An ultimate guide to Building An Effective Game Testing Strategy
Tags: gamedev, testing, webdev, programming
Published: 2024-02-28 13:08:18

There are already 2 billion gamers worldwide, which is increasing daily. By 2026, it is anticipated that the worldwide gaming market will be worth US$ 287.1 billion, representing a CAGR of 9.24 percent throughout that time. Gaming businesses and game developers are under tremendous pressure to follow trends and foresee emerging ones. These businesses must rely on QA testing services to guarantee that the final gaming product is bug-free. If not, customer dissatisfaction will undoubtedly hurt business relations.

Testers must look for issues including invisible walls, warped characters, wrong network code, missing graphics, imbalanced weaponry, gaps in the map, slow controls, long load times, and missing textures during mobile game performance testing. Because it guarantees enjoyable, bug-free gaming, quality assurance plays a crucial role in game development. Hence, it is necessary to have an effective Testing strategy for gaming applications. This article will guide you on how to have an effective game testing strategy.

## What is Game Testing?
Gaming app testing includes finding problems and further improving performance. You can incorporate testing activities while developing video games either at the prototyping or production stage. It guarantees the early discovery of errors without alerting end users. You may evaluate, identify, record, and fix software flaws that could affect the user’s gaming experience with the aid of game testing services.

The DevOps-driven continuous testing technique works with a CI/CD pipeline to deliver timely. For really complicated games, it is thought that dedicated testing resources are required to maintain QA testing efforts. Such video games should be tested from the very first line of code.

### Manual vs. Automated
Whether for game or software testing, the debate between manual and automated testing is perpetual. The proper ratio of manual and automated game testing scenarios must be used in an ideal testing plan.

Some of the most well-liked mobile app automation frameworks used for [automated game testing](https://www.headspin.io/blog/game-testing-a-complete-guide-to-its-types-and-processes) include UIautomator, Appium, EggPlant, and Selendroid.

A common misconception among novice testers is that automated game testing is unrelated to testing web (or mobile) apps. They are the same, although many mobile games use many CPU and GPU resources. High-end graphics-using games can significantly increase their CPU and GPU usage.

Testing gameplay scenarios that don’t require much manual intervention can be handled by automated game testing. On the other hand, exploratory tests for the game mentioned above must be done using manual testing. In addition, manual testing of games can help evaluate performance in throttling network situations, corner test cases, offline gaming, and other scenarios.

The automation team can concentrate on developing scalable and trustworthy test scripts that can automate the login, game flow (i.e., finishing levels and buying stuff from the store), and quitting the gameplay on game completion. The automated game testing technique must also include load and stress testing.

On the other hand, when automation is not particularly useful, manual game testing must be done. It is impossible to release a video game that is 100 percent automated; therefore, a combination of automated and manual game testing is required!

## Steps of the primary game testing process
A game testing strategy must be planned to make game enhancements. It improves your chances of successfully doing game testing for better results and preparing a complete process.

For game testing to be successful, there are essentially six steps. However, most game creators discuss different difficulties that limit the accepted procedure and make them unable to understand when to begin or end the testing process.

For more utility, let’s concentrate on the vital game testing procedures:

**Step 1: Design and plan**
Testing involves some forethought to achieve the most outstanding results, just like any other stage of the game development process. A game tester starts by being familiar with the game, which includes learning about its architecture, characters, rules, and stages. Strategic planning’s function is to identify likely issues that will arise during the game testing process and potential solutions so that successful outcomes can be attained as quickly as possible.

The roles of the team members, the tools, and the documentation used are also decided at the planning stage of the game testing approach. You need first to divide the project into manageable components and examine each one from the standpoint of testing.

Additionally, assign a configuration to the new version and compare it to the previous build to identify features that have been removed. A game tester can use this to plan and create his test.

**Step 2: Create Test Cases and Test Strategy**
A GDD(Game development design) for the game testing process is a test strategy. It is the most monotonous but necessary action. The main components of manual and automated testing, along with the specification of the test approach, test environments, and bug tracking procedure, are all included in a well-designed and well-described test strategy.

