10 tips for improving game Quality Assurance

The original Article "Top 10 tips on how to improve a game Quality Assurance Department" by Phillip Derosa, please do not reprint it!
I am a mentor from the Quality Assurance Department of Alberta, bioware Canada (bioware developed the martial arts project Jade empire and Science Fiction Project Dragon Age ). This article is a practical tip on how to improve quality assurance (including discovering bugs and standard tests for video games ).
1. Definitions of "quality" and "fun"
What is "quality? It is generally defined as "excellent degree" or "Outstanding attribute", which is not very useful to those of us who must ensure quality.
Let's define quality in the context of the manufacturing product (note: the definition of quality is the general topic of this Article ).
Games are complex software. We can break them down into small and easy-to-process blocks. For example, we can start with looking at software; we can design testing methods for games by applying many standard technologies from the software quality and assurance industry. These "best practices" deserve more detailed research. A possible example is: functional testing (can it work ?) Run the test (does it meet our running goal ?) , Availability (easy to use ?) .
Now study fun! Although this is just a word, "Fun" is a huge topic. In fact, so far I think it is a science. This means that application observation, validation, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical interpretation help define simple words "fun" on the surface ". When we are dealing with "quality", let's ask some simple questions to define "fun ". This process will lead to some answers and more questions. Some examples may be: Why do people play (our) games? What is fun? What is boring? Note that the question you asked naturally changes with the type of game you developed.
2. develop plans and set forward targets
Planning is one of the four pillars of management. Everything should be planned. "If you cannot plan, your plan will fail ". This is also a sign of our department. Planning capabilities can also be used to measure our development progress.
Foresight is what we hope to achieve with a plan. Our current quality testing department's long-term goal is to develop a group of staff who aim to improve product quality and reduce costs through early detection of bugs.
3. Provide clear job descriptions and responsibilities to your group
Career QA provides a challenge and beneficial experience that can impact other departments. QA should be the leader. Testing should understand the interaction between many different systems and them, and be able to convey our ideas to developers.
There are multiple roles in QA. Some are defined by the company's goals, and others are defined by the game type and the type of information we seek. For example, our full-time Detection Service provides expert testing services and development support. Full-time personnel include QA (Quality Testing) leaders, technical and design headers (subproject leaders), QA (Quality Testing) tool leaders, technical testers, game playability/story testers, application tester and QA (Quality Testing) programmer.
We have signed a contract with the detection staff including the famous game detection personnel (playtesters), focus detection personnel, beta detection personnel and user testing experts. Let's talk about playtesters: (they are basic members of the QA (Quality Testing) team later in Development). They are helpful and provide fresh ideas. Knowing that a playtesters team joins our game can help me sleep at night.
I have studied it for a while. Let regression testing work in our games. Regression testing ensures that the current functionality is not affected when changes are introduced. Running a full regression test in a game is almost impossible (for example, made on bioware ). By using automation and building acceptance tests, we can cover what we require. We need to add a test scenario at a certain point, requiring that the game must go through the crucial path of the entire game. This is a good job for playtester.
4. Find good people and treat them well! Studio Quality
Bioware's other core point is "quality of our studio ". Basically, we believe that the best asset of a company is its talents. The beginning of creating a high-performance group is a passionate talent around you.
Let's look at the hiring process. Employment has a serious impact on the performance of the group. The carpenter said, "Two times, one saw ". Because I believe that someone is valuable to the group before asking him to join, it is boring to spend a lot of time training for low-performance employees, which is not conducive to production.
It is important for any company to retain talent. It is important to invest time in discovering what encourages people (and discovering what does not encourage people, so you can improve things !). Good managers are good at listening and good at remembering good ideas from anywhere and anyone at any time. Plans for employee business training are not only advantageous and necessary, and may require continuous plans in some cases.
5. Training and Development
Our products are the result of collective intelligence and the crystallization of our blood, sweat, and tears. Training is a way to sharpen knowledge. It is beneficial to both employees and employers. Employees share and apply new knowledge to create products. When employers invest in their business training, they feel their value and gratitude to them, which helps to establish long-term loyalty to the company.
