This week we attended a guest lecture delivered by Georgia Mae Ayling, focusing on the role of quality assurance ( QA ) within a games development stages. A QA’s primary role is to ensure the overall quality of a game. This role involves identifying bus, inconsistencies and performance issues within a games development stages. QA is an important role within the development of any game, this is because it helps a game maintain a higher standard and be better suited for release to the public.
Each individual way of QA testing has different responsibilities and different ways of approaching this task. Whether it be through generalised QA testing, making sure the game meets industry standards, verifying a build or art and animation assurance each different component of QA testing can affect the overall outcome of a game.
- Takeaway
The role of a QA tester is essential the the overall outcome and polish of a game. Because of this we might find it beneficial for our group to appoint a member to take on this responsibility of quality ensurance. Ideally we wouldn’t have a need for this, but mistakes and inconsistencies happen and could greatly impact the outcome of our overall gameplay. Doing this would not only give us more clarity as the games developers by it would help us to understand the game better from a player perspective and what issues players might run into. Including a QA would be a step towards having a more refined and polished end product.