How important is Game Testing in Game Development Life Cycle?

Game Testing A process of Refining a Game, right from its Alpha build to the Final build.

 Image1: Game Testing

Today, Game Testing is an important Branch of the production cycle of a Game. No matter what the game is, it doesn’t matter if the Game is an Indie game or a Glorious AAA+ Title made by some Leading publishers. Every producer and publisher today have acknowledged the importance of Game Testing.

Game Testing eventually embraces the Aim/Dream of a Designer into a very refined product, making it liable to ship to the players out there in the world. It is also considered that the Game Testing can really help predicting the expectations, Desires, anatomy of a player towards the game. It’s been a great and a long history with game testing.

Lot of aspects and time was taken to consider game testing as an important factor in game development. Today it is still a doubtful question for a couple of peoples that, Is Game Testing really a job, is it really that kind of important? Well, answer to that is yes and the explanation for that should be the rest of the Document below.

Before we get straight into game testing lets learn something about games and their development procedure, and all this relative to game testing.

What are Video Game?

Image 2: Video Games

 

A video game is a game designed by specialists and developed by engineers to be played on an electronic platform. These games are a source of virtual existence and interactive entertainment in digital world.

The Video game concept came into existence in the early 1970. Where previously kids used to connect the wires of consoles i.e. Joystick, controllers, and etc. to the television sets and then push in a ROM chip, after settle down for couple of hours and enjoy their time playing some really fun and amazing Games of that specific decade.

There has been a lot of improvements and upgrades in the Games these days. With every new technology coming up, there are some major changes held in the gaming industry.  Today we have lot of publishers developing AAA and AAA+ titles for the audience. Looking to the history of games, today’s industry has evolved a lot. Today we have AAA title publishers to a lot of highly skilled and passionate Indie game developers.

Game development varies based on its budget and size, mostly categorized as Indie/Small, Medium, Large, AAA or AAA+. Now development of these games varies and have mostly different infrastructure and organizational chart, let’s have a look at it.

How are games developed?

So the basic flow is as simple as a basic product being developed. Here first comes the idea from a source or we call it an inspiration, the person to get an idea revolves around it and tries to compose it and pitch it, where a designer will design the gameplay with its mechanics and storyline and many other, after this now a developer consisting of usually a team of different skills like programing and Art, combine their contribution towards this one whole idea based on the design elements set by designer, after multiple iterations the game is now ready to be released to the players out there and the teams ready to receive the Critics. 

Image 3: Basic game development Cycle.

The above image is pretty self-explanatory.

Now let’s learn about the development cycle of the games based on their categorization. The above mentioned is just a layman’s term for the understanding of the game development procedure, like just a tip view of an iceberg floating. 

Indie Game:

Image 4: Indie Games

Developing an indie game is something industry professionals say is a bit easy task as compared to the development of a large game. Indie game the name itself suggests that independent developer i.e. one person or a small team of skilled game developers each one of them elite in his own field for e.g. one in the programming while the other in the arts one in the designing while one in the managing of the product. So the development of an indie game begins the same as that of all an idea. A person to strike an idea tries to secure it by writing it into papers turning it into a real deal to be built up into a game as it is going to consume a lot from the people involved into the development of this game, now this can come in the form of budget i.e. money or even time, sometimes even skills is what it costs to make a game.

The person with an idea now decides to go solo or make a team for the production of the game.  After concluding to that point the team will have to decide on a budget, but before that they need to generate funds in order to fund their production as it takes a lot of money in development of a game.

The game development costs are very variable, these are based on the decisions taken by the team member, as it is the team to decide on what game engine is to be worked on and based on that the license of the game engine is calculated. The second most expensive thing is the Art for the game, now most of it is being developed by the developer but there are situation where the team had to purchase couple of Art work from the store which then costs them or even worse a Royalty with an Upfront payment.

Another expense that an indie developer has to face is Sounds, this can be produced by self and can be brought with some royalties, but the cost is a must expense for an indie developer. Something very important expense of an Indie is once the game completes the marketing and promoting of the game consumes the most of out of it.
Last but not the least, funding your own pocket in order to make a living, now many of us might be confused while some might be laughing, but yes, salary, it is an important part. If you won’t feed your tummy how will one stay energetic and stacked on development of your very own game?

