WARNING! SPOILER ALERT! If you have not watched The Tester Season Finale, stop reading now, grab some popcorn, and go directly to the PlayStation Store to download the last episode. Of course, come back when you’re done and keep reading…
After eight episodes of battling through the highly entertaining challenges in PlayStation’s first original competitive reality series, The Tester, Will “Cyrus” Powers beat out 10 other hopeful gamers from across the country to win the job as an official PlayStation game tester, as well as a $5,000 signing bonus.
What did Cyrus think was his toughest challenge? What is he looking forward to most about his new career? And, does he really have the Hannah Montana Platinum Trophy?
These are just a few of the questions Brent Gocke, release manager from SCEA and The Tester panelist, asks Cyrus during his first official PlayStation Network interview available from PlayStation Store this Thursday.
Here’s a short version of the interview also now running in PlayStation Home:
Congrats again to Cyrus! We wish him the best of luck with his job working for PlayStation’s Quality Assurance department and hope to check in with him down the road to see how he’s doing.
You can also still catch the entire eight-episode season available from PlayStation Store in both Standard and High Definition formats.
I should get something for my Birthday today! Hehe
you got first.
yawn… glad it over…
I saw his interview on joystiq.com, he really doesn’t know what “irony” means, haha.
“They set us up with a couple of PlayStation 3 systems and multiplayer games, and an air hockey table. It didn’t matter what we were doing. We were always competing at something, which was kind of ironic.”
It’s a competition, this isn’t irony.
“The whole alliance that was on the show … that was just a group of people that got along with each other. So, it’s ironic, looking back at it, those are still the people that I keep in contact with the most.”
No, that isn’t ironic at all. It would be ironic if you kept in contact with the opposite group.
Congratulations Cyrus…
They should do a sequel.
Get all the senor managers together… you know, the ones that make the crappy decisions like ‘OtherOS’, lack of PSPGo Support, whoever had the idea for this show. etc…
Make them do a bunch of stupid challenges over the course of 10 weeks. Winner gets to keep his job.
the next game is going to be “VP” and you play to be the next vp of sony. haha
* I mean Senior btw, not the ‘senor’ as in mexican manager.
Makes me want to stop applying for a QA jobs and hate the fact that I got a BS in Comp Sci. Always denied and now I know why, I need to put on a show instead of working my fingers to the bone to get into the industry.
The whole show was eye opening for me.
good show, hope PSN makes another show because it was really cool while it lasted.
Congrats Cyrus! I think the show was great, but I don’t know if another run would be as interesting. Because it was a new idea (well, sort of) it was fun to watch. A second season might be a bit less fun.
Release Manager… I can never remember that.
Congrats to Cyrus, but Brent should have been interviewing Nauseous, dammit!
grats to cyrus but i think noxious deserve it also
i think this was a bit fun to watch but the challenges were awesome.
and congrats Cyrus he really deserves this.
@9 You don’t need a CS degree to do QA. You’re probably better off doing development work for an indie studio first, if you want to get your career started right in hopes of doing development for a larger studio.
Yeah, follow up in a few months!
I want to see if he died of boredom.
I think the actual First Prize was to avoid being shackled to testing buggy software over and over and over and over and over and …….
Make the Tester 2!!
If any higher-ups are listening…
Youtube is now officially broken on our browsers. Reason given: Adobe flash player is out of date or does not support your browser. Is this ever going to be upgraded, this flash player?
A minor update such as this will prevent users from fully accessing video content on youtube, a site which many Sony titles offer uploading directly to it – we can no longer access this feature until this matter has been resolved.
Also, I’m submitting my resume, along with a design document. I have created an amazing title, here! XD
One of the events for next season should be who can platinum their game of choice the fastest. Oh wait, nevermind…everyone will just pick Heavy Rain.
@15 Oh I know that now. But when I first applied out of High School everyone, Indie Studios included, they told me to get a degree first. Just for QA at that. Now it is lack of industry experience that gets me shut down, even for QA. My long term was to do design but of course you can’t jump into that from day one.
Even networking doesn’t help anymore it would seem, as knowing people in the industry helps none as well.
But that’s not what this post is all about, so I won’t take up more space and time.
