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One of the best video games publisher in US outsources Qualitesoft for game testing to build the best confidence in the quality of game.

The client publishes video games to run on PCs as well as gaming platforms from Sony and Microsoft. Offshoring was chosen as the preferred route to quickly ramp up the publisher quality assurance resources so as to control costs as well as increase flexibility in team sizes.

CHALLENGE:

The customer had to ensure that games are released to market at the right time as decided by the production team. The key challenge was to integrate a remote team into the customer’s established quality assurance structure.

EXPERIMENT & SOLUTION:

Qualitesoft was chosen as the preferred outsourced supplier for its combination of ready game-testing infrastructure, its long-standing background in testing and quality assurance and its in-depth experience in games testing. A well-defined engagement model provides the basis for the project, while mutually agreed key performance indicators measured the success of the outsourced quality assurance. The integration of the remote team was achieved with tremendous success through detailed planning, risk management and joint task forces.

Qualitesoft team broadly focused on the below areas from the intitial phase of testing.

 Appealing to different types of player demographics
 Educating the players
 An intriguing or complex plot
 Realistic/ delightful graphics (including characters, backgrounds and equipment) and sounds
 Random events (to keep the player interested)
 Little known facts (to educate the player)
 Facilitate players to work as teams

A knowledge transfer and activity planning stage onsite for each game to

 Design a test strategy and test plan.
 Formal knowledge transfer for each game from the client.
 Customising and reviewing existing test assets and test case preparation.
 Determining execution metrics.

Following testing types were performed by team members to accomplish the best quality:

1. Installation testing
It involved the series of steps that should be tested on the common computer configurations (each configuration specifies data like the Processor, RAM, Hard Disk, Display, Display RAM, operating system etc.) used by players.

Testers designed the test cases for the installation steps and then executed these test cases on each of the common configurations.

2. Feature Testing
This was the most important type of game testing. Typically, the game would have a number of features. Testers aimed to cover the game’s features as exhaustively as feasible. Team members chose the efficient way to accomplish this by designing test cases in a number of ways, such as:

a. Detailed test cases – These test cases are suitable to cover obvious features.
b. Task based test cases – These test cases are at a higher level of detail.
c. Test matrices – These test cases are useful when there are different features for different player statuses.

3. User Interface testing
An efficient way to test the UI is to first list the checks desired for every graphical element and content type. Then checked each item in the list in every logical division of the game (e.g. each screen and each level).

4. Performance Testing
Testers Identified the common tasks a player is likely to perform.

Determined the acceptable times for these tasks. These times are the goals.
Tested the game at extremes. Ran a game continuously for 24 hours.

RESULTS: 15% IMPROVEMENT IN LEADS PER VISIT

In Qualiesoft Game Testing the customer was able to develop a reliable long-term offshore testing partner for formal execution of publisher quality assurance to:

 Reduce elapsed time for testing
 Control costs while increasing the volume of testers engaged in game play testing
 Reduce turnaround time between development and quality assurance activities
 Increase testing coverage for all its games