn, I wish I could give this a try, if only to have a taste in game testing.
I assume this is open only to Japanese residents?

Why does nothing cool happen where I live. Florida sucks :(

Will they pay relocation costs? :P

@jive238: Thats not true. Plenty of things happen there. Thats why www.fark.com has a special tag just for your state;p

Are we sure the "travel expenses" aren't the ones from your place of residence (in Japan) to work everyday? I'm not sure they'd put an ad up in Japanese for which the rest of the world was meant to apply.

@jive238: we uh, get megacon. i think play is coming down here to perform in orlando. i know what you mean, though.

boy, here's one of those jobs that sounds so badass as a kid, until you actually learn what they do. good luck to all of youse applying, though.

The Beta testers for that sitting-minigame in Wii Fit had a pretty sweet gig.

ARRRRGG. Dammit. I hate going to school. But shit, this is the kind of thing that I would take a semester off for. Mario Kart is probably one of the few games I could play for 6 months and not get tired of. Thing is, I know absolutely no Japanese.

@djgeki:
Yah, travel is from your house (in Japan) to NCL (in Japan), NOT from out of the country to Kyoto.

@gamadaya: The thing is, you wouldn't actually be playing. You might be asked to play a specific track or set of tracks for the majority of the testing phase, and/or use only one particular character.

Does using Peach on the easiest courses in the game eight hours a day for a few weeks sound fun to you?

Damn it! Why now? Why not one year ago while i lived in Tenri near Kyoto! :(

Testing games blows. Worst job I've ever had. Repetitive as hell, you end up hating every game you play after a couple weeks, and you get paid the same as a kid at Starbucks.

Travel Expenses? Hot dam, does that cover weekly flights to Japan?

@Lezard: And that's when they actually get to the game... I heard there's quite a bit of time spent on just menu/option-related things, too so... you probably won't be spending all your time actually playing.

@argh:
What he said. You do not want to get into game testing if you want to enjoy the games you might be testing. Its tedious, the hours can be killing, the pay is low, and it is generally very strictly controlled.
I don't know about Nintendo, but I do know some other companies and while they try to make their testers reasonably comfortable, the fact is that they are a minimum wage resource and turnover is pretty high.

Awesome. It's tempting. My Japanese is terrible though. Well, not enough to function in a work environment anyway.

Still, I have plenty of vacation time at my current job. It'd be fun to take 2 weeks off from working my real job, just to go to Nintendo and play video games, adn get paid for it.

I love the picture of Mario as sarariman at the Nintendo arbeit page :) Will this be a new power-up?

@Lezard:
Haha, actaully, that's not that different than what I do now. I know what play testing is, and it's a lot like competitive time trials. Fact is, I've spend 10 hours on the same course in MKDS, just to get into the top 200.

@Kinketsu: Its not impossible thou. Im paying around 45k / month in rent, and I try to put the limit for food expenses at 1500¥ / day.
(Ive got a bike so my transportation costs are close to zero.)

It would be rather tough thou, especially if your used to live "large", and party alot.

I would never in my life want to be a tester. Those jobs are fun for 2 weeks, maximum. Might go there to catch a glimps of THE GAME, thou :o

Lol, just crossed my mind. Would be hilarious if a few people went abroad _just_ to be able to playtest new Kart. And when they get there they find out its a new WiiFit title..or worse.

I live in Kyoto. On the subway line that connects to the Nintendo HQ (though not directly, of course) to boot. I thought about giving up everything I'm currently involved in and pursuing this idea for about 2.9seconds... then realized no... no... no. Something else for Nintendo but not this. No.

@Iceman B.: I would assume so, because they're pretty strict about illegal aliens here.

I'm reminded of that episode of Pure Pwnage where it shows a flashback of the_ownerer at a playtesting job and he's playing some horse grooming/riding game or something and he just starts screaming uncontrollably. And none of the other playtesters in the room even notice.

Worst job evar.

Being a Nintendo beta tester would be an awesome job, until one got sick of videogames entirely. Still, not fun enough to move to Japan, and I highly doubt that it would be a steady enough line of work to go into permanently.

Still, BETA TEST MARIO KART!

If you manage to sneak in a recording device, you can easily double your money by selling gameplay footage! Or find a gamebreaking glitch but don't report it and thus begin your unstoppable rise to the top of the leaderboards when it releases...

I got excited until I read "for Japan residents".

That'd work perfectly with the job I have right now at Albertsons. But it'd probably kill my love for video games. I've heard play-testing is just horrible. This for example will probably consist of playing one game for 6 hours a day, (excluding the lunch break) 5 days a week for 2 weeks. Ugh.

I used to work at a QA company that mainly tested DVDs from big clients like Universal, Buena Vista etc, testing the audio/visual quality and dvd menus of titles across different players. Once on the night shift I was asked to go over to the games testing department. I thought I was in for a treat, boy was I wrong.

The game was Crazy Frog Racing on the PS2, and it was the worst 7 hour shift of my life. The company thought it was shippable which was a joke, as the characters flew off the track for no reason, and the game crashed when selecting certain characters, and played only the first track without crashing. I was being paid £8 an hour ( something like $16 ) but still, it was hell. I was so glad to be testing Barbie DVDS the next day, no joke.

the building... is oddly reminiscent of brick castles prominent in super mario... except gray.

like a hellish orwellian-esque prison of torture... that paradoxically vomits from it's bowels colorful adventures like super mario galaxy....

or perhaps this building is just for the test monkeys?

My luck, I'll be testing "Pokemon Snap 2" or "Donkey Kong Does His Taxes".

@Darkest Daze: I think a pokemon snap 2 would pretty cool.

Does "arbeit" mean anything in Japanese? It's the German word for work.

@karasu47: "Arbeit" (a-baito in the local syllabary) is the Japanese word for "part-time job." They borrowed it from German.

Ah, thank you feitclub.