Book Image

Modern Game Testing

By : Nikolina Finska
Book Image

Modern Game Testing

By: Nikolina Finska

Overview of this book

Few things are more annoying for gamers than encountering a buggy new game. This often leads to negative reviews, and in turn, you’ll find that demand for your games declines. The solution lies in better quality assurance (QA) – and Modern Game Testing will show you how to achieve just that. Whether you’re a new tester, developer or producer, the QA testing techniques shown in this book, using modern methodologies and the latest technology, will have you releasing quality games that are on time and, most importantly, on budget. The book begins by introducing you to QA and the various types of tests that are performed on games. You’ll then explore test cases and bug reporting, building tests for different platforms (even consoles and PCs), and LiveOps and test management. As you advance, you’ll build a QA team from scratch and work with remote QA testers. The chapters help you take a more traditional approach to learning lessons, enabling you to examine the modern agile approach and various testing strategies that you can then adopt. All angles are covered with oodles of examples, so you’ll have everything you need to implement QA strategies in your organization. By the end of this book, you’ll have a clear understanding of the modern methodologies of QA testing for games, and be able to build efficient, reliable, and long-lasting QA teams.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Part 1: Game Testing Foundation
7
Part 2: Test Strategy and Execution
13
Part 3: Test Management and Beyond

Strategies for dealing with new code

In game development, especially when working with live ops, we deal with new code relatively often. Depending on the number of changes and, subsequently, new code that was implemented, we need to adjust our strategies to be able to successfully test those changes in a fast-paced environment. Here are some of the tips that will help you pick the right approach.

Start your testing with mainstream tests first. Those are the tests that cover basic functionality or optimal player path. These tests are usually simple and easy to understand, and if they fail, it would be taken as a serious problem. You want to find those bugs as early as possible in the development cycle.

At first, test broadly rather than deeply. This is particularly useful when we have no information about new code and we are unaware of any risks. Covering a wide area of the game will help us prioritize future testing and help us find the most risk-prone areas. This approach to...