Overview
The Game industry is a top growing industry in today’s era and it is growing steadily. Commonly the game’s success mainly depends on the quality of the game and performance of the game. This is where game testing comes into the picture. High-Quality testing is important for the game’s success. There are different types of games and each of them is unique by its own irrespective of the platform. Means Game testing is not as easy as we think, many Special qualities required for a game tester and there are lots of difficulties testers feel during game testing.
Qualities Required in a game tester
- Game Tester does not always require a technical degree, whereas a Software tester is preferable to have an Engineering degree in Computer field or any other technical field, but a game tester should have a passion for games, good written/communication skills and able to do repetitive work.
- A game tester should be able to keep a continuous record of enormous amounts of dynamic details or Game flow.
- In games, Recreating bugs is extremely difficult. To recreate bugs tester should have an expertise and well attention towards the game flow.
- Games are always developed with respect to the latest Operating systems & hardware; hence, game testers must stay updated with the trends.
- There are some similarities between software testing and game testing but all types of testing require expertise to perform it well and in a proper flow.
Types of Games
- Console
- PC
- Mobile
- AR/VR
- Web-based etc.
Challenges in Game Testing
User interface: Games are developed with respect to different resolutions of devices in the market. Tester’s responsibility is to check that the game works without any interruption across different Layouts & screen resolutions. In other words, Regression testing must be completed frequently to assure that the game’s Graphics does not change even when layout and resolutions change. Tester has to check the game in different Screen orientation. Testers have to keep an eagle eye on whole display during testing.
Gameplay: Gameplay is as important as UI of the game for success in the market. Tester has to play all the levels, all character of the game, in other words, a tester has to test game till whole game and scenarios are not covered. And this is challenging for a tester to cover a whole game and to keep the record of the whole game and if any bug is there in gameplay then tester should be able to recreate the bug. In some games like where star ratings are there then, a tester has to test whole game with 3-star ratings, 2-star ratings and 1-star ratings; because some critical bugs are there which does not reflect in any star ratings.
Multiplayer Feature: Testing a multiplayer game is challenging for Game testers. Multiplayer testing is about recreating a Bug/Scenario of many players, this can be challenging because players can be from anywhere, not from the same room. Sometimes it is impossible to recreate the Bug/Scenarios in a multiplayer game. There are lots of possibilities for testing the games. A multiplayer game goes through the backend server and for this situation, the network will be a crucial thing while testing.
Game Authenticity: Tester has to test authentication of the game because nobody wants to lose their saved game or score not being updated due to a bug in authenticity. So it is the business of a tester to take care of this kind of bug and verify that the game authentication is working properly or not. Apart from this, other authentications are there like, users authentication, device authentication and authentication with the social media app. Tester has to check all the possible and required scenarios in authentication like forgot the password, forgot username etc.
Social Media Integration: Social media synthesis with the game is a crucial part for the game. In most of the games, it is compulsory to sign up with a social application or share the game’s results on the social application. Hence the games should be tested in Android, iOS, Windows etc. devices, with various OS versions and device configuration. It will be a tedious task for a tester to test the same thing in multiple devices, so testers have to be passionate.
Performance Testing: Without performance testing, medium & big games cannot be released. Here the challenge is to check the performance of the game in combination across devices, hardware, and platforms. The other challenge for checking the security of the game, as if the game is played online around the world. Then the tester has to verify that the game can withstand with the heavy rush, external attacks, and vulnerabilities.
Conclusion
Hence we can conclude that Game testing is not as easy as we think and not enjoying at all for game tester because it is a repetitive task and to do the same thing constantly for a long time with full concentration and this is a hard job. And the very challenging task for the game tester is to reproduce the same scenarios again and again during testing the game and during verifying solved bugs. So game testing is also a hard work it is not as easy as people think.