With the invention of new technology and advancement in the domain of testing the world has evolved. There have been several advancements in the domain of game testing. Now companies and organizations consider automation testing as it has many benefits like a high-quality product, high production rates, reduced time, improved safety, and many more. On the other hand, the game industry believes to not miss any bug or defect and thus requires a professional game tester because anything left can cause terrible effects on the game. Even when we involve beta testers to test our game on a variety of different platforms, one cannot necessarily report a bug as a professional does. The role of a game tester is not only limited to finding and reporting a bug but to create documentation, shreds of evidence, debug logs and videos to support their claim. The testers need to have exact steps to reproduce the bug with different scenarios. A tester is also involved physically with a team meeting and discussions which no one can replace.
Some people think that automation testing has taken over the market but for the games industry manual testers play an important role in game Functionality testing, Game UI testing and Game UX testing. Manual Game Testing involves many steps that might get missed out through automation tools and beta testers. In this blog, we are going to see the importance of manual testers in the game industry.
Why is Game Testing Important?
Game testing is important as it contains a variety of components and modules that need a clear vision to check the functionality. Even the slightest of bugs can stop the game from running smoothly or even prevent the booting at first place. Games are complex that comprise different genres that need to be seamless and provide an interactive experience to the user. In addition to functional testing, there are multiple aspects that demand manual testing efforts including but not limited to:
- Installation Testing: To check if the game will load run on different devices and platforms. All these steps are described in test cases.
- Feature Testing: Verification of games features.
- User Interface Testing: The main component of Game UI Testing is to check for the graphical look and feel along with the content.
- Performance Testing: Checking which areas are laggy/spiking or unpleasant in various environments.
- UX Testing: User Experience Testing is something that can be done only by real users and players. And not by the programs/AI/Bots.
What is Manual Testing?
This type does not require automation tools and is a primitive type amongst all others. It is a type of software testing where testers execute test cases manually and find bugs in the application or product. Manual testing requires more effort to check the feasibility. Exploratory testing in video games is an important aspect of manual testing efforts wherein FTUE (first time user environment) can be tested very effectively and it cannot be replaced by automation anyhow.
In the process of manual testing, a comparison is set based on the behavior of the application like any component, module, or User interface with the expected behavior that is typically set during the SDLC. Finding the bugs and errors while manually testing the application helps to make sure that customer requirements for the product or application are met.
Importance of Manual Testing for the Game industry:
As we have discussed that manual testing plays an important role besides automation in the game development industry. Even a minor defect can ultimately cause the game to stop leaving a negative user experience. It is important to know why manual testing important while developing video games
- Human Angle for Testing: Human brain is irreplaceable. The basic behavior, design, look & feel can be evaluated with the human brain. A tester can create test designs, detect bugs, and execute designs to get the desired output. A human tester can see for the unnoticed flaws or defects being missed out by automation testing. One can quickly detect any issue.
- User Experience and User Interface Testing: User Experience and User Interface testing may not be possible. A manual game tester can spot visual, graphical, contextual, and functional bugs. Visual Considerations like gestures, image color, font-size, etc would probably require manual testing to identify bugs.
- Some Domains prefer Manual Testing: Some firms prefer manual testing for their highly confidential data. Sharing the source code for script writing may be risky for some.
- Non-Automated Scenarios: There could be multiple scenarios where automated testing might cause fluctuation in the result and can result in variations during runtime due to behavioral changes. In this case, manual testing QA can test quickly.
- Automation Costs: With tight deadlines projects of certain size may find automation to be more expensive. In case of video games, one can prefer manual testing rather than automation testing purely to save the time required to build scripts, test them to ensure these are serving the purpose and then execute for covering a limited type of testers.
- Mobile Application Testing: Features like entering and re-entering randomly or freshly added internet spots, running other pre-installed apps, receiving calls and text, etc, cannot be efficiently covered by automated scripts. In this case, a manual tester can address these issues and reduce the possibility of freak-outs within a very short amount of time and investments.
Conclusion:
Manual Game Testing can be considered eyeball testing based on human brains and knowledge. Games with visually appealing GUI can be difficult to test with automation testing tools. Automation testing cannot replace intuitive behavior, inductive reasoning of a human brain. Though the technology has revolutionized and the demand for manual testers has been decreasing, certain aspects cannot be ignored. Manual testing can be used for small to large projects. Manual Game testing requires a creative, patient, and open-minded game tester.
There are times when the cost and efforts required for writing an automation script are very high as compared to the cost of finishing everything efficiently and effectively with help of experienced manual game testers. On top of that, manual testers can be unpredictable, update the test strategy based on the situation in hand and even improvise using the presence of mind. This cannot be done by automation testing. Technology can change the quality of life but that cannot replace the human brain.
