Game Testing- An interesting area to explore

The video game testing industry is set to become the largest industry. In spite of the recession, there was no dearth in the sales of the game titles, although the game console sales were hit and the game testing companies had to revamp their strategies.

Gaming had its ups and downs over the years but it continues to grow leaps and bounds. Facebook application games are really path breaking with budding developers experimenting their knowledge. Episodic games are the new thing. Games for the iPhone are the new frontier.

So, no one in the game industry knows where games will be even two or three years from now. The only thing they know is that everything is changing and that the games that are released in a few years will be different from what we have now.

Testing video games is equally challenging as game tester needs to have a solid writing skill, very good communication skill and habit to keep attention for details.

Video game testers play critical role in game development industry. As video game programmers spend years deigning video games and video game tester needs to make sure it’s ready for release in very short time span.

What is a typical Game Testing Process?

Computer games take from one to three years to develop (depending on scale). Testing begins late in the development process, sometimes from halfway to 75% into development (it starts so late because, until then, there is little to play or test).

Once the testers get a version, they begin playing the game. Testers must carefully note any errors they uncover. These may range from bugs to art issues to logic errors. Some bugs are easy to document but many are hard to describe and may take several steps to describe so a developer can replicate or find the bug. On a large-scale game with numerous testers, a tester must first determine whether the bug has already been reported before they can log the bugs themselves. Once a bug has been reported as fixed, the tester has to go back and verify that the fix works - and occasionally return to verify that is has not reappeared.