COIT23003 Games Development

Quality Assurance

References

• Meigs, T., 2003. Ultimate Game Design: Building Game Worlds, McGraw Hill.

• Rabin, S. (ed.). Introduction to Game Development, Charles River Media, 2005.

The Game Design Lifecycle

• 3 Phases:1. Concept (output = game concept)2. Elaboration (output = entire design)3. Tuning (output = “polished” design)

• Outputs for Phases 2 and 3 would normally include prototype software

• Precedes the development/production phase of the game lifecyle

The Game Lifecycle

• Game development lifecycle consists of two streams:

1. A design stream2. A production stream

Concept Elaboration Tuning

Pre-Production Post ProductionProduction

Design Stream

Production Stream

The Production Stream

1. Preproduction• Secure finance, determine budget, determine resource

requirements, develop schedule …• Follows on from concept stage of design stream

2. Production• Follows on from tuning stage of design stream• Game is created• Typically consists of 3 stages (alpha, beta, gold master)

3. Postproduction• Bugs fixed, game tweaked, package and manual created

(Rabin, 2005)

The Production Stage

1. Alpha Stage• All required features of the design implemented, but

not necessarily working in the desired manner

2. Beta Stage• All features delivered in the alpha stage are working

and locked down. Final sound effects, music, voice added.

3. Gold Master• Copy protection, device drivers added, installation

software integrated

Why Gold Master?

• Named after the gold-coloured recordable discs originally used to send final mastering assets to the publisher for mass duplication

Quality Assurance: Design

• Incorporate stakeholder feedback on concept/design documents and prototypes

• Same principle applies as in Software Engineering – catch problems as early in the lifecycle as possible

Quality Assurance: Production

• Alpha stage:– incorporate gameplay feedback from focus

groups/testers, design team, publisher …)– Perform functionality testing (requires formal test

plans)

• Beta Stage:– Perform testing on any added content– Public testing if appropriate

Console Games vs PC Games

Console games will require– Conformance testing to meet platform standards– More rigorous testing as patching is problematic