Know more about Game testing-How and When?

Game Testing Strategy:

Evaluation of game rules:

Game rules adequately explain operation of all components of the game including features, free games etc. Game functions as defined by rules.

UI, Functional, Performance and Compatibility test:

Verify Games outcome and data are correctly shown when games are played. Verify Game Functionality such as Game Progress, game outcomes, handling of incomplete and re-started games, multi player games.

Verification the Integration points:

Check if game win determination aligns with game rules.

Reviewing gaming procedures:

Procedures will be reviewed by System management, player account management, tournaments and promotions.

Infrastructure and security review:

Require to verify all equipment and network implementation. Secure and reliable operation for example time synchronization, OS reliability and security.

How to Test Games?

This process is almost similar to product or web application testing. Here is the typical game testing process:
Identification: First analyze and identify the game rules and behavior
Functional Testing: Ensure game works as intended. This also includes integration testing with third party tools used if any.
OS and Browser compatibility: Most critical game testing part is to ensure game works on required Operating systems. For online games check functionality on all intended browsers.
Performance testing: This becomes critical for online games if gaming site handles betting on game. Game testers must verify if Game Testing site smoothly handles customer load.
Multi player Testing: For multi player games you need to verify the game functionality to handle all players and functionality with fair distribution of game resources to all players.
Reporting: Bug reporting to developers. Bug evidence need to produced and submitted through bug reporting system.
Analysis: Developers hold the responsibility to fix the bugs.

Verification: After the fix, bug need to be verified by the testers to confirm that it shouldn’t reappear.

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.