The competitiveness of the gaming industry is evolving rapidly, with many trending aspects and desires. As per the recent reports, the video game market size is soon reaching USD 600.74 billion. So, launching a game with immersive elements and bug-free features is desirable for audiences.

With extensive demand for players, the modern games are becoming complex. So, it might give rise to potential errors. As players are expecting stunning visuals, performance, and seamless experiences, any type of glitch can give rise to instant uninstallations. This is why game testing has become a necessary aspect for any company. With the help of game testing services, you can be assured of better functionality and performance of the platforms and can easily verify the gaps that can impact your user experience.

It is necessary for product owners and CTOs to understand the benefits of game testing, as it can help them with strategic planning and budgeting. In this blog, you can get a detailed breakdown of the game testing process that can empower you as a tech leader.

What is Game Testing?

If we define game testing in simple terms, it is a streamlined quality assurance procedure that is curated to assess every detail of a game’s functionality and user experience. They are tested before they are delivered to the market by experienced services.

▶Definition and Purpose

With the help of mobile game testing services, you can easily examine the functionality by detecting its mechanics and features. With performance testing, you can assess the loading times of the game and ensure it is responding with quality features.

The process also identifies bugs such as glitches, logic errors, and crashes that might hamper your users’ gaming experience. It analyzes the gameplay balancing by detecting the character strengths and resource allocation.

▶Game Testing vs. Traditional Software Testing

Through game testing and traditional software testing, you can keep track of your product’s quality and performance values.  However, both of these aspects have different functionalities to offer. Games require real-time user updates and dynamic environments. So, the test coverage remains extremely complicated.

Testing is far more than just verifying the functionality. It indicates how engaging and intuitive your game is from the player’s perspective. It should maintain high frame rates and be responsive during traffic. With the help of video game testing services, a game’s fun factor can be analyzed, and you can sense if it can leverage an emotional connection with the audience.

Why Game Testing Matters to Product Owners and CTOs?

When it comes to the product owners and the CTOs, game testing is not considered to be a development task. It is a strategic requirement that influences your brand values, product quality, and profitable aspects.

▶If your gaming product is reliable enough, you can build trust among your customers. Bugs and inefficient crashes can put your brand at risk and can increase the uninstallation rates.

▶If your gaming platforms showcase critical issues during their launch period, it can give rise to poor and negative reviews along with a loss of revenue chances. So, the essentiality of game QA testing services can’t be avoided for the competitive edge.

▶Precise testing ensures your game platform stays intact with your performance requirements. It will fulfill your feature expectations and project vision.

▶With the efficiency of early-phase testing, you can verify the issues before they become a nightmare. Apart from this, early testing can minimize the rework level and can safeguard your time for post-release assessments.

Also Read :- Building Trust in Conversational AI: A Guide to AI Bot Testing for Leaders

Phases of the Game Testing Process

When it comes to the game testing process, it is incorporated in multiple steps. Each of the processes has been tailored to discover potential types of risks and challenges. You can review the points for a better analysis. 

▶Pre-Production Testing

➢In the first step, you need to outline your objectives and scopes along with resources. You can document the game’s design and concept as a foundation.

➢Now, list out the potential risky areas and analyze for which devices, platforms, or operating systems you want your game to be optimized for.

➢The mobile game test process includes setting up the environment where the experts will prepare the needed software, hardware, and tools to simulate the operating conditions.

▶Alpha Testing (Early Internal QA)

➢With the help of gameplay mechanics testing, it identifies the necessary features such as physics, controls, and in-game logic operations as expectations.

➢Initial UI/UX testing ensures the user interface and experience of the gaming platform. Through this, you can easily analyze usability issues and encourage player navigation.

➢With performance profiling, you can measure the CPU and GPU usage along with memory consumption. Ask your testing agencies to verify the loading speeds of the games to detect challenges and optimize performance.

▶Beta Testing (External/User Testing)

➢Professional iOS or Android game testing services can help you access the game for real-world players. Through this, you need to gather insights, gameplay experience, usability, and glitches. With the reviews of the actual players, you can easily refine the final product.

➢With load testing on servers, you can assess the stability and responsiveness of the server under high traffic. This way, you can ensure your players are enjoying great functionality.

➢Leverage A/B testing to compare various features like UI layouts, monetization levels, and difficulty levels of the game to determine which version of the game is impactful.

