Game QA Testing is an indispensable step in the video game development process. The testing part involves identifying bugs and providing a game responsive activity to your players. In creating video games, the action of testing video games can be done during prototyping, development, soft launch, and after release. The role of game QA testing is to analyze, identify, document, and repair any software defects that could adversely affect the final gaming experience. This is a factor that decides whether your game can become successful, depending on the experience your players will have.
Types of Game QA Testing
1. Combinatorial Testing
This type of game QA testing helps to improve the efficiency of applications and increases test execution efficiency by suggesting that fault detection is improved by testing combinations of various parameters. This test method covers all possible combinations of parameters and identifies distinct attributes.
2. Functionality Testing
This method aims to fix the problems of the game content and graphics problems as well, and its purpose is to confirm if the final game conforms to the initial specifications. Functionality testing is a complex step that takes time to identify graphics issues, audio-visual issues, etc.
3. Ad Hoc Testing
For this game testing technique, no initial documentation or planning process is required, but it is done randomly. The objective of Ad Hoc testing is to ensure the completeness of testing and detect hidden errors or bugs.
4. Compatibility Testing
When you want to check if the user interface is optimized for the various sizes of various devices such as mobile phones and PCs. Also, with this technique, the compatibility of the game on different gaming platforms is checked. Timely detection and troubleshooting of graphics, software or hardware keeps the user happy through a good gaming experience.
5. Regression Testing
This method of game testing can be called a retest of the functionality of the game feature. By regression testing it is checked if after the new modifications of the game bugs or errors appeared. In this way, the quality of the game is maintained at high standards.
Tips for Game QA Testing
In the 3 stages of game testing (planning, execution, and results) various challenges appear, and game developers do not know exactly whether to stop the game process or to continue testing.
Use a game test strategy. To avoid this problem and improve your game, you need to prepare a game test strategy, which should contain sections like timeline, testers, a number of testing cycles, types of testing to be conducted, risk-based test analysis, service level agreements, defect logging process and reporting process. A complete strategy increases the chances that your game testing will be as efficient as possible.
Design and execute test cases. To discover as many errors and bugs as possible, you should create both positive and negative test cases. To design the test cases as efficiently as possible, you can use techniques such as critical path testing, exception path testing and traditional black-box testing techniques. To reveal more defects, game test cases must be executed in the identified environment with different software and hardware configuration.
Recording of test results. Detailed recording of tests can help to better understand the defects found and to review them more efficiently. The test results can be recorded as screenshots or videos.
Emerging Trends in Game Testing
Perfect game functionality. Any error in the game can have an unfavorable effect on users. Some of the most common defects that game testers find are progression blocks, game freezing and system crashing. Faultless functionality is one of the technical aspects that make the difference between a mediocre game in a popular game.
Easy to navigate interface. If you know exactly your target audience, finding user-friendly aspects will be much easier. Navigation in the game must be intuitive, but at the same time it must offer the player a variety of emotional experiences and keep his interest for as long as possible.
Multiplayer Performance. A very important aspect that must be verified and taken into account by game tests is multiplayer performance. A defining feature of this type of game is the multitude of players who are present in the game and who interact in real-time. Here must be followed the loading speed during the game and other risks that could hinder the players’ experience.
Why most game developers prefer to outsource their game testing to a third-party QA testing services company?
The outsourcing of the game QA testing process has become a highly sought after option in the industry due to the experience that an outsourced video games company offers, but also to the testing technology that they have.
More and more companies are choosing this option because it saves them a lot of resources such as time and money. Thus, it is no longer necessary to create an internal team for game testing, get rid of infrastructure costs, and they can focus on other processes in video game development.
Our Game QA Testing Experience
With over 10 years of experience in the video game industry, Starloop Studios provides a full range of game testing services for multi-platform games. Our extensive testing process is carried out by professional game testers that specialize in all kinds of devices such as PC, mobile, console, and AR / VR.
Starloop Studios is proud to be part of the Magic Media group, an international group specialising in entertainment and gaming industry services. Our wide range of offerings includes VFX, blockchain gaming, game art services, and more. Reach out today to avail of our expertise and A-Z services for your projects.
