Stardock should hire me for game design. I can't program, but man am I good at min-maxing and pointing out and taking advantage of flaws in game mechanics.
I have a natural talent and passion for this.
From what I've seen, you're very good for QA (which is pretty much how I've been using you for a month). Less so for actual design work, which is more about coming up with formulas, drawing up lots of spreadsheets and communicating your ideas to programmers than anything to do with being able to play the game well.
The good news is, QA is an entry-level job in the industry, whereas I've never seen any design-side job advertized that doesn't demand 3 years+ experience and a raft of released titles in your portfolio. Very occasionally smaller studios might hire from the modding scene as scripters; when I was working for BL-Logic they hired me because of my Paradox mods, and Paradox itself has quite a few ex-modders on the books.
Personally I think strategy-game makers need a dedicated QA person who can point out the flaws and the design mechanics of what they've made. Programmers simply don't have time to figure these things out because they're too busy writing code and/or spending time convincing others to write the code they want to write. The net result is that many companies make strategy games that THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND THEMSELVES. There's a definite need for people to point out the design flaws in the game prior to release. I'm not talking about whether the game crashes or not. I'm talking about the underlying strategical principles behind the game.
If you want I can write a 2-3 page synopsis of strategic design flaws in Gal Civ III, but I think I've already done so (and more) in my various posts on this forum. Mind you, I discovered most of those flaws within 2 hours of play. Consequently this leaves me with more than enough time to test OTHER strategy games if so inclined.
In other words, I'm not looking for a QA job in the normal sense of the word. I'm looking for a QA job where the person is testing whether the strategic concept of the game WORKS AS INTENDED. I'm actually sort of surprised more game companies haven't started to split QA into two branches: one branch tests to see if the game can run on computers without crashing and the other branch tests to see if the strategic concepts of the game work. Most of these strategic design flaws could easily have been fixed pre-release if someone like me had been around to point them out. The AI would be a lot better if I had been around to point out the flaws.
I can do a better job at communicating with the programmers. As you can see, I am quite capable of writing coherent sentences and paragraphs when I'm so inclined. But if I'm just some random dude posting on the forum, I feel very un-inclined to use grammatically correct emoticon-free sentences for obvious reasons. Furthermore I'm a math person so formulas are easy for me. If you want I can write a mathematical thesis on the weakness of some of the formulas and calculations the game uses.
In other words, your assessment, Naselus is mostly correct. I am aware of my flaws. However, you're under-estimating my ability to communicate properly and you haven't seen my math skills in action yet (which sort of makes sense given the style of some of my other posts
).