Automated Testing Archives - iXie Gaming

9 Popular Video Game Testing Tools in the Market to Level Up Your Game QA

iXie — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 08:17:28 +0000

The last thing you need is to release a faulty or error-prone video game to players. Players will not like it and may create a negative impression of your video game due to the poor gameplay experience. Therefore, as a developer, you must thoroughly test your video game to ensure it works as expected and can effectively handle overload.

Remember, we live in an interconnected world where your video game can go viral overnight, attracting significant traffic. This means you must design your game to handle an increased workload without affecting functionality. And that’s where video game testing tools come into play. Join us as we review some popular video game testing tools to level up your game QA or quality assurance.

1. Unity Test Tools

Unity is one of the most used game engines globally, with about 70% of developers using it for mobile game development. This platform offers a set of robust testing tools to help you you’re your video games.

One of the test tools offered by Unity is the Unity Test Runner, which promotes the creation and execution of tests. This tool helps in ensuring the functionality and stability of video game elements. Also, it supports integration with several testing frameworks and offers an avenue for automated testing, strengthening game QA efforts.

Unity Test Tools streamline the process of detecting and rectifying glitches and bugs. This enhances the overall gaming experience by facilitating seamless gameplay and minimizing post-release issues.

2. TestComplete

TestComplete is a comprehensive automated testing tool that supports numerous types of applications, including video games. It supports different types of testing, such as:

Load testing,
Regression testing, and
Functional testing.

This feature set enables you to thoroughly test your video game, ensuring it works as expected and is free from errors. TestComplete’s scripting capabilities enhance customization, allowing you to tailor your tests to meet specific needs.

Additionally, this game testing tool helps game developers systematically evaluate gameplay elements for inconsistencies and bugs. But why do many testers prefer TestComplete for video game testing?

Well, it automates repetitive testing processes. In doing so, TestComplete expedites bug detection, allowing developers to allocate more resources and time to refining gameplay mechanics. Also, it enables you to simulate user interactions and test across different environments, ensuring seamless gaming experiences.

3. Xcode Instruments

If you’re building video games for iOS, Xcode Instruments can be an ideal testing tool to level up your game QA. This game-testing tool offers useful tools for inspecting and improving your video game. It is a flexible and powerful performance analysis and testing solution.

Xcode instruments offer numerous testing capabilities, enabling you to level up your game QA efforts. Here are some ways you can use Xcode instruments for video game testing:

To discover memory problems.
To track down issues in your source code.
To analyze the performance of your video game and identify areas of improvement.

4. BugSplat

BugSplat is a robust tool that enables you to quickly detect defects when testing video games. It is a crucial crash-tracking and reporting tool that supports meticulous crash and exception analysis. These capabilities help you pinpoint problems that disrupt gameplay stability.

As a result, you can assess and assign newly found defects from actual crashes experienced by game players in minutes. This enables you to fix the most crucial issues by the end of the day, minimizing your video game’s downtime.

BugSplat provides actionable insights into the root causes of crashes, facilitating efficient bug fixes. In doing so, BugSplat elevates your overall video game quality, enhancing player satisfaction.

5. GameBench

GameBench is one of the leading tools for performance data collection, analysis, and optimization for video games and other applications. It is tailored for mobile games and provides a comprehensive solution to assess the stability and efficiency of games across different devices.

GameBench measures critical video game metrics, including memory consumption, battery usage, and frame rates, helping you detect performance issues that may hinder gameplay experience.

This tool empowers you to optimize your video games for a wide range of mobile devices, ensuring high-quality and consistent performance across various mobile platforms. Its ability to unearth potential issues early in game development helps ensure a seamless gaming experience.

6. Hatchet

Hatchet is a cloud-based testing solution that allows you to perform testing on various devices. It offers automated testing and helps developers detect compatibility issues across different hardware configurations. As a result, developers can identify and rectify glitches and bugs in the early development stages, improving the overall video game performance and quality.

7. Appium

Appium is an exceptional framework whose use cases cut across different development aspects. For instance, many of today’s popular video games are tested using Appium. It is an easy-to-use game-testing tool that supports graphics-based content, including video games.

Appium’s cross-platform compatibility enables you to test your video game on Android and iOS devices using one script. This ensures faster and more efficient game testing.

8. Valgrind

Valgrind is a useful video game testing tool that can level up your game quality assurance efforts. If you’ve primarily built your video game using C or C++, Valgrind can be an invaluable testing tool. It facilitates profiling and debugging in C and C++ applications. Developers use this tool to detect memory leaks and other low-level issues in their video games.

