Video games? Always.

Shopto.net feature

I have been featured previously on the Shopto.net blog to review for them for international women's day. It was an excellent opportunity to write a review for a game of my choice as a female gamer.

Halo world championships at gfinity

It’s no secret that my most beloved franchise is Halo. I grew up split screening at my friends, until I was able to get a hold of the original Xbox and racked up countless hours on each game. I saw that the Halo Championships were coming up in Wembley, London which is a few hours from my home. I contacted Gfinity and asked if there was any opportunity to go and help out for the day as a volunteer purely because of my love for the franchise. To my surprise, they said yes! It was an incredible day and experience to work backstage at such a prestigious event.

Video games and software testing

In 2014 I heard about the opportunity to test games in my spare time. When it came to testing prior to this, I’d be the one to sign up to any beta available. Pre-order and get to be in a beta? I’d be there! From sign up in 2014 I’ve tested a lot of games varying from PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and iOS. I’ve been a part of huge AAA testing which has been an absolutely phenomenal experience and has given me such an insight to the full release games I pick up and play. I have provided accurate feedback on the tests taken place and given statistics about my PC and console setups.

Once lockdown hit, it gave me time to realise I wanted to work in the video game industry. I spent so much of my life talking and reading about games, it didn’t make sense that I wasn’t working in the industry it’s self. I landed a job I working for Keen Software House remotely who are based in Prague. I worked as a QA Specialist on the game Space Engineers (PC platform) You can find the game here on Steam. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the company and learned so much in the (almost) two years.

I then made the leap to a lovely small indie game developer in Edinburgh, Scotland and worked on Dungeon Golf I joined before the game was public as the QA Tester all the way through until after the game launched. During my time with the studio, I was lucky enough to visit both EGX London and later exhibit the game at Gamescom. Sadly, like quite a number of others in the Video Game space, I was made redundant at the end of 2023. If you know anything about the Games Industry right now, it’s an oh too familiar trend.

Swapping Industries? I moved to Software Testing outside of Video Games and absolutely love it! I’m working for Reincubate on Camo. I have been given the chance to test more platforms which means no day is the same. Fun fact: I started off blogging and doing YouTube tutorials about Apple when I was younger before shifting more to games. It’s as if I’m doing what I hoped I’d be doing back then!