[Broco]

Hmm, nice. That sounds like a very thorough interview process for a testing position, which probably augurs well to how you'll be treated within the company.

At the large games company I worked in, there were basically two classes of testers: those in testing farms on the publishing side, and those who did internal preliminary QA and feedback on the development side. The latter type of tester is the better one to be, as they've got relatively varied work, lots of contact with the creative team and many opportunities to graduate to better work (I know one tester who became game designer, and another who became a sound effects guy). Meanwhile the farm testers seemed to do repetitive work in faraway offices that I as a developer never saw, and I doubt there's many places for them to advance to except "lead tester". I'm not sure exactly what the American branch of Namco does, so I don't know which type of tester your position would be closer to?



Since this is the new job thread, I'll mention that I just switched jobs myself, though I'm moving out of the game industry, to develop software to more utilitarian purposes. I just left my old company this week and I'm packing up my stuff to move to the Bay Area myself to start my new job next month. Not that I wanted out of the game industry, more that the Bay Area position seemed like a really good opportunity that I couldn't refuse.

Maybe we could hang out DJ. I'll be arriving in two weeks and will try to quickly find an apartment in San Francisco (still haven't got one ;_;).