Stages of Game Testing

Introduction:

Game Testing is one of the software testing processes where we test the video games to ensure that quality, functionality, and playability. The main goal of game testing is that find out defects or bugs and improve stability and performance. Game testing is a component, where we ensure that it is bug-free. 

Different Stages of Game Testing:

1. Pre-alpha Testing:  Pre-alpha testing is one of the types of game testing. It is start at the initial stage of development of game when build is mostly incomplete.  At that time mostly focus on testing core mechanics and basic functionality.

2.  Alpha Testing:  Alpha testing is the form of acceptance testing which is performed in-house QA and testing team. It is performed at the end of the development in the development site but before going application to beta testing. It ensures that the game is developed without any glitches and is working smoothly without crashing. At this stage, developers require some intense documentation of hardware and software failure so that they can fix issues at earlier stages. In this stage, the game is more stable than the pre-alpha stage, but still, it has many incomplete features.  Also, the tester may identify major bugs, issues, and crashes with gameplay mechanics. Testers’ feedback helps developers prioritize improvements and fix issues.  

3. Beta Testing: Beta testing is the last stage of testing which is followed by the internal full alpha test cycle. In this stage, companies release the software to a few external user groups to test the application and gather feedback on this release. It is impossible to test the application for every combination of test environments, so beta release makes it easier to test the application on thousands of test machines and fix the issues before releasing the application to the real environment. 

In this stage game is almost completed and ready for production with all the major issues being fixed. At this stage, the tester team is required to find all the possible ways to break the game along with looking for all the minor issues. While testing the game needs to pass through many testing methodologies such as stress testing, performance testing, and game compliance testing. 

The tester runs the game consistently for hours and hours together on many devices to check the performance and server downfall.

Beta testing is done in two different ways: 

Open Beta Testing: The open beta is the pre-release game testing. When the beta version of the game is made available for everyone interested, this interested group will play the game and share the review with the publisher. This process is called pre-release beta testing. As many of the possible bugs were resolved already within the earlier stage, now in this stage focus on improving the user experience. As per the feedback and reviews obtained from the user, certain functionality can be included in the game. 

Before releasing the game, the tester runs it in a production environment to ensure that the game does not have any broken codes. After this, the game finally receives the certification to be released in a real environment.

Closed Beta Testing : 

The close beta testing is done only to a closed set of people who work closely with the game. The issues or defects found during this testing are addressed before launching the game officially. The close beta testing is mostly similar or less similar to alpha testing. 

Conclusion : 

Alpha and Beta testing are mostly done for every product of software to ensure that end to end flow of the system is as per the requirement. Also, the product is bug-free, so it can be used without any failure.