Have you ever wondered what it is like to work at VNG but in another country, not Vietnam? We would proudly introduce Pim – an ex-Starter from VNG Thailand, who has successfully completed a 2-month internship - to give you an inside look into her life at VNG Thailand as a Game Tester intern.  

 

Greeting from Pim 

Hello, my name is Pim. I'm a Faculty of Media Technology student, majoring in Game Development from King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi. 

I was supposed to come for an internship during the summer semester in the 3rd year for 2 full months to gain experience working for a gaming company, with the aim of building a career as a Game Tester and learning about a wide range of games to put the knowledge gained from projects or subjects in Year 3 and Year 4 in practice. 

 

 

About the company VNG Corporation

The company I trained with is called VNG Corporation. It is a startup company that owns many large businesses in Vietnam, including online games, cloud, internet platforms, and digital wallet. For Thai people, they may be more familiar with being a Publisher company that buys game licenses to operate in Thailand. The current games belonging to VNG are YS 6 Mobile, Heroes of Crown, Cloud Song, etc. Now the company is planning to expand and establish more branches in many foreign countries, one of which is our country itself. Therefore, the company is looking for quite a lot of Thai employees to work with. Thus, this is one of the things that gives us the opportunity to work here. 

 

The atmosphere in the workplace 

 

 

 

Pictures of the atmosphere of the workplace within the company 

 

Seats within the company are divided into zones for each department, which will sit not far from each other. Each person's desk is quite wide. And during the internship, I put my own things on the desk as in the picture. You can wear any outfit to work, in a freestyle according to the staff. 

In addition to the work area in the picture, there is also a dining zone on the left of the entrance, which will have candies, snacks, drinks, water dispensers, and automatic coffee machines placed for employees to use while working as welfare for employees as well. 

 

About the social relationships in the company 

 

 

 

This is a picture of me and my brothers, in both the Thai and Vietnamese departments 

 

In this company, everyone will be together like friends - all brothers and sisters. Therefore, when working, no one put pressure on or scolded me like most of the old companies. If there is an error in the task, people here will come out and teach us new ways to understand more. And if there are any questions or problems in the assigned work, you can ask any teammates in the department. All brothers and sisters are always ready to help explain things for us to understand, so, don't be afraid whether or not it doesn't work or doesn't work well.  

Another thing to know is the employees in the company are both Thai and Vietnamese. Sometimes when you want to communicate with your teammates who are Vietnamese, it may be necessary to use English in communicating. Or if you can learn Vietnamese, that would be great. Even if you have the same English-speaking level as me, they understand. Or if they really can't, they will ask someone in the English-speaking team for help.  

 

Company work style 

The working time is Monday-Friday from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM (not necessarily on time), which the working style here is Hybrid Working. Every team and every department has a set date. We must work from home to keep our distance during the covid-19 virus outbreak when our team would set to work at home every Thursday. 

 

Work experience as a Mobile Game Tester (QA) Intern

 

 

 

The picture was taken while working in the company. I originally look like this already, not for the company forgot to turn on the air conditioner! 

 

When it comes to being a Game Tester, many people may think that it is a position to sit and play games and wait to report bugs found in the game to the GM, which is just partly correct. There's a lot more to do than that. 

What I was assigned to do in the early days was to write up a 1st-impression description of the game that the team had me play for about 3 hours, summarizing the basics of that game, such as style, theme, highlights including various functions; as well as answer questions about the details like: “Within the game, what systems are there? How do you feel after playing this game? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this game? In general, what is the game like according to one gamer's opinion?” 

There are also specific tasks that we are assigned to do all the time. The work in our department is divided into smaller teams. Each team will have a different game to take care of. Our team would be in charge of some games that need to be taken care of primarily, and I had to test on various matters from the start of work until the end of the internship. 

The main tasks we need to do in this game are doing Test Cases, Bug Reports, User Journey, Game Guides, and a few other tasks as mentioned in the first paragraph. I will briefly describe them one by one in order.

• Bug Report: Checking for game bugs found in the gameplay and reporting it to GMs, it's a task that we probably already know testers must do, but there is something else we need to check beyond the game system. It also includes bugs related to the text in the game: wrong meaning, wrong spelling, wrong language, wrong wording, overlapping, long translation, inappropriate space line, the user interface in general... I had to check them up as well. All of them could be counted as the main tasks that I had to perform every day.  
• Test Case: It's like checking the system and the functions in the game, including the UI, localization, and whether the function is working in the way the developer wants it to be. It will be a very detailed test because you have to look at every function in the game in detail in a defined order. 
• User Journey: It's like recording the game progress that players go through each day, like to what level, functions are unlocked. 
• Game Guide: It is written explaining the details and how to play the various systems within the game for players to understand. 

 

There are also a few other duties, such as finding interesting systems and scenes in the game to promote, etc. 

In addition to the main game that needs to be maintained, there may be other games that we have to test, so I didn't play the same game all the time as it did not require us a deep test. I usually helped to find their pros and cons, and compare them with other games of the same genre to spot interesting games only. 

 

The feeling after coming here for an internship 

 

 

 

This glass of water was bought by Vietnamese elders to treat me. The teddy you can see is from the elders in the company as well. There are also other souvenirs I received from the B.E. 

 

The idea on the first day I came to work was that I would just come and try it, get it done then go home, with the thought that the company was just a place to make money. But after 2 full months at VNG, I regard this place as a family to me and realize that working is not as boring as you think. It seems that my feeling was full of fun when it comes to working, and I even no longer hate Mondays since working for this team. 

We think that the most important thing that makes us very happy here is the brothers and sisters in the company, because everyone, both Thai and Vietnamese people, take care of us very well, so, over the past 2 months, I hardly felt stressed or lonely at all. And the internship had passed so quickly that it was quite heartbreaking. 

In the matter of work, it might be a bit tiring sometime. But I think that the feeling of having fun when working is more than enough to completely cover up the feeling of tiredness. 

Therefore, to anyone who is interested in working here, please feel confident to apply. I believe that there will be no disappointment for you, and you will know what it's like to be happy at work. 

And if you want to apply for a job here, how do you follow the news? You can track recruitment here from Facebook groups or job sites like LinkedIn. If you find a job that interests you, you can apply immediately. Good luck and soon join the VNG family.

 

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Inspired by our enthusiastic intern at VNG Thailand? Join us for a growth-filled career: https://career.vng.com.vn/en/job-search 

See the original article from Pim on Medium: https://bit.ly/3wnsidX