Later one comes the part to build a budget to elaborate and estimate the total time to be invested in the development of the game, as this aspect relates completely with the marketing because marketing of the game is completely based on the schedule.

Once all the Sponsorship, budget, and Time Table is done, then comes the time when the production of the games begins, in most of the certain times, the development and budget securing process goes simultaneous to each other. Once first Prototype is developed further more processing is done like change in design if required, modifying the art, or alter the end of storyline, etc. After the game is done marketing is done, online ads, small showcase, preparing for the trailer launch, circulating the demos within the player base.

The show doesn’t end here for the indies, it has just begun. The critics, generating revenue from the game, generating traffic towards game is the major block an indie team has overcome.

After a successful launch, the indies generate income through micro transactions or In-App purchases for mobile platforms or through in game ads. Though it is not what that easy task to generate income, but a slow and steady flow starts to visit the Indie team’s door.

Not a lot of the Indie games are a major Success, but let’s have a look at the Successful and Unsuccessful indie games of the era.

Successful Indie Games:-

Minecraft:

Image 5: Minecraft

Yes you heard it right, Minecraft it is. Minecraft was first developed by Markus Notch Persson, after developing a 3D sandbox version of it, he and his friend set up an Indie studio name as Mojang Studios. Later on, when a paid version of the game was released Microsoft showed its interest in acquiring this whole nice concept, but they apparently acquired the whole studio for around $2.5 billion. Minecraft today is one of largest project currently running at Microsoft and a lot people working there are contributing towards its success.

Garry’s Mod:

Image 6: Garry’s Mod

Yes again you heard it right, a Mod not a simple mod of a game it is Garry’s Mod. Garry’s Mod was developed by a Modder for Half-life at the time when he was of 22 year old. The name of the Legend is Garry Newman. He had the mod released as an independent game, where you can play with physic, a complete sandbox. Garry’s mod is usually also referred as GMOD, it was free until it’s separation from Half-Life, it is now sold for $10 on steam and can be easily accessible.

Limbo:

Image 7: Limbo

Limbo is developed by Playdead studios, it was first developed by Arnt Jensen in the year of 2004, and however, as a concept artist it was too difficult for him to program the game. So after the initial release of a Trailer for recruitment purpose, Dino Patti came in contact with Jensen and helped in the programming of the game for the few initial months of the game development. However, Patti then decided to recruit more developers for the project. After a first successful build, in July 2010 only and only for Xbox, but after collaboration, the game got ported and shipped for cross-platform.

Limbo is one of the considerable Indie Games that tasted the success after long and huge complications and Hardships.

Now, considering all this above for Indie game, What happens if the game developed by the indies with such passion and hard work is released and is completely buggy, las lots of issues in it like the gameplay, or unlocking an achievement or just not able to launch, what will happen?

The player will start complaining, no new acquisitions, no flow of money, no reputation on plus it’s just the hamper on the reputation of company and plus, the confidence is demised.

Medium/Larger Game:

Image 8: Game Development Life Cycle

Well not a lot of people know or just understand what medium/large games are? But according me game those were built during the 2000 to 2008/9 can be considered into Medium/Large games. Previously this category was hugely dominated by the Today’s AAA title publishers. But if we consider it for today, the AAA companies have shifted themselves to the development of AAA games and have left this tiny little notch of medium/large games to the inspiring and yet evolving companies in the game industry. The Production of these games goes something like this, a person to strike an Idea generates a pitch document for it, analyzing the current market trend and the potential of the concept to make money. After all this is done, now the person will pitch the idea to the big Industry giants. Once the industry giants are satisfied and see the potential of making money out of it, the project gets assigned to one of their teams. The lead of the project usually it used to be the Game Designers who lead the project. A lead game designer, will eventually have couple of more designers in his team, now they come up with the mechanism, Shooter Type, Genre, etc. and then a proper complete document is prepared for such. Now the document is circulated to the developers i.e. the programmers, artists, and the Level Designers. Every Team Lead of different fields communicate with each other. The plan is to execute the design with given timeline set by the producer i.e. the industry giants.

Once it is all scheduled, here comes the time to prepare for the production of the game, the teams are ready to start on production.