The discussion may be powerful. It prompts us to develop our ideas into programs. Our design team focused on game playability and design. Our reading group reviews writing and story elements. The group members watched the game playability at the bioware cinema and publicly discussed the idea, that is, the QA (Quality Testing) Criticism meeting. We also had a group discussion in the programming planning phase. In addition, we have a library that contains multi-disciplinary books, such as game theory, quality assurance, leadership art, and programming.
General technologies developed by the industry should also be taken into account (technologies that can be applied at work or in daily life ). For example, content about decision-making, time management, and communication.
6. Tools
The wage is obviously the biggest expense. Therefore, employee productivity should be our priority. Tool is a simple concept: it makes our work more effective and helps us achieve better results. That is to say, we provide tools to the group to make them better workers.
The tool problem is that the initial investment is usually large, or there is no immediate benefit. We are all familiar with the loss of productivity. It does not appear in the asset balance list and should be directly located. Talk to employees and discover things that make them fail. Observe their inherent habits. If the investigation is set correctly, the project management tool may be a powerful assistant. We can use our experience and understanding of the process to find out the real problems. Once we collect all the data, we write them into the ROI report and submit them to the management to help improve the tool. Tools can also help reduce repetitive and monotonous work. Bill and Giz concluded, "it is very difficult for white-collar workers to work efficiently. But they will work better without being disturbed and burdened by daily things ". (Bill Gates, business @ the speed of thought ).
Common tools in our departments are program management, debugging and logging, development, automation, and benchmark tools. In addition, we have created a game research site where competition Competitive analysis can be run ..
7. Quality of creating a work environment
Corporate culture will play an important role in determining the entire environment. In the department, we decide the local environment. We believe that the quality work environment focuses on cooperation. This also includes human engineering. Human Engineering must provide a safe and healthy working environment for the group.
It is important to develop a culture in all companies, and it controls us like cooperation and justice. These are the quality of our products and the quality of our studio.
8. Develop a correct and fair Supervision System
One of the quality assurance methods is provided by feedback. Unfortunately, it is a serious challenge to give us both qualitative and quantitative runtime performance. Sometimes I think this is risky because our results lack visible or functional components. Our feedback should improve product quality and save development time through early detection of problems. Early detection of bugs is less expensive because less affected systems are involved. The problem is that we often cannot conduct controlled experiments to prove the value of our contribution.
Developing such a system should try to make it fair and correct. Monitoring is another pillar of management. Let's look at the possible sources of the detected data. It is important to provide feedback to people ("customers. We also consider the quality of project tracing tools and products. We even questioned the feelings of our team members.
What is a bedbug quota? The systems I have seen are too simple and non-valuable. They are anti-production, frustrating developers. Read the goal of Eliyahu M. goldratt, a book on Defect Measurement Systems.
9. improve feedback
Let's define feedback as "quality feedback ".
Quality feedback is condense concentration, correct accurate, neutral neutralize, precise, isolation of isolate, generalization of generalize, re-creation of recreate, influential impact, error correction debug, and evidence of evializ. When providing feedback, you should understand your users, and do not assume that they know something, but provide them with implementation information.
In games, we often deal with the "concept" bug opinion bugs, Which is subjective. Creators often become attached to their work (that's natural, but adds extra complexity ). General problems related to such feedback do exist. They are not facts, they are ideas, and some will conflict with other ideas. Correction is often emphasized too much, rather than isolation of basic problems. It may be just a fault rather than a problem.
Here is a suggestion to improve the concept of the Bug opinion bugs: try to remove the subjective feedback (neutral neutralize ). Provide reference values to support your opinions. Get additional support from others (for example, we often discuss these topics, or use email for public opinion surveys ). Isolate and define problems rather than provide suggestions for correction.
10. Turn QA (Quality Testing) into an integral part of the development team
After repeated QA (quality testing), the final product became better. When we get the required information, we obviously increase the efficiency.
Let people know what we are doing and how we can help them.