In the end, Congrats Cyrus was left out of my original post. Green eyed monster over took me before I said that.
@20
Actually, I’d prefer if you’d indulge us. I’m sure others would enjoy to hear your story as well ^^
Congrats Cyrus, in the end i did liked the Tester, looking forward to more psn mini shows.
good job cyrus but does the time at playstation when are you going to update the psp or get psproom in the us
@21 I’ll give the abridged version here.
I went to a magnet school in Las Vegas, Advanced Technologies Academy. At the time Westwood Studios was still located there as well. Right out of HS I went there and applied for a QA spot. Their requirements besides enjoying gaming was a HS Diploma. They were also heavily tied into the school. I got turned down and during the interview, I was told a BS was needed for any position in any game studio and to go get one.
I tried a few other places while working on getting said BS. From Sony to Capcom to Garage Games even the newly founded Petroglyph that replaced Westwood. Everyone said try back when I was done with my degree.
I’ve had my degree for almost 2 years now and I get denial letters for QA at every place I have applied to, even when it is listed as only requiring a HS Diploma. And of course, no one will let you intern unless it is for school credit.
@21 Continued
Over the course of the last 3 years, I began writing on two sites, aggrogamer.com and pwned.com in the hopes of making connections in the industry so when I got out of school, I knew the inner workings and right people.
We can see how that has worked out. Kind of long for an abridge, but I am know for getting wordy sometimes.
Does he have hannah MT Pt?
People really surprise that Cyrus won? I didn’t follow the show, but it was quite obvious that he won base on twitter comments from SONY, Jeff, and his appearance at SONY Gaming events.
Anyway, congrats to Cyrus and I hope you are testing Resistance 3 right now and somehow let some gameplay slip online :) hint hint hint :)
he’s a real trophy ho if he has the platinum trophy for h. montana – hahaha!
Congratulations Cyrus, you kicked some serious ace man
I guess that would make him a Miley “Cyrus”.
Hades, that sucks man, but there are new studios popping up all the time, just keep on tryin dude, you’ll land somewhere.
Cool! It was a good show. Congrats to Cyrus
Where can i leave a suggestion for playstation store.Its about lbp.
@33 Playstation.Blog Share link up top.
Ok now all we need is a new seson
Great job Playstion I hope next time i will get a chance to win.
Scared of me? I’d really just like a compromise guys.
Nauseous FTW…still.
Yay it’s over, now Sony can put their money into something more productive.
I was personally going for nauseus first and ampd second, but i didnt have anything against cyrus, if either of the 3 would win it would have been alright for me. Anyways congrats to cyrus on winning.
Finally over…and I lol’ed at post #6 , made my day.
WELL DONE!
Now give me your mail xD
@40
Why do you want my mail?
And… Thanks guys for everyone saying congratulations!
Great job Will!!! I picked you from the get go. Hope you got what you were looking for in a job! Also delete someone on your friends list so we can be online homeys! Psn: cronic_gamer and to Sony next time you do this throw some money at the show for Crist sakes millions of dollars a year in profit with pspgos and ps3s for prizes how about pspgo and $1000 dollars put in your wallet online and instead of a ps3 wich I’m sure that already had how about an Sony Bravia tv ps3 entertainment package with surround sound don’t even get me started about the sign on bonus looks like they shelled out a grand total of 5,550.00 in prizes for this show with millions in the bank you could at least make me wish I was a runner up for 1st place
Sooo….. the winner of the tester is brent gocke’s long lost brother???
so fake as if both the black guy and amped would miss the clue on the barrel
Congrats! I was cheering for nauseous though and i actually thought he would win when i saw the last challenge. Lol.
Frankly, I was cheering for Nauseous because alliances in reality shows are lame, but Cyrus seems like a decent guy. Congratulations and best of luck in your fledgling career.
I thought the show was interesting, but I agree that it probably wouldn’t do good for a season 2. But I do like these mini-show type things so nice work sony. And congratulations cyrus and nice try amped and nauseous.
I liked the show. but Merideth was SO ANNOYING!
@ 48
she was annoying? I enjoyed watching her, i think shes pretty attractive so I was fine with her there, lol.