Testing in Games Development

• Guest speaker – Georgia Mae Ayling – QA analyst @Rocksteady studies, Previously worked in EA
• Table of contents : introduction, what is QA, design changes vs bugs, testing your bugs

What is QA?

• Quality Assurance :Quality assurance is a broad process for preventing quality failures. The QA team is involved in all stages of a product’s development: production, testing, packaging, and delivery.

What is QA in the context of making games >?

• Functional testing: General QA testing, finding bugs, smoke testing
• Dev QA: Developer Qa role : supporting QA teams, sorts out trouble shooting issues,
• Localisation testing: Fluent in multiple language, can check legal compliance for certain regions
• Specialist Field Testing : audio, performance ,design systems
• Compliance Testing: Checks the game meets standards set by first party platformers
• SDET : Software development engineer in Test : write and manage automated testing

Design Changes and Bugs

• What is the difference between design issues and bugs

Design Issues (Useability Issues):

• Is the game playable o someone who has never played the game before? (Examples of issues include: Unclear objectives, Narrative Issues, Confusing Visuals, Inconsistencies)
• Bugs: a defect in the software. Code doesn’t function as it should (Example of issues include: Crashes, Performance issues, Cosmetic issues, Functional game flower issues, Certification / compliance/ legal issues)

What does testing for User Feedback look like?:

Testing for design changes : Watch someone play the game, Give as a little pre-amble information as possible, take detailed notes and ask questions ( WHY?)

What does testing for bugs look like?:

Don’t play the game  normally, Try to account for every scenario the game will be played in

What are the limitations of testing your own work?

• You know what you’ve made
• Giving yourself honest feedback is hard
• Scale of resources
• Training yourself to think differently (Example: designer, player and player who has never played games)

Advice for testing your own work :

• Set your quality gate and stick to it (what is the standard you want to achieve – for example the art to reach a certain quality)
• Break it down into sections
• Get Feedback on your product!

Advice for working with a QA team :

• Document your work clearly – the more information the better
• Test your work before submitting