Why Game Testing Is a Real Challenge Even for Senior QA Experts?

by TestFort News Editor on 12/13/2018

Even though gaming is considered an entertaining way of spending our time – actually developing a games is not that fun. Game testing can be even harder. Today we’ll take a look at the challenging points that QA engineers face when they try to make games interactive, highly-performant, and simply bug-free.

Game testing: Engines

The choice of the best engine for a game is always hard for developers. Even though QA experts don’t have to choose anything, everything is harder for them. The thing is, developers with necessary skills can be hired to build a specific game on a specific engine. QA experts, on the other hand, have to be prepared to test any engine they’re given. They have to keep in mind all the specifics of each engine and be able to apply different types of game testing to check it thoroughly.

Game testing: Loads

Games sometimes suffer from unexpected loads and this is the reason we often may experience sudden crashes. Console games usually face only security issues, but online games face both security and load issues. Their capacities are predefined, and this means that while performing stress and load testing, games should be overloaded on purpose to check the behavioral patterns. Ideally, any online game has to work even on big capacities, dealing with them by equal distribution of loads through multiple servers. QA engineers may find it very hard to apply all the best game testing methods to make sure it is not only working with thousands of users playing at the same time but also resisting external hacking attacks on the servers.

Game testing: Integrations

We simply can’t imagine any resource or entertaining platform without social media integration. Once we see something we like – there’s a need to share it. In the game industry, it works a bit differently though. It’s not enough just to put sharing buttons on the screen. In games, there may be the whole structure of players and teams based solely on social media. For example, you create a player and all the information from your profile on Facebook automatically uploads to the game’s server. This way, players can create communities and teams much easier. Broad use of social media in the gaming industry, however, has not yet led to a perfect testing solution for QA engineers. They still have to spend hours on testing product integrations using old-school manual game testing methods and tools.

Game testing: Multiplayer feature

Not so many games have a multiplayer feature, but the ones that do are exceptionally hard to test. The more players and locations are in the game – the more possibilities, but also difficulties come with the fact that each player can move across big distances. This creates an enormous issue for testers to make sure even the tiniest piece of a map is displayed without glitches, while characters’ actions are robust and precise no matter where they are located.

Game testing: Deadlines

Sometimes game testing may take as much time as the development due to the wide range of functions, characters, and backgrounds. The main issue is that QA is usually expected to be done faster. No matter how sophisticated the game is, the client wants it to be tested shortly, cheap, and bring flawless results on the plate. In real life, game testing stands very closely to the development process as after each iteration there comes a series of bug fixes. And then the cycle repeats itself until everything works well.

TestFort engineers work with software of all difficulty levels to make sure you get a product that deserves to reach its audience. We provide testing services for almost two decades, and obtain knowledge of the best testing techniques, operating the latest tools for automated and manual testing. Contact us to have your game tested professionally.

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