Game Testing is a software testing process for video games’ quality control, usually conducted in the post-production stage of the game development cycle. The primary goal of game testing is to discover and document defects in a video game and improve its overall security, stability, and performance.
As a part of the Game Testing, Gameplay Testing is an important component of the Total Quality Management Process of Tencent Games. It is a method used for game design testing, usually done before the launch of a game.
For example, WeTest was once responsible for testing a popular mobile game before its worldwide release. After conducting the small-scale user test, it encountered several problems: bad game reputation, low channel scores, gameplay issues, and quality defects.
In this case, the Gameplay testing model was used to solve these issues.
The Gameplay Testing is divided into four dimensions:
1. Functional Crowd Testing
Functional Crowd Testing aims at finding generic problems within the game or its user interface, such as checking colour, font size, messages, and audio quality, etc.
This type of ******* usually conducted by 10,000+ testers to ensure quick feedback on defects.
2. Gameplay Crowd Testing
The Gameplay Crowd Testing reduces its tester size to 1000+ players. However, it offers a one-stop solution for the overall Gameplay optimization by analysing specific requirements of the game developers and distributing the tasks in a more organized way.
More specifically, the Gameplay Crowd Testing Process includes 6 steps:
- Product Requirements Identification
- Players recruitment
- Confidential test process management
- Task distribution
- Testing start
- Report output
This process is supported by millions of registered players, the management distribution platform, and a professional game assessment team, to ensure more customized and efficient solutions to the game.
3. Competitor Evaluation
The Competitor Evaluation process usually covers an evaluation of 3–5 competitors of the game. It mainly focuses on analysing the gameplay design of similar games, identifying their respective advantages and disadvantages, and giving an overall improvement strategy.
4. Core Gameplay Evaluation
The Core Gameplay Evaluation focuses its test cases on specific gameplay scenarios. It analyses a particular game feature by setting different data variables and values to the game and executing it in the runtime environment.
The overall framework of Gameplay Testing is the first step of ensuring a high-quality game.
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