Game Testing All in One (Game Development Series)

Testing happens.

Anytime someone plays a game, it is being tested . When someone finds a problem with the game, it makes an impression . A beta release is published for the express purpose of being tested. Hasn't the game already been extensively tested prior to the beta release? Why are problems still found by the Beta testers? Even after the game is released to the general public, it's still being tested. Game companies scramble to get patches out to fix bugs in PC and online games , but unfortunate console game publishers have to live with the bugs that were burned onto the game cartridge or CD-ROM. Even patches can miss stuff or create new problems that have to be fixed in yet another patch. All those bugs escaped the game company's paid and volunteer testers.

Despite the best efforts of everyone on the game team, games get made wrong. When games go wrong it's because of defects described by the eight ODC defect types covered in this chapter: Function, Assignment, Checking, Timing, Build/Package/Merge, Algorithm, Documentation, and Interface.

In Memoirs of Constant, Volume III, Chapter IX, it is written " ‚ there is much in common between smugglers and policemen, the great art of a smuggler being to know how to hide, and that of the detective to know how to find."(www. napoleonic -literature.com/Book_11/V3C9.html) This chapter has shown you the ways of the smuggler in the hope that it will make you a better game testing policeman.