It’s widely spread that videogame QA testers don’t need to understand programming and automation because they usually do only manual testing, and that is a partial truth, why do I say that?
Because learning programming can give you the ability to help find the bug’s origins.
Imagine the following scenario:
The development team gave you have access to the Unity (or Unreal) project and now you can see all the errors showing up in the console. What do you do with that information?
Surely, you can just copy the errors and paste them to your bug report, but you’re going to be a much more valuable collaborator if you can actually point what’s wrong in the script.
That’s why some Senior QA roles require testers to have some knowledge of game engines, Visual Studio and programming languages, because even though they’re not hired to code, they can help those who do it.
How much programming should a QA tester know?
Well, I’d say you should, at least, understand programming logic because knowing basic things such as variables, functions, conditions and loops are already enough to give you a whole different view and understanding on how the game is being developed.
I became a tester, then I became a game designer, then a programmer. I didn’t plan that, it just happened because I saw the need to develop these skills in order to have a deeper understanding of the projects I was working on.
Nowadays, I do these 3 jobs according to the needs of the company.
Programming is a great knowledge for game designers
Most of the famous Game Designers know, at least, basic programming.
Think Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, Will Wright, Hideo Kojima, just to give a few examples.
All of these guys started as programmers, and one amazing thing they could do was prototyping without the need of others.
Prototyping the games they designed allowed them to test ideas, to find strenghts and weaknesses in their own game design ideas.
Once you learn programming, you also learn about hardware and software limitations and workflows. That knowledge will change how you design your games and it will also help you explain your ideas to the development teams.
Should you learn programming?
In my opinion, everyone should learn programming. Coding allows you to put your ideas into applications just like you can put your thoughts into words.
So yeah, if I was you, I would start doing some programming tutorials right now!