Once the game enters into production, every team lead is in communication with each other this community of leads is led by a lead Game Designer of the project. The programmers script each every object in the game that requires something to do, it is list just adding the brain to the objects. The Artists will work harder on the development of the characters, Environments, and many more. The Level Designers, now these are the people working closely with the game designer, are the one responsible for the Levels/Worlds we see in the games, the combine the information from the Game Designers and the Artist data into an unique experience of Virtual but realistic/nostalgic environment, We call it the Game World. Now everything is combined into an engine known as Game Engine, where each and every thing that is to be shipped in the game is brought and united here in this tool.

The Project manager has to take care here of everything, especially considering the budget. The pay of the artist, programmer, designer, sound artist, licensing fees, IP registration and all and all, it is a very big list and all to be managed in an adequate budget. All this efforts take around a couple of years into production of these games.

Let’s consider few examples here:

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 

Image 9: GTA San Andreas

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is published by Rockstar Games but, is developed by Rockstar North a franchise of Rockstar Games. It was initially released for the Playstation2 in the year of 2004 and then after a year it was released for PC and Xbox i.e. June 2005.

It is also said that San Andreas stands to be first game ever to have the player navigate openly within the cities i.e. on Land, Air and in water (swim). A vast map consisting of 3 cities all surrounded by water and with different regions articulated such like, Dessert, Green, Hilly, Beach side, etc. It is said to the 7 number game in the series of GTA and stands to be a success for GTA Vice City.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Image 10: COD Modern Warfare Art

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare is developed by the Infinity Game and it was led by the designer Mackey McCandish. However, the game is published by Activision by Square Enix has also helped into the distribution of the copies of game in Japan.

The Game was released for all the 3 major trending platforms in November, 2007. However, it was announced by Activision in April 2007. This game is set in the modern world, this eventually to break the deed of COD themed as a World War Game. It is a game for Mature Audience and had a huge success on its release.

The game had Multiplayer support added with a new feature called as the Hardcore mode, where the players had health 30 instead of 100.

It also consisted with few new game modes such like the Search and Destroy, Free for All and Headquarters.

In May 2016, the audience was teased with the Trailer of COD 4: Modern Warfare Remastered version and eventually was released in the October of 2016 with COD Infinite Warfare. 

Halo Combat Evolved

Image 11: Halo

Halo is developed by a company owned by Microsoft at that time it is named as Bungie Studios. It was led by the designer Paul Bertone and was released for Xbox in November 2001 and after 4 years it was released for the PC platform i.e. in the year of 2005.Halo had set its own record, it sold an estimate 5 million copies while it was an exclusive of Xbox and became one of Most Popular games for Xbox and the game to break its record is its sequel itself by racking over 8 million copies of Halo 2 in the Xbox market.  

So now, just think all that effort and you release the game and encounter that the people are complaining regarding their favorite character not being unlocked in meeting the requirements, or just think that the final boss is defeated but the mission doesn’t even conclude, players not able to navigate in the map, or just get spawned out of the world, or even worst, the game doesn’t launch.

 What will happen?

The game will fail, people will make fun, complain, no one will buy, and all your money is wasted, you go bankrupt. 

AAA or AAA+ games:

Image 12: Game Development Process

The above image is from the Juego studios, pretty handy, simple and easy to understand. Now here the developer has very comfortably displayed the concept of sprint. The development of an AAA game is a very vast process so in order to increase the efficiency, it was decided to break it down into small crunches of timeline with some objective or motive for the specific crunch on the timetable or schedule. This crunches are known as Sprints and there can be N number of sprints in a project, depending on its size and category of Engine play i.e. whether it will be MMO or an online game that has a lot to deal in production as well as in Post Production period.

According to Juego studios, even I agree with most of its considerations. Pre-production is dedicated for few very important aspects of game such like the Game Concept Analysis, Preparing the Game Design Document, Project planning with specifying the Milestones, Technical Design Document, and Test Plan etc.

The Production phase consists of the development of the various modules of game, management trying to recognize the most important and crucial parts of the game and prioritizing its production in the early Sprints of the Game Development Life Cycle. Creation of Art assets and the Level Design is also include here. Now it is very important to balance the game and so it is considered in the production phase itself, implementing the Audio in the Game.

