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

The test management role

While the focus of this book is primarily on games testing activities, it is important to mention test management as well. Test management is an important part of testing and it affects everything we do as testers. Furthermore, it sets up the testing framework and decides on the key points of how QA is done.

What is test management?

Test management is the process of planning and managing the overall testing efforts. Test management decides on the approach, strategy, tools, and execution processes that are utilized in testing activities. Furthermore, test management also includes people management: leading teams of testers, reviewing performance, and hiring and training new testers.

When we look at the definition of test management, we can clearly see how the deep impact it can have on QA activities. Unfortunately, if our test management is poor, even if you have the best testers on your team, the results will be sub-optimal. While test management is...