As a result, we can determine precisely what will be tested, why it should be checked, and whether the test automation framework can automate these tests. Additionally, we will know the most critical testing types, such as functionality, compatibility, regression, progression, and ad-hoc testing.

A game testing strategy must be planned to make game enhancements. It improves your chances of successfully doing game testing for better results and having a complete strategy prepared. The most fundamental methodology may include various components, including the tester count, testing cycles and timescales, testing type, service-level agreements, risk-based testing, and reporting.

Testers create the test cases that they will utilize to execute the testing procedure. This would entail developing test scenarios that were both positive and negative. Writing down positive and negative test cases is advised to find the most flaws and problems during a game app testing process.

You can develop test cases using a variety of methodologies, including Critical path testing, exception path testing, equivalence partitioning, and more conventional testing techniques like black-box testing. It makes sense to run game test cases in the approved environment utilizing specific software and hardware settings to identify more flaws.

**Step 3: Perform test**
You will begin a thorough bug hunt during this performance stage. If you discover a flaw, run more tests to get more data about the fault to create a complete and accurate bug report. To find new ways to duplicate old bugs, you would need to retest them.

The new build is tested against the supplied methods during the actual testing phase. To find other mistakes and defects is done carefully.

This process is essential because it entails testing a product in various environments, which subsequently aids in finding more flaws and defects in the product. Testing methods are frequently utilized, including alpha, beta, and content testing.

Make sure the build version testing is accurate and has the required updates. The new build is tested using both manual and automated test suites. In test cases, every step is categorically marked as pass or fail. To ensure nothing was broken during implementation, [regression testing](https://www.headspin.io/blog/regression-testing-a-complete-guide) should be automated rather than manual for the new functionality.

Recording the entire test session is another helpful tip in this situation. The developers find it simpler this way to evaluate the game’s behavior, helps prevent inaccurate descriptions of the bugs found during testing, or guarantees the new build is error-free. Even if they were fixed on the fly, every bug should be recorded.

**Step 4: Publish test reports**
Test findings are then documented in the form of a movie or as screenshots after they have been completed. As a result, the designers can quickly and accurately examine the behavior of the items. This is crucial since it ensures the client receives an error-free product.

You must create reports for the defects you discovered during testing at the reporting step. When reporting a bug, include information about where you found it, how to recreate it, and who should be notified to fix it.

The entire test report may not always be required. Your stakeholders and team may only need a brief test summary to inform the results.

The procedure then creates a record of every flaw or bug found. This is carried out to ensure that the discovered flaws are effectively recorded, prioritized, categorized, and tracked. The choice of their subsequent title project is made more straightforward for the developers.

**Step 5: Fix bugs**
The team and stakeholders discuss the poor faults found during testing. You must participate in conversations with the developers to ensure they get what went wrong and other details needed to fix the defect.

The team managers must prioritize the issues found during the test execution phase. To ensure that changes are implemented as soon as possible, specific issues must be delegated to the appropriate game developers along with a timeframe.

Bug tracking programs like Jira must be used to keep track of bug fixes. In our experience, it is advised to prioritize fixing bugs (or issues) that affect gameplay and performance. These two main things can prevent an online game from expanding.

**Step 6: Repeat**
You repeat the first stage’s procedure in this stage. An updated build with new functionality and bug fixes will be provided to you. This process is repeated until the gaming application is made available on the market.

A new build will be accessible after the development team fixes the bugs. The testing team will retrace their steps to step 1 and review the test plan document again.

The team repeats this cycle until they are happy with the outcome. It’s critical to maintain track of both fixed and unfixed bugs.

_Read: [What Running Test Automation Involves](https://dev.to/abhayit2000/what-running-test-automation-involves-344b)_

## Conclusion
According to the current trend, many organizations that create video games regard outsourcing game testing as a realistic option. A reliable game testing platform with a multi-platform experience can benefit your company and the client’s pleasure. The key advantages are time and resource savings because managing an internal game testing crew is no longer challenging.