Games Development Blog-Vasilis

Testing is a very important part for the development of a video game. It helps developers identify problems within a video game and fix them accordingly. By doing that they make sure that they reach the high expectations of the high demanding customers; this works vice versa, if they find bugs within a game they will create a negative reputation about it and people will avoid playing it.

Phrases

There are different phrases during the testing process of a video game.

The first stage is the Alpha testing when the game reaches a playable state.  The game is at a very early version, therefore may not contain everything for the final version. The changes that are usually made after this phrase are basic changes such as the life of the characters or the design changes. Alpha testing is usually performed only by members of the developing team.

The next stage after Alpha Testing is Beta testing. The purpose of this stage is to crush news bugs that have appeared prior to the commercial release of the game.  This phase is usually done externally but also internally. A very popular example of a video game which announces Beta versions before it is published is Football Manager. This helps the customers report the bugs or what they don’t like to Sports Interactive and suggest any possible improvements. After that Sports Interactive consider all the reports, makes the changes and announces a report analysing what they have changes to the game. An example can be found below:

Please note that source for this announcement is: http://www.footballmanager.com/news/fm15-beta-update-1503-available

““As you may have noticed, SI staff have been monitoring the bugs forum to make sure any issues which are found are immediately looked into. Thanks to this, we've already been able to locate and fix a few issues which were in the original release for a small update. 

As always this update is save game compatible, you will not need to start a new save game for this to work in your game. We are aware there are some issues which have not been fixed which we are still looking into, the most notable of which is the crash which sometimes occurs on the individual training screen. For the time-being we ask users not to use that screen until we can give it the all-clear. Also there are no match engine changes included in this build other than optimisation. 

The list contains the following fixes:

STABILITY & PERFORMANCE

·         Improved general performance

·         Improved trackpad performance

·         Fix for issues affecting 10.6.8 NVIDIA Macs 

·         Fix for crashes during processing and going into a match

·         Fix for crash on quit

MATCH ENGINE

·         Improvements to goalkeeping

·         Improved goals from direct free kicks

·         Fixed consistently, unrealistic high scorelines in lower leagues

·         Fixed skin tone issues

·         Fixed headed backpasses leading to goals

·         Reduced own goal levels

·         Hundreds of other changes to match AI

·         Further polish to animations

TRANSFERS & CONTRACTS

·         Fixed issue where selling a player for a large fee would reduce the users transfer budget 

·         Fixed issue where users could sometimes not offer a contract to a player they had made an enquiry for 

·         Fixed issue in contract negotiations where including the ëOne year extension after X league games would prevent the user from agreeing terms with the player 

·         Fixed issue in contract negotiations where selecting Use Existing Terms would prevent the user from removing some competition bonuses 

INTERACTION

·         Improved balance of the ease at which a player can be talked around when they are unhappy

·         Improved balance of the amount of teammates who support players in their unhappiness

·         Fixed issue where players would ask to leave for first team football before they simply asked for more first team football 

·         'Request Tutoring’ option has been added to increase the amount of tutoring options the user has

·         Fixed the ability to offer continent-specific tournament football to players not playing in that continent

·         Fixed rare instances of promises to accept a bid for a player being broken when no bid was made

·         Balanced the regularity at which players will request new contracts

·         Fixed board meetings being generated harshly and the ability to set yourself multiple points targets from within a board meeting

COMPETITIONS

·         Amended Champions Cup seedings for 2014/15 season 

·         Improved Liverpool Champions Cup Quarter Final scheduling 

·         Fixed drafts not being scheduled correctly 

·         All A-League matches are now on TV

·         Fixed players not coming off DL6 at the end of their stint

·         Fixed Re-entry Draft Two pick duplication

·         Fixed issue where Young Designated Player contract logic was being applied incorrectly at times preventing User offering a contract to a player

·         Fixed issue where Free Agent retained Season Ending Injury status meaning they couldn’t be registered

·         Fixed NYCFC manager job becoming Insecure when they join MLS

·         Toned down NYCFC trade activity before they join MLS

MEDIA & NEWS

·         Fixed AI managers being incorrectly questioned and talking about the user struggling 

·         Fixed Team of the Year player in incorrect position

·         Fixed not enough nations available to manage

·         Fixed subscription selections being reset on save/load 

·         Fixed results in League Cup counting towards club’s Highest Scoring League Game record 

·         Fixed English Premier Division Top Goalscorer Record is Sheringham with 1 goal 

·         Fixed view Incident button on controversial penalty incident news item doesn’t show the foul

·         Fixed completely blank news item 

MISC

·         Adjusted Dutch wages in both Eredivise and Juplier League

·         Fixed an issue where a player would retire immediately after signing as a Player/Coach

·         Fixed an issue where a player would retire without giving the correct reason

·         Adjusted coaches training workload

·         Fixed an issue with transfer budgets after adjusted season expectations mid-season

·         Fixed the issue of a users profile changing unexpectedly

FMC

·         Various skin fixes

·         MLS now be playable in Challenges

If your game version doesn't immediately update (the game has to be closed for it to update), please try closing down Steam and re-launching it. The version number will now be 15.0.3. “”

Gold testing is the phrase that last minute changes can be made.  The game is completely playable and there should be no breaking bugs that can make the game unplayable.  The game is like any other retail game and the project team usually make some last changes that will make a significant impact on player’s satisfaction.

Certification is the last phase of testing and is done by the hardware manufacturers. Before the game take the certification it has to meet some requirements that are set by Sony, Microsoft etc. or software platform owners such as Steam. The application will be rejected if the game does not meet certification as it happens for every game.

Conclusion

Testing ensures that the game is released in a timely manner and operates at the standards expected.  A game having bugs cannot run therefore and can dissatisfy customers therefore I believe that it is essential having a game that runs properly and will meet the customers’ expectations.