HankMan said:
Game testing is like prof-reading an essay? Hell I ALREADY play games like that! It would be great is someone actually did something about the problems I find in the games I play.
I know this was on the first page but I really wanted to put my 2 cents in.
In reality, you only get listened to about 50% of the time. I recently worked on a temporary contract for a large company (won't give a name due to the game not being released still yet) and almost all the bugs our team found were waived in the last month it was there. Some of these bugs were either obvious or quite annoying to the end user but they were on a tight deadline and so unless it caused a full on crash they would ignore it. This isn't really their fault to an extent because publishers like you to keep to deadlines if you want your money.
It is also a thankless job, a quarter of the people on the team (around 10 people from the day shift no idea about night shift) the developers "forgot to put in the credits" and then came back with "well it's too late now and we don't care anyway, you're just QA." Myself being included in this list, which was frustrating when we all tried to talk to a lead. The lead tried but sadly failed to get our point across to the developer.
Don't get me wrong, functionality testing made a huge difference to the amount of bugs in the product. But don't go into a job like that thinking you alone will change a game (your post gave me the feeling you possibly felt this way but if I am wrong I apologise.) It's also a team effort, so sometimes you won't have "a bug by your name" for days as you'll be helping others by re-testing their bugs to ensure you get a good idea on the frequency.
It's an interesting and fun job but it is also a job that doesn't get enough recognition publicly unless you're being blamed for bugs still inside the game. So many times have I seen posts online "their testers must have sucked look at all these bugs I found!" They will have most likely found the bug but the developer had no time to deal with it.