The Post Production part here consist of QA (Quality Assurance) and testing, User Acceptance Testing, Monetization and the integration of 3^rd party SDK’s and the submission of the Master Candidate builds to the First Party i.e. the Console Owners for Approval of release on specific platforms.

Image 13: Team Size in development of a Game

As the above chart explains the involvement of the number of the developers as per the Milestones of the game, it takes a lot in the production of an AAA game. Initially in the preproduction phase only high authority people like the creative direction one concept artist one Gameplay programmer and a couple people are included, then when the project is in Production phase the team size is increased and teams are formed, focused on development of different modules of the project. Once the Project hits the Alpha milestone involvement of Testers come in and mostly the designer’s team is dissolved. Only the lead designer stays. In the Beta phase the Testing involvement is increased and is in higher priority, change in a few modules, designs and major fixes are done. However, once the game hits the QA milestone, a thorough and Full Fledged testing is done on the builds of the game, various defects/bug fixes are seen in this period, After the QC provides the status of Go/No Go the management will submit the builds to First Party for the approval and this phase is called as Approval period or mostly Master Candidate/Submission Candidate.

The Master Candidate is a build mostly the recent one in the hierarchy and the one that is supposed to be submitted to the First Party. Once Master Candidate is approved by the First Party, the game then initially enters the phase of Release, the most awaited moment for every one working on the project.

Image 14: Workflow Process of Game 

This above image should be well enough to explain the flow of work while the game is in the Production Phase or Post Production Phase for an MMO. It displays the communication between the different teams and then their data flow. Everyone is interconnected with each other but more over the links are dominated by a Game Designer. The Testing also has a vast communication with the people working on the projects. The operations here means the players, the release of the game and then some problems reported by the players in live environment is called as Operations here.

The Development team and the management also are closely in contact with the QC team in order to track and fix the major issues or we can hindrances in the release of the game. The QC team here collaborates with the dev team and understand the core of the game development do that the release of the game or the player who will play the game will not face any problems while playing the game.

Let’s consider few AAA examples here:

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey:

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is a successor for Assassin’s Creed Origins, it is the 11^th game in the series of Assassin’s Creed.  AC is developed by Ubisoft Entertainment and the production was led by one of the Ubisoft Franchise Ubisoft Quebec. The game is inspired from the Elder scrolls, Witcher 3, Fallout and also development of AC Syndicate helped in the emerging the idea for Odyssey.

The developer team chose to go with theme highly demanded and requested by the community, it is a setting of Ancient Greece. The Announcement of the game was done one day prior to E3 i.e. in May, 2018. Odyssey has more than 3 million players and the developers have decided to provide updates to game even in the post release phase.

Image 15: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

The game is set in an ancient t era, replicating the war between the ancient Greece states, this war is also known as the Peloponnesian war. Here the player acts as a Protagonist and is supposed to choose between two characters featured in the game, either Alexios or Kassandra. The game is released for XBOX, PS4, PC and Nintendo switch. The game Nintendo Switch exclusive only in the Japan region and is also called as a Master Piece.

God of War:

Image 16: God of War

God of War is developed by Santa Monica studios, It is a Mythology based Hack and slash and Action-Adventure game. God of war is created and designed by David Jaffe in the year of 2007.

It is published by Sony Entertainment and is a PS4 exclusive game. God of war has won the Game of the Year awards for the year of 2018. Published recently published God of War 4 as a successor for God of War 3, and it was named on its predecessors title i.e. God of War. The game released in April, 2018 was a huge success. The game was first announced by the lead animator of previous God of War game, it was announced on twitter back in December, 2016.

Uncharted 4:

Image 17: Uncharted 4

Uncharted 4 is a PS4 exclusive game Published by Sony Entertainment. The game is developed by the Naughty Dog studios and is an Action adventure game, it is also a Third person shooter platformer. It stands as the 4^th game in the Uncharted series and was released in May, 2016.

Neil Druckman and Bruce Straley are one to lead to the development of the game. They have also worked on the previous titles of Naughty Dog and which were a huge success. The game was well received by the critics and so the number depict. The game received 10/10 rating by Gamespot and in the Playstation Magazine. The game Informer rated the game as 9.5/10 and the Metacritic gave the game a score of 94/100.

