The global spread of the novel coronavirus has confined millions of people to their homes. To prevent the spread of the virus, several countries across the globe imposed immediate lockdowns starting from early 2020 confining people at home with restrictions for many activities. This lockdown caused widespread economic disruptions with every hotel, mall, school, universities being closed and people aimed to work remotely from home. Covid-19 lockdown phase has changed the lives of many people with some getting laid off from their jobs, businesses reporting a decrease in sales and revenue. On the other hand, more people are starting to play video games after getting stuck at home. The game industry has seen a boost in user engagement along with increased revenue in the lockdown phase.
IMPACT OF LOCKDOWN ON GAME DEVELOPERS
We have seen the increased user engagement for video games in the lockdown but is the situation good for game developers also? There are many challenges that are faced by game developers which are including but not limited-
- Security of unreleased games builds in the work from home engagement.
- Restrictions on licensed hardware accessibility, especially the debug consoles.
- Limitations for Virtual Reality development and VR testing team members with compact residential places.
- Inability or difficulties to share or access the full fledged IT infrastructure while working remotely.
- Lack of office culture, discipline, motivation and relaxing breaks while working from home.
- The concept of working as a team in video game designing and development is not very effective when all the members of the team are scattered in various geographies and working remotely.
No matter how advanced the video conferencing tools become, the real human connection that forms a team is missing. The overall situation in the games industry is affecting the planned deadlines and quality of end-product. We are going to learn how external agencies and vendors can help game developers and studios with cost-effective strategies and flexibility to improve the quality of their product as well as experience for the end-users.
HOW REMOTE QA PARTNER CAN HELP GAME DEVELOPER AND GAME STUDIOS?
During this tough time of the pandemic, it has become very important to consider certain factors while building games. Outsourcing various tasks to a trusted and experienced partner can help to reduce costs and headache within the game development studio. It is equally helpful to game development teams of all sizes.
The pandemic has pushed various limitations on most of the organizations regardless of their industries and geographies. As a result studios are constantly in a mess whether to outsource 3rd party game testing agencies or not. Apparently, with the increase in the number of games, the scope of game development and testing has increased significantly while the restrictions of WFH environment remain the same. Game developers are constantly in a surge to deliver and deploy high-quality games in the market. In this scenario, an external QA team can help to manage your overall testing processes by delivering quality services. Let us see how an external QA partner like Game Cloud can help your business by providing cost-effective and flexible services.
Here are some advantages one can have if they outsource a 3rd party game testing agency.
- Flexibility: Always available resources of QA vendor or agency with ramp up and ramp down provisions as per your requirements.
- Cost-Effective: Zero investments in hardware, infrastructure, sanitization process or employee health checks during daily attendance.
- Expert: Outsourcing to external QA vendors allows you to maintain high standards of your games with involvement of experienced professionals.
- Deadlines: You don’t have to worry about delivery schedules and deadlines if relevant terms and conditions are incorporated in the game testing contract.
Conclusion:
It is important to deliver a bug-free & high-quality user experience for all game lovers as the player engagement is at its peak during pandemic. Hiring a QA vendor or 3rd party agency with virtual assistants maintaining the office culture for your video games will ensure efficiency, time management, reduction in workload, and better quality results. Outsourcing during pandemic can offer comfort and cost-effectiveness to game studios of all kinds regardless of the duration and size of the project.
We at GameCloud Technologies have maintained a team of QA specialists and virtual assistants well versed in gaming services on all major gaming platforms. With our state-of-the-art QA facility in Pune, we have implemented the essential sanitization process, constant circulation of fresh air and ensured social distancing for all the staff members.
Professional delivery, access to more than 300 test devices, office culture, security & integrity are few of the advantages we are offering to our customers which they find impossible to achieve locally during pandemic. We have worked hard to deal with the challenges posed by pandemic and moving back to the most needed office culture. After all, you get professional results if the professionals are working inside an organization and not outside of it. This applies more for video games than any other industries.
