” Do you want a good job, or do you want a fast job?’” Testing games can quite literally be a disappointing experience. There are those times when developers can pound down on their external testing teams to the breaking point with unreasonable expectations.
For example, in a load test scenario, you would ideally break down the different variances within the test environment in order to test specific items to a game. But there are those developers out there that are so gung ho with meeting release dates, wherein they bunch together a whole slew of testing scenarios into a mere 4 hours of testing. Quite frankly this is a total waste of time and money.
Proper testing is usually done over a period of time with a scheduled approach to variances. In the MMO space, that usually means testing the application over a single platform spec as well as a carrier. In larger tests, it’s usually better to start scaling tests based on a 50 user base and approaching that 1000 currently connected users right around a month down as each error and bug rear’s its head over that staggered period.
Usability testing also suffers the same way. Since there’s no real way to say when a UI is properly constructed, series testing would normally be the right approach to each beta build. And as each build progresses, do not be alarmed that your target demographic idea in mind changes. It’s really a dynamic process when building something out for a young mind, and only through series testing will you able to determine the necessary intricacies of finding your