It was a Huge success and was is in the top charts for selling in many regions a massive success.

Image 18: Uncharted 4’s Critic review

So now just consider, such vast budget, it is the money after all coming from the stake holders, management teams, and even the money of the players. Consider the fact that this much big process just to develop one game is obviously time consuming for all. What happens if the game fails in the market due to some minor technical issues? Imagine you spent almost $20-$30 to buy a game that you have awaited for a long time, saving all your money just to buy that game. Now, when you buy the game and you are unable to play it, or let’s say it’s facing major problems. Major FPS drops, characters doesn’t seem to load up and many more. What will happen?

You will complaint, write bad reviews, it will impact on sales of the game, which means no money incoming, all the investment is lost, the company faces huge loss, plus the players are unhappy and won’t trust the publisher and the developer any more.

Quality Assurance

Considering all the above mentioned facts and points we have very much important to discuss here now. The question arises is How do we stop this? How can we release a very polished game? A bug free game. How?

Here come the Quality Assurance/Quality Control Teams. We will now understand what Quality control is what they do and what is their aim/moto. How do they work and all.

Quality Assurance or Control is team of smart and intelligent, agile people, who work day and night in order to test the game and ensure that the developers efforts won’t fail. They do is Game Testing. The person to test the game is called as a Game Tester.

A Game Tester usually works with the game developing/publishing organization. A Tester is required in the fields and aspects of the game, even the feature of a game or let’s say a platform or even the genre. The aim of a tester is to find as many as possible bugs/defects within the game and report them to the developer so that the developer can fix it and the timeline stays eminent for the release of the game.

Image 19: Game Tester

The Game Tester is the one who is never credited for his efforts and hard work, all the fame, recognition is taken by the high profile Designers and the Directors. “A Game Tester is an Unsung Hero”.

A team of Game testers is led by a team lead or even by a senior game tester. The lead stays completely in touch with the developer team and will guide his team members. This is a process of enlightenment, enlightening the testers with design updates, changes, new content and the timeline. Senior game tester will also guide his team in reporting the bugs to the developer. Writing reports and informing the development team regarding the status of the testing done for current build or feature.

A Game tester will collaborate with his team members and create a test plan and form various test cases around the game. Tester will repeatedly try to break the game in order to test the stability of the games. A standard process is followed with the bug reporting and its tracking, lot of tools are also used for achieving the same but every tool and software has the same cycle, it known as Big Life Cycle. Bug life cycle is very important and helps one to understand the flow of a bug within the organization. It also helps in tracking the issues based on the current milestone and target set according to the Timeline. The below example is a resemblance of the Defect Life Cycle followed in one of the Leading and Top Game Publisher.

Image: 20: Bug Life Cycle

This is one of the Standard procedures and almost everywhere it is similar except for few changes depending on the Organizational chart of a Publisher or Developer Company. It is a pretty simple and self-explanatory image.

The Defect life cycle is divided into four phases based on the members of the organization. First is the Tester, the job of a tester is to search for bugs in the game and report them into the tool, once the Issue reported, the tester assign’s the issue to the QC lead in short his Team Lead, who will now verify the reported issue and ensure that the issue reported is a defect, if not so the reported issue will be deleted from the database and if the Issue reported is a defect it gets approved by the lead and is assigned to the Lead Developer in the hierarchy respective to its component.

The issue now is in the Dashboard of a Developer and the QC team now has to wait for the developer to provide a resolution for it. The Lead Developer will not verify it the reported issue is a defect or not, on doing so if it is found that the reported issue is not a defect the Lead developer will provide such resolution for the Issue reported and close it. However, if the reported issue is a valid defect then the lead developer will assign the issue to a developer in order to get it fixed.

The Developer will now analyze the issue assigned to him, he will not try to search for flaw and fix. He will do required code changes or some animation changes or whatever depending on the issue reported. Once the developer fixes the issue he will provide such resolution for it and notify the QC leads for such updates and ask them to verify the fix.

Now the QC lead will verify the resolution provided for the issue and then will assign it to the tester in order to Regress it. The process of reproducing the fixed issues on the later build specified as fixed for is called as Regressions.

