By Naveen Chauhan
My love for video games started long before I ever wrote a line of automation code. Back in my college days, my first “real” experience with game testing wasn’t glamorous — it was tinkering with the physics text files in Need for Speed. I’d change values, run the game, crash into walls, and smile when things didn’t behave the way they were supposed to. Looking back, that was probably my first taste of QA in games, even though I didn’t realize it at the time.
After college, life took a more traditional path. I got placed in an IT company and for the next 19 years, I worked as a QA professional across industries — ERP, BFSI, Healthcare, eCommerce, Security, Network Monitoring — you name it. The work was challenging, demanding, and at times exhausting. But in between deadlines and late nights, I always tried to carve out little pockets of time to play video games. They were my escape, my way to reconnect with that curious college kid who once tweaked physics files just to see what would happen.
Recently, I stumbled upon gametester.gg and signed up. One of my first playtests was King of Meat. It wasn’t just fun — it reignited something in me. For the first time in years, I started asking myself: “What if I combine my test automation and manual QA experience with my passion for video games?”
The thought has been sitting with me ever since. Testing games feels like more than just a curiosity — it feels like a calling I’ve ignored for too long. The reality of paying bills, building a career, and climbing the corporate ladder kept me on the IT side of QA. But deep down, I’ve always known I wanted to be part of the gaming world, not just as a player but as someone who makes games better for others.
So here I am, finally at a point where I can start blending two worlds: decades of QA expertise with my lifelong love of video games. Whether it’s stress-testing multiplayer servers with bots, automating game flows, or simply filing bugs that make developers roll their eyes — I know this is where I belong.
This journey is still unfolding, but one thing is clear: QA may have paid my bills, but Game QA is what feeds my soul.