SYMPTOM RARELY THE DISEASE
- Mar 4, 2017
- 3 min read
Each week at the University of Bolton we are lucky to have guest lecturers from the games industry teach us various aspects, this week was no different with Si Donvaband from Fabrik games taking the reigns.
Above: Fabrik games logo.
Although Si gave insight into many different areas of game development, one stuck out which was Quality Assurance and finding the problems within games. Being a QA tester within the games industry is a major role, both in terms of the significance within development and the knowledge the QA tester undoubtedly gains of the product they are working on. QA testers get the overview picture unlike alot of the developers working on the game in question, artists only see the art usually, designers wont see certain aspects and so on, however the QA tester usually sees all aspects coming together into a playable build. They then must repeatedly play the section assigned to them exhaustively, learning every intricate detail, from level layout, mechanics involved, animations and more (Thang, 2012).
Once a QA tester learns their area though, they are to report problems within the build, for example maybe an animation is not firing properly, or a sound clip not appropriately playing. The list of problems that a QA tester can find in a build is so extensive that not all can be viably listed. After finding a problem, a normal QA tester is to report the bug, trying their best to replicate the bug within the build so they can isolate both the problem and reason behind the problem (Tutorials Point, 2017).
This leads on to the main problem however in video games testing, often a problem in one area of the game build is caused by something in another. Sure the audio might not be firing at this precise point, but it could be a trigger box across the level which is causing the malfunction. Thus the 'symptom is rarely the disease' approach. One cannot instantly think that due to say a problem within the audio, that it is a missing audio file or even a problem with the audio coding.
Many games suffer from launch problems, with gamer's reporting bugs constantly and even problems such as wiped game saves and more coming to the fore (Schreler, 2017). QA testing is not a 100% guarantee that bugs will not make it through development, but it is a means to try to eradicate bugs before customers receive the product.
(Above) http://coavainc.com/quality-assurance/
Good QA can make or break a game, with games as recent as Mass Effect Andromeda (BioWare, 2017) being released with animation problems and vastly criticised by gamers (Murphy, 2017), garnering a negative opinion for the game before a lot of the public have even played the game. This negative wave towards problems within the game can only adversely affect revenue for this software title. It can be argued that these problems can and should be found out in quality assurance before the release of the game, thus allowing them to be rectified.
References:
BioWare. (2017). Mass Effect Andromeda. [PS4 Software]. Redwood City, California, United States: Electronic Arts.
Murphy, M. (2017, March 31st). Mass Effect: Andromeda designer Bioware Games developer BioWare vows to ‘fix’ title after backlash against ugly characters. Retrieved from The Sun: https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/3223129/game-developer-bioware-vows-to-fix-mass-effect-andromeda-after-backlash-against-ugly-characters/ [Accessed on 4/4/17]
Schreler, J. (2017, January 18th). Quality Assured: What It’s Really Like To Test Games For A Living. Retrieved from Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/quality-assured-what-it-s-really-like-to-play-games-fo-1720053842 [Accessed on 4/4/17]
Thang, J. (2012, March 29th). The Tough Life Of A Games Tester. Retrieved from IGN: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/03/29/the-tough-life-of-a-games-tester
Tutorials Point. (2017, January 20th). Software Testing - QA, QC & Testing. Retrieved from TutorialsPoint.com: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/software_testing/software_testing_qa_qc_testing.htm [Accessed on 4/4/17]
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