The Tester will regularly check his dashboard and keep in touch with the QC lead for the Regressions. Once the tester is notified for regressions, the tester will try to reproduce the reported issue which got recently fixed by the developer. The tester will attempt for couple of times to reproduce the issue, once he feels assured that the issue is been fixed and is not occurring, the tester here will also check that fixing this issue might have not caused any other issue to occur. If a tester encounters that the issue reported is marked as Fixed and is still occurring then the tester will reopen and assign the issue back to the developer with the updated steps to reproduce and all. The issue will now enter in the same loop as that it was previously with the developer. When a tester ensures that the issue is not occurring then he will notify such to his lead and verify it. Verifying the issue means closing the issue.

Such is process followed in the QC teams.

The QC teams performs various testing on the game some of these are mandates. Few of its Categories are as follows:

Functionality:

Image21: Functionality Testing

Functionality testing the name itself suggests the meaning of this kind of testing. Functionality Testing is a wide area of testing with huge coverage depending on the size of the game. The major focus of a tester in such testing is that to ensure the proper functionality of the in game events, buttons, UI’s, in game objects, some feature of a game, etc. the issues reported are mostly code related issues and very minimal time the design teams are disturbed for a flaw in design. Functionality testing can further also become Ad-hoc testing also vastly known as Negative Testing.

The functionality teams ensure the proper functionality with in the game, they check for each and every corner of the game and the UI of the game. The functionality teams also report issues related to Levels, AI and many times the Animations.

Collisions, Camera, Character are major one of the major subjects where the issues are reported in. Complete Walkthrough is also done by the functionality teams and any walkthrough blocker is reported as a sever issue and marked as a Must Fix issue by the QC Team.

Functionality team can be as vast as 200 members in team working on one project to 10-15 persons working on multiple projects simultaneously depending on the size and complexity of the Project. The functionality Teams cover almost 75% of the QC team in a project.

Compliance Testing:

Image 22: Compliance Testing

Compliance Testing is a Must Fix and a very High Priority testing done by the testers. Compliance teams are short in size and can vary just from 4-8 members per project. Compliance testing is very critical because the aim of Compliance team is meet the Requirements set by the First Party, in order to receive a Go from the First Party to release the game on the respective platform. Now we have various platforms out there, and we have various companies owning those platforms e.g. Xbox: Microsoft, PS4: Sony, Switch: Nintendo, Android: Google, IOS: Apple and many more.

These companies who own a platform are called as First parties and these first parties have set few basic requirements for a game to be developed and published for their platforms. Microsoft has TCR (Technical Certification requirements), Sony has TRC (Technical Requirements Certificate) and Nintendo has LotCheck.

These are all set of few rules or we can say guidelines that a game should consist and follow. There are few features that a game is supposed to have in order to develop a game for the Consoles.

Failing any of these, will eventually fail the Master Candidate of the game, and then again same thing time waste, money loss, penalty for a failed submission and many more.

The Compliance Teams take care of these and performing testing based on the requirements and report the issues to the developers as Must Fix and with higher severity. Developers also target Compliance issues with high priority as a Critical Failure of the Master Candidate is eminent if any of the Requirement is not passed or fulfilled by the game.

Localization:

Image 23: Localization Testing

Localization testing is mostly done by a functionality game tester. It is done to crosscheck for Debug Text’s and any text present in English and not localized for a specific language. The tester here usually selects the languages supported by the game and will verify all the UI elements in the game that are presented in the selected language. Localization majorly focuses on the region and culture based player activity.

E.g. If a publisher plans to sell the game in a specific region like China or Japan, the game is supposed to have support for the Japanese or Chinese language respective to its region.

If a text is not supported in such language and some unsupported languages are displayed in place of the text e.g. Back is displayed something like @!$$ or some squares being displayed instead of a text. Some like shown in the image below.

Image 24: Localization Bug

Regression testing:

Image 25: Regression Testing

Regression Testing is also done by a game tester now, this testing not specific to a category or class, it is done by the Functionality as well as by the Compliance Testers.

Regression testing is nothing but re-ensuring the fixes of previous bugs, on the newly integrated design and code. While performing Regression testing the tester also ensures that fixing the bugs has not caused any new issues to occur or might have just impacted some important feature of the game. Now this impact can be in any part of the game, e.g. fixing a collision might have just removed the collision from entire surrounding for a specific region.