9. PlaytestCloud

PlaytestCloud enables you to playtest any video game on any platform, including iOS and Android. This tool focuses on gathering user feedback and playtesting. It allows you to remotely test your video game using actual players and collect insights on gameplay, bugs, and user experience.

Final Thoughts

Video game testing is crucial in ensuring a seamless gameplay experience and quality. These game-testing tools can help you level up your game QA. However, choosing your preferred tools should be based on the specific need, development environment, and target platforms. Also, assessing the capabilities and features of each tool can help you select the testing solution that best fits your video game QA requirements.

Game Testing: Partnering for Quality

iXie Gaming — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 11:36:26 +0000

Reliability, quality assurance at competitive costs make iXie the ideal testing partner for this video games publisher.

CLIENT PROFILE
A leading global firm based in the US was developing a software tool for workforce management, employee attendance marking, collecting labour data and generating attendance summary of a large workforce. The software was developed using .NET technologies and AJAX and Oracle 10G was the database used.
The client was scouting around for the right testing partner, one who had the capability to manage the testing process at rapid speed, without sacrificing quality. Importantly, the QA team at the client site wanted a 100% automation-driven testing process, to reduce time-to-release, for every build. Also, the project needed handling of multiple data sets for a highly data intensive application.

KNOWLEDGE CHALLENGES
The client had attempted to create an in-house testing team but faced certain hurdles:

Games need to be tested on the right devices for accurate quality assurance. For this, the client needed to invest in the devices, which would become redundant after the game was released.
The second challenge was to hire key, experienced QA personnel, which added to the costs.
Assets also add to overhead costs, an additional drain on the finances of the publishing company.
In-house testing would dilute the focus of the company from publishing to managing the testing assets.

The ideal solution was to look for a testing partner with its own asset base to outsource quality assurance too.

ADVANTAGE iXie
Some of the qualities the publisher for including:

The asset base
The experience level
Cost competitiveness

iXie’s game testing proved to be the right fit for the client because of our experience in testing across devices.
We were able to perform testing on:

Our testing lab houses mobile devices and Tablets of all kinds – Android, iOS, Windows and Amazon Kindle
We also have gaming PCs & Laptops to support game titles
We have experienced personnel, averaging 12 years of experience in game testing.

BENEFITS OF USING iSAFE
One of iXie’s key and standard approaches to testing is to work closely with the client’s third party developers in planning and executing the project, interacting with them in real time. Our key ingredients for testing success are:

PLANNING
Our work was mapped out to include testing for:

Functionality
Compatibility
Compliance
Regressions
Smoke
Test case preparation

INVESTMENT
After understanding the requirements for the testing, we invested in:

Purchase of mobile devices
Purchase of high-end PCs
Network (exclusive leased line, backup network lines)
Firewall
Hiring of full-time resources

IMPLEMENTATION

Execution – we worked closely with the client right from the alpha stage of the project, then beta, close master, soft launch, global launch and maintenance, updates and patches
Shared daily status report
Shared Weekly status report
Tracked a milestone checklist
Maintained an iOS compliance and compatibility checklist

COMMUNICATION
We maintained communication with the client, thus retaining their trust and updating them of progress periodically through multiple tiers:

Chat based – Skype, Slack
Audio conferencing bridges
Video conferencing bridges
Email communication
Bug database (JIRA/Mantis)

These four steps ensure that the game to be tested is understood well, the test cases prepared, each level tested methodically and the client provided with the right information critical to the success of the game.
BENEFITS OF iXie GAME TESTING
We at iXie go the extra mile to make sure the projects we undertake are delivered successfully, on time, every time. To ensure this, we equipped ourselves suitably:

Rapid scalability of resources – our team was beefed up from 8 to 80 in two months. This helped us complete the project on time.
Infrastructure: We spruced up our infrastructure to suit the needs of the project, thus covering every aspect of testing.
Effective Communication: Continuous interaction with the customers and their third-party developers helped us gain their confidence and test in real time.
Suggestions and Improvements: Based on our vast experience in game testing, we made suggestions to the customer on game design and monetization. This not only got positive feedback, but the suggestions were implemented and enhanced the quality.

TOOLS

Defect Management Tool – JIRA

METRICS

15,000 test cases were developed

KEY PROJECT STATISTICS

Team size: 80
Duration: 7 + months

Accolades –
I can’t say enough about how great this team has been.
We have had a launch on 4 platforms – first geo-locked, and then world-wide.
The team has been very adaptive to last minute overtime requests, and have done so cheerfully.
They have been integral to a very successful launch (we are number #3 in Apple store worldwide).
We also have a 5 star rating in the Apple store.
In other words – this team is excellent.
There is nothing they need to improve right now.

-QA Manager of a billion dollar gaming firm in the US

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