Modern Game Testing

Implement modern and agile QA practices with the help of this part-color guide to ensure your games are high quality, on budget, and released on time

Key Features

• Set up a test environment, create test plans, and learn to communicate with developers
• Discover how to build efficient QA teams either in-house or remotely
• Increase your chances of career advancement and your employability in the gaming industry
• Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Book Description

Few things are more annoying for gamers than encountering a buggy new game. This often leads to negative reviews, and in turn, you’ll find that demand for your games declines. The solution lies in better quality assurance (QA) – and Modern Game Testing will show you how to achieve just that. Whether you’re a new tester, developer or producer, the QA testing techniques shown in this book, using modern methodologies and the latest technology, will have you releasing quality games that are on time and, most importantly, on budget.

The book begins by introducing you to QA and the various types of tests that are performed on games. You’ll then explore test cases and bug reporting, building tests for different platforms (even consoles and PCs), and LiveOps and test management. As you advance, you’ll build a QA team from scratch and work with remote QA testers. The chapters help you take a more traditional approach to learning lessons, enabling you to examine the modern agile approach and various testing strategies that you can then adopt. All angles are covered with oodles of examples, so you’ll have everything you need to implement QA strategies in your organization.

By the end of this book, you’ll have a clear understanding of the modern methodologies of QA testing for games, and be able to build efficient, reliable, and long-lasting QA teams.

What you will learn

• Conduct compliance, regression, and localization tests, among others
• Build and optimize test sets for testing mobile games
• Find out how to set up an efficient bug flow
• Write optimal bug reports that differentiate between priority and severity
• Pick the optimal testing approach for each phase of game development
• Discover how to use equivalence partitioning, boundary analysis, and decision tables
• Master live ops QA and handle live bugs

Who this book is for

This book is for game testers, game producers, game developers, testing managers, and other QA professionals who want to learn more about modern approaches to QA and utilizing them to build more efficient and cost-effective QA teams and products. Prior professional testing experience is desirable, either in software or games testing and/or experience working in the gaming industry. Basic familiarity with agile working practices such as scrum is needed to fully understand all the concepts explained in this book.

Table of Contents

1. Setting the Stage – Introduction to QA for Modern Games
2. All Engines Go – The Basics of Game QA
3. A Deeper Look – Types of Testing in Games
4. Deeper Look – Testing on Various Gaming Platforms – Mobile, PC, and Console
5. It Must Be Hardware: Testing Hardware in Modern Game QA
6. Friend or Foe – Test Cases
7. It Works on My Machine: Bug Flow
8. I Thought I Fixed That: How to Write Efficient Bug Reports
9. It Works, but It Hasn't Been Tested: Testing Approach
10. Eat, Sleep, Test, Repeat: Test Methodology
11. Are You on the Right Version? Live Ops and QA
12. Beyond Testing – Introduction to Test Management
13. There Are No BUGS Without U – QA and the Game Team

Nikolina Finska is a Gaming industry Veteran and QA guru with over ten years of expertise in the game sector and another 10 in the software industry. She was nominated for ‘Tester of the Year’ by the Finnish Testing Association for her contributions to QA methods. She has worked on over 20 games and was in charge of quality assurance on various Angry Birds franchise games. She has done practically every type of QA in the past, from localization to live OPS, on a variety of platforms, including massive databases, the web, and every imaginable gaming platform. She is also a guest lecturer for QA and Production at various Finnish universities like Amiedu and KAMK.