THE best job in Scotland has come up after the makers of GTA advertised for a game tester at their Edinburgh HQ.
The award-winning Scottish firm Rockstar North, responsible for one of the most successful game series in history, is advertising for one lucky gaming fanatic to test new games before they even hit the shelves.
To the envy of millions of gamers worldwide, the successful candidate will work full time in the Holyrood Road studio testing out new games and providing feedback to designers.
Hundreds of applications are expected to flood in for the job, the first of its kind at Rockstar North for three years.
The company, notorious for its secrecy, posted the ad:“Rockstar North is looking for passionate, enthusiastic and self-motivated individuals to join our QA team in Edinburgh.
“You will be expected to test our games looking for problems and accurately report errors through our databases to ensure superior game quality before release.
“Successful applicants will have excellent written and verbal communication skills and be able to observe attention to detail.
“You will have good general computer skills and be a confident learner working with word processing, databases and spreadsheets.
“Candidates must be 18 years of age and above and provide two references.
“The position will be a full-time fixed term contract. Applicants will preferably be educated to further or higher education standards.
“This is a two stage application process. You will first be asked to complete a video interview, from which you may be asked to attend an in-studio interview.”
Rockstar North did not reveal details of the pay but when a game tester job last came up, in 2012, it was reported to be in the region of £14,000.
Tristan Donovan, author of Replay: The History of Video Games, believes a vacancy at Rockstar is very few and far between.
He said: “Every games company needs game testers so the job itself is quite regular, but to work for Rockstar North is a very rare opportunity.
“It’s an entry level job so you’d be taking it expecting to work your way up in the quality assurance department, and depending on the training you do you might even be able to move across into level design.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of applications for this job reached into the hundreds.
“It can be a deceptively tedious job, however, if you look at a game like GTA with all of its cities and buildings, a games tester would have to walk into the walls of all of the buildings just to check if they work properly.
“The games are broken, they don’t work, so anyone applying for this job shouldn’t think that they’ll be playing games as they do at home in their living room.
“You have to do sections over and over again.
“It is a great way to break into the industry though, and anyone can apply for it, you needn’t of had any training in the area, it’s just passion for video games and Rockstar that they would be looking for”
The vacancy on the Rockstar North website has been shared nearly 400 times on Facebook.
The company, Rockstar Games was founded in 1999 with the Edinburgh office being home to the ground breaking series, Grand Theft Auto.
Formerly known as DMA, the creative geniuses were also behind the 1991 game, Lemmings, where players have to guide a groups of lemmings through a series of obstacles with the aim to keep as many alive as possible.
