Young Australian Student Paid to Review PC-Games by American Company

This young Aussie student is remunerated (paid) by an American-based testing company to review / evaluate PC-games. Apparently he is ranked 4382 in the world of PC-gamers.

It's a positive in many ways, as the company is able to gain 'game perspectives' or reviews from people in other countries prior to a PC-game's release.

***click-on the link below to peruse article:**

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I'd be interested to know if any other high-school students / college pupils on this forum are engaged by a PC-gaming company to review either pre-release games or current on-the-shelf games?

Who or what determines his rank?

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Yeah what?

EDIT: Wait is this a legit website or Australians version of the Onion.

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Good question, I found that interesting, too. I guess he is part of a wider group of PC-gamers that were evaluated by gaming companies. As it states in the article, he was noticed by a (I assume) gaming company representative, possibly at a games expo in Australia.

My local newspaper's website.

Hmmm okay.

I don't really see anything groundbreaking here, in fact it reads like an exaggeration by a local newspaper that has no idea about videogames (hence the ridiculous "ranking" and wording like "an outstanding games player"). There are journalists all over the world who write about video games. It sounds a bit like this is just guy is just taking part in some kind of opinion survey.

I guess a 14-year old Aussie student getting remunerated by an American gaming company tells me he must have impressed the American gaming representative with his abilities.

The gaming company is probably eager to gain a perspective from the 14-year old demographic from the marketing angle, too.

The question remains: what abilities? If he was already known via YouTube or an outstanding esports player this would make more sense than an unnamed company hiring some teenager from another continent. There's just too little information to make this plausible.

Any company will test their product in another continent as part of the evaluation purposes, so as to avoid a bias in a product, and to reach a wider demographic.

Then how is this case special?

You could safely assume the American testing company were seeking an Australia perspective in the evaluation of their PC-games, instead of relying on the perspective of an already 'saturated' American reviewing demographic (in other words, seeking-out 'new eyes' to review their product-line)

The questions have become,

How was he ranked this magical number of 4382 in the world?

How did they find him and/or promote himself to this position?

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The article talks about an "American-based testing company", not a company that makes video games. It doesn't even say if the company specializes in (video) games in any kind of activity (whatever they test). They want an opinion on a specific type of products (video games) in a specific region (Australia) from a specific demographic (teenage boy).

I stand by my point of view: he's just participating in an opinion survey. Nothing more, nothing less.

I somehow detect 'American Pride' at stake? But seriously, it's superbly splendiferous to see companies encouraging young gamers in the review process, and that has to be a positive for the long-term future of PC-gaming (whether at a national or global level)

This is just plain fun.

Fun in the way it hurts.

I guess your "American Pride detector" is broken, because as far as I know are Europe and Murrica not the same thing.

You mean "encouraging" like in "paying them"? This is certainly the wrong approach, especially at this young age.

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You can't have these young people reviewing games for nothing, it also helps to install a work-ethic at that age of 14. As the article states, he is also gaining invaluable experience in scripting from a journalistic perspective in the gaming sphere.

Why not? There are enough people out there who are willing to share their opinion on anything without even being asked to do so ;-)

Good thing if his knowledge of the English language improves but that's not the point here (and if it was then why is he the only one who gets paid for getting exercise in his native language?).

It's just a beefed-up story with almost no information (or even only incomplete information) from some local newspaper about a teenager who gets paid for telling some company what he thinks about games. If it was important news there would be a statement from the company instead of his teacher.