Today marks the debut of Sony's new reality series on PlayStation Network, The Tester. The Tester will feature, in the words of the show's official site, “11 avid gamers competing in a series of physical and mental elimination challenges to win an actual job as an official PlayStation game tester along with a $5000 signing bonus.” If you have any knowledge of what being a game tester actually entails, the problem with this premise is obvious.
A tedious, poorly-paid, mind-numbingly repetitive job is not a prize. It is an anti-prize. If it ever made direct contact with an actual prize, both would be utterly annihilated in a cataclysmic burst of gamma radiation that would reduce everything within a five-mile radius to molten slag. Hell, just having it within proximity of that $5,000 dollars is risking disaster.
The word "prize" implies something of value. This is why game shows and reality usually offer the chance to win things like new cars and large sums of money. This is why the Showcases on The Price Is Right usually involve things like luxurious home furnishings or exciting vacations, rather than 10-year prison term in a Federal Supermax facility or home foreclosures or syphilis. This is why there was never a smash hit game show called Who Wants Regis Philbin to Beat the Shit of Them With a Rattan Cane. (Rege's terrifying prowess in the deadly art of eskrima is one of the best-kept secrets in show business.)
The show itself didn't really catch my interest, though your mileage may vary depending on how much you enjoy American Gladiators-esque sporting events with people in giant plastic spheres, people using cliched game terminology to express their anguish during personal crises, and watching the producer of PlayStation Home berating someone until they cry. If that's your thing, the first episode is available for free download on PSN.
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