The tester will ensure and cross check for such issues, even the previously executed test cases a performed and tested on the recently provided build, which is also partially considered as a part of Regression Testing, well some might disagree to this point, but yes in some studios it is so.

Regression testing can also be justified as a phase of normal testing which is held or performed after the resolution is being provided for a previously reported issue.

Regression Testing is one of the very important and core parts of testing, it is just another process of ensuring the fixes done by the developer, in order to verify and assure the quality of the build for the current milestone and release. Regressions also help both the QC teams as well as the Developer teams to track and record for the issues encountered and be more alert for such scenarios in future.

Smoke and Compatibility Testing:

Image 26: Smoke testing

 

Smoke testing is done to ensure the stability of the build, in order to ensure the health of the build so that the QC teams can perform testing on it. It is one of the first passes done by a dedicated developer team, it also done by QC teams, but a bit of in advance than that of the developers. In a smoke test a developer will just look out for some major issues that can be easily accessible, whereas the QC teams will do a quick pass on the various contents and features of the game.

Image 27: Compatibility Testing

Compatibility testing is done with the smoke test just ensure the proper functionality of the game with previous and the latest operating systems or the platform soft wares. Compatibility is less time consuming and can be done parallel with the functionality testing.

Balancing Testing:

Image 28: Balance Testing

Balancing Testing is done by a team formed with the Functionality Team, dedicated to just work on the balancing part of the game. The testers here will analyze the elements present in game, now these can be anything, a Character or a Map or even a Game Mode. Herein the tester will play and analyze the elements, and justify based on it and will provide some important feedback to the developer in order to get it balanced. After receiving the answers or the feedbacks the developer will now do some certain changes, now it can be like moving the spawn point far from the objective or to bring it close based on the situation or the difficulty of an AI to complete some mission or something related to visibility and many more.

In today’s lot of MMO games we might come across the terms buff and nerf, in the changelogs provided by the developer. Buff means adding or increasing something in specific element of the game in order to ensure its balance in comparison with other available elements in the game. Same applies with the Nerf, here it means decrease or removing something from the specific element which was evolving into an exploit, all for the same purpose of balance.

Game Testing Scrutiny:

Game testing came into consideration around couple of Decades ago, where the size games increased day by day with new technical innovations. It became very important for the developers to test the game before releasing it the people. However, with huge size of games, it is not possible for the developers to test every aspect and feature of the game, as doing might get hectic for the developers and even will be time consuming, just like over using the resources, due to which quality will be dropped. Hence new department was formed called as Quality Assurance.

Game testing is a part of Game development life cycle since long time. According to the Jean-Yves Thiboutot (Quality Control Project Lead, Ubisoft Montreal) game testing is a part Ubisoft from past 25 years. So on basis of this we can guess that game testing is pretty old department and there might a chance of having game testing before 25 years in some studios.

Continuous efforts of the people in the QC department, leading to release a very well-polished games in the market. Introducing the QC department has assured the publisher with the quality of the game that is supposed to be released. Based on the previous scenarios mentioned in the document, testers have helped the developers to cut the slack and negative points of loss with the release of the game.

Game testing is a vast field, we have various people with various skill sets, mastered in some key elements of the game helping an upper hand in performing critical test cases with in the game. Game Testing acts as a Game Changer phase in the timeline of a Game Development.