▶Regression and Compatibility Testing

➢Multiple retests ensure you have identified the issues and resolved the problems without giving rise to new bugs and risks. You can also incorporate the game type test process to understand the effectiveness of the game and how efficiently you want it to handle.

➢The professional game QA testing service provider should test the game over multiple devices and platforms to offer consistent performance. This will analyze the functionality of your game over multiple screen sizes, hardware, and operating systems.

Final QA and Certification

➢In the final step, the professional testers will ensure the game adheres to the compliance standards of specific guidelines. It should maintain its compatibility with each platform’s content and technical submission.

➢With the incorporation of the game localization testing process, you can verify the translations, region-specific content, and ensure the game has cultural references.

➢This is the final phase where the professionals carry out the final evaluation to ensure the game is true to its functionality and is stable for release.

Types of Game Testing That Shouldn’t Be Overlooked

Instead of going forward with the basic testing process, you need to review the specialized testing types for a high-quality and widely accepted gaming solution. Here, you can check out the convenient types that should never be overlooked. 

➢Functional Testing

With the help of functional testing, you can ensure the core features of your game are intact. Along with this, you can also verify if the mechanism and system are working precisely as per your criteria.

➢Performance Testing

With performance testing, a game testing service can easily analyze how the game is behaving under high player loads and intense scenarios. The game should perform efficiently without showing any bottlenecks.

➢Security Testing

Security testing analyzes vulnerabilities that could further lead to breaches and unauthorized access by fraudsters. Moreover, this test safeguards your players’ data.

➢Localization Testing

With this testing, you can make your game match the text, language, and cultural preferences of specific locations.

➢Usability Testing

This integral testing examines how exciting and comprehensive the game is from the perspective of the players. It majorly prioritizes the design and flow of the game.

➢Compliance Testing

This testing process ensures the game is meeting the required standards and regulations of the following platform or store.

Also Read :- Top Game Testing Tools Revolutionizing QA Strategy and Efficiency

Tools and Technologies for Game Testing

Adopting the right tools and technologies can help you keep your game testing process accurate and faster. Here is the list of tools for your reference.

➢Automated Testing Framework

Some of the efficient tools are TestComplete, Appium, and Selenium. These frameworks can help you execute multiple tests and help with regression cycles and UI interactions with minimal errors.

➢Performance Profilers

The leading tools are Unity Profiler and Unreal Insights, which help a game testing service provider get real-time insights into memory usage, CPU, and GPU. This verifies performance issues and efficiency of the game.

➢Bug Tracking Tools

JIRA and Mantis are effective tools that help teams log and trace defects collaboratively.

➢Cloud Testing Platforms and Device Farms

This allows testing over a wide range of real devices remotely. Through this, you can assess cross-platform compatibility.

In-House vs Outsourced Game Testing: What Should CTOs Consider?

This section can help you assess the benefits of in-house and outsourced game testing, through which you can be firm about your choices.

▶Benefits of In-House

➢You can have direct control over your test cycles, quality approaches, and timelines of the project.

➢The development teams can enjoy seamless collaboration with you and can be authentic about the process and the feedback.

▶Benefits of Outsourcing

➢Outsourced game testing services can offer you prominent solutions without the need for full-time hires and expenses.

➢The industry experts have access to specialized tools and experience with multiple client types.

➢They can easily expand the testing bandwidth during large releases.

▶Hybrid Approach

➢The hybrid approach allows you to grasp the strategic oversight of the in-house team while enjoying the professionalism of external teams for specialized or high-volume testing processes.

Best Practices for Efficient Game Testing

To boost your game testing efforts, here are some best practices to follow effectively.

➢Make sure to begin the game QA process during the designing or prototyping stage to detect the issues at an early stage.

➢You can use actual hardware to verify device-specific bugs and ensure the game has broad compatibility.

➢Maintain good collaboration with developers and designers to meet your objectives and achieve the outcomes.

➢Integrate testing into each sprint session to ensure the features are intact to avoid unnecessary last-minute risks.

➢Keep detailed documents of your test, plans, execution, and results along with the bug tracking to make it impactful for the regression test cases.

Ready to Level Up Your Game Quality? Let’s Talk Testing Strategy

The above blog highlights that game testing is not just limited to basic QA; it is a strategic initiative that helps your product perform undefeatably in the market. If you partner with a professional game QA testing service provider, you can increase your customer satisfaction rate quickly. For product owners and CTOs, investing early in testing ensures their product launches have a great impact. So, make sure to test early and smartly with expert guidance.