GTA V, a Rockstar Games publication created by Rockstar North, was released in 2013. Let’s dig into it a little deeper and see how game testers look at this spectacular action-adventure game. So now, just before GTA VI will be released, let’s take another look at Video Game Testers and GTA V.

The release of GTA V was one of the largest, if not the largest, entertainment release ever. We’re not just talking about video games here, but television and movie release as well. GTA is one of the most expensive games in the world.

Costing upwards of $230 million to make, Rockstar had a huge responsibility to get every facet of the game spot on, not just for fans, but for shareholders and their own pride. And a critical element to this process was the role of the video game tester.

You see, once you’ve stripped away the hype, the years of production, and the ground-breaking budget, you still need a game that is playable and bug-free.

Rockstar developers and programmers don’t have time to sit around all day playing through the enormous sandbox environment that is synonymous with the GTA series, but somebody has to ensure any bugs or glitches are removed pre-release; that’s where the role of a Quality assurance specialist comes in.

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The very first mass-produced home gaming console came in the form of the Magnavox Odyssey, released in 1972. Up until this time, gamers could only experience gaming by taking a trip down to their local arcade armed with a pocket full of spare coins.

Granted, the retro gaming graphics look almost laughable compared to Xbox or PS games available today, with small squares bouncing around the screen which required a lot of imagination to turn into a game theme. Overlays were used for creating gaming environments on the Magnavox Odyssey that fitted onto your TV screen.

Other gaming consoles began to be produced including the Ping-o-Tronic, Coleco Telstar, Radio Shack TV Scoreboard, and many other classics.

The era of ‘Pong’ soon followed with a game called Pong brought out by Atari which was based on the tennis game originally on the Magnavox Odyssey on their Atari 2600. Magnavox tried to sue Atari in the courts over this game as they saw it as a blatant copy of their idea.

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Octodad: Deadliest Catch has been around for a few years now, but it is still among my favorite indie games. The wonderful thing about indie games is that they can be about anything. They don’t need to have the requisite grizzled, macho hero or awkward love interest that triple-A games seem so attached to.

Indie games can be about little boys lost in dark, scary woods, or about sexually ambiguous robed figures running across a desert, or indeed about an octopus who has infiltrated society and spends his days hiding his true identity from his family.

After being successfully kickstarted, Octodad: Dadliest Catch was released on PS4 in April 2014 but the game is still very popular today. The protagonist is an octopus who has somehow found himself in a family with two children. It is essential that his loved ones do not find out that he is an octopus, so he has to function like a normal, human male.

However, every day is a huge challenge for poor old Octodad. With limbs designed for swimming rather than making coffee, even menial tasks are a massive struggle, and if he makes too much of a mess, his family will start to wonder why their father can’t open a window without getting stuck in the ceiling fan.

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