Image 29: Importance of Game Testing

Citation:-

1. Game Testing: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/0*YbQpFTT--JhuVNQB.jpg [15/01/2019, 12:31PM].
2. Image 2: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/640x360/p05d3m35.jpg [21-03-2019, 01:32PM]
3. Indie Game: http://www.pixelprospector.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Indie-Resources-Indie-Guide.jpg [21-03-2019, 02:54PM]
4. Minecraft: https://www.top10hq.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Minecraft.jpg [21-03-2019, 08:40PM]
5. Garry’s Mod: https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/g/garrys-mod.jpg [21-03-19, 08:53PM] 
6. Limbo: https://www.dlcompare.com/upload/cache/game_tetiere/img/limbo-img-4.jpg [23/03/2019, 12:35PM]
7. Game Development Life Cycle: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/64868685-7dc3-4958-8095-7dfb958de993-160207133535/95/introduction-to-game-development-16-638.jpg?cb=1454852225 [23-03-19,01:37PM]
8. GTA: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gtawiki/images/9/92/GTA_San_Andreas_Box_Art.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/270?cb=20090429021856 [23-03-19, 01:54PM] 
9. COD 4: https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/7940/header.jpg?t=1545234949 [23-03-19, 02:05PM] 
10.  Halo: https://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_medium/mig/0/0/4/0/2210040-box_halo.png [23-03-19, 02:25PM] 
11. Game Development Process: https://cdn.juegostudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/ProcessImg.png [23-03-19, 12:51AM] 
12. Team Size: https://www.how2become.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Video-Game-Development-Process.png [24-03-19, 01:07AM] 
13. Workflow: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Juergen_Musil2/publication/221045927/figure/fig2/AS:305624014442498@1449877851418/Simple-workflow-oriented-process-for-game-development.png [24-03-19, 01:21AM] 
14. Odyssey: https://gamingbolt.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Assassins-Creed-Odyssey-cover-image.jpg [03-04-2019, 10:05AM]
15. God of War: https://www.gamexchange.co.uk/images/pictures/b/god-of-war-article-banner-(600x300).jpg?v=d66f17a2&mode=h[03-04-2019, 12:43PM]  
16. Uncharted 4: https://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/uncharted.jpg [03-04-2019, 12:55PM]
17. Critics of Uncharted 4: https://static.gamespot.com/uploads/original/1551/15516546/3066930-uncharted-4-a-thiefs-end-accolades-screen-01-ps4-us-12may16.jpg [03-04-2019, 01:07PM]
18. Game Tester: https://www.gamedesigning.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/game-testing.jpg [02-04-2019, 7:44PM] 
19. Functionality: https://www.keywordsstudios.com/content/uploads/2017/08/KWS_Functional_QA.jpg [02-04-2019. 11:08PM] 
20. Compliance: https://www.ixiegaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/perform-Game-Compliance-Testing-400x219.png [02-04-2019, 11:21PM] 
21. Localization: http://blog.qatestlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/shutterstock_152571764-1200x545_c.jpg [02-04-2019, 11:34PM]
    
    
22. Localization Bug: https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.igda.org/resource/group/b013eadb-f4bb-43cd-a224-d2ff1c0a4809/111.png [03-04-2019, 3:29PM] .
23. Regression Testing: https://screenster.io/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/UI-regression-testing-automation-bugs-1200x594.png [04-04-2019, 3:05AM] 
24. Smoke Testing: https://reqtest.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Smoke-testing-.jpg [04-04-2019, 03:20AM]
     
25. Compatibility Testing: http://www.alshoroukbos.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/compat.testing.jpg [04-04-2019, 03:29AM] 
26. Balance Testing:https://www.forgottenempires.net/wp-content/uploads/aoe2_african_kingdoms_balance_testing.png [04-04-2019, 04:27AM] 
27. Importance of Game Testing: https://study.com/cimages/videopreview/videopreview-full/bns302d9l9.jpg [04-04-2019, 12:38PM] 

 

References:

1. What are Games: https://www.thewrap.com/what-is-a-video-game-a-short-explainer/ [21-03-2019, 01:29AM]
2. Successful Indie Games: https://www.top10hq.com/top-10-successful-indie-games/ [21-03-2019, 08:39PM]
3. Garry’s Mod: https://usagamer.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/garrys-mod-a-mod-created-by-garry-newman/ [21-03-2019, 8:52PM]
4. GTA San Andreas: https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas [23-03-2019, 01:52PM]
5. Game Development Life Cycle: https://www.juegostudio.com/process [24-03-19, 01:05PM]
6. AC: Odyssey : https://assassinscreed.fandom.com/wiki/Assassin%27s_Creed:_Odyssey [03-04-2019, 10:07AM]
7. God of War: https://godofwar.fandom.com/wiki/God_of_War_(2018) [03-04-2019, 12:52PM]
8. Uncharted 4: https://uncharted.fandom.com/wiki/Uncharted_4:_A_Thief%27s_End [03-04-2019, 12:57PM]