Microsoft Defense Force

Check out the video below of Sony’s latest financial urination

Even if you are a Sony PSN fan… some part of you can’t be agreeing to this. “Tester” is a PSN exclusive reality show, coming in the form of 10 unfortunately deluded individuals battling it out for a job at Sony as a games tester, over 8 episodes. That’s right… a games tester. If anyone knows the games industry, then they know that this is like being tested mentally and physically in a game show to win a lifetime of luxury… only to be thrown into a poverty-stricken slum in the far corner of the earth.

The games tester. The very bottom of the gaming industry… looking for their way into the bright lights and fast cars of the industry that’s bigger than Hollywood. The reality for testers? Not so much bright lights and fast cars. Not even “looking for their way into the”. In this day and age, where nearly anyone in a professional industry needs to have a piece of paper from a higher institution to prove it that they can do what they want to do, you may stand little or no chance of getting where you want to get to. Advantage? Sony.

I mean I don’t even know why they’re doing this in the first place. Is anyone going to watch this poor bandwagon-hijacking show? Does anyone actually care? I question the mentality of the contestants … whoring themselves to Sony’s sub-par PlayStation Network, allowing all the users of the network to judge them further. These contestants are the product of Sony branding… “proof-of-concept” of just how far someone is mentally and physically willing to go for the sake of the name “PlayStation” more than the damning job that lies at the end of it all – if they are even to get that far.

You can probably tell already, we have a real problem with the show. I don’t like Sony as a company, and this is possibly solid proof of just what they are capable of getting away with. No human should have to suffer physically and mentally for a brand such as Sony, just to achieve something that anyone can do. Most gamers, whether they are XBOX 360, PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii fans, are aware that the online gaming realm isn’t as forgiving as real life, and judges harshly due to the very nature of human competition.

I know that the gaming industry educated will see past the “Reality TV” element of this. Everyone else on PSN won’t – and that’s the problem.
I know that Microsoft know better. And for the record, I only knew of one company that would take their testers seriously, and offered career progression into design and management. Rare.

You can read Ars take on this too, by Ben Kuchera.

Ars – Sony’s Tester: mixing worst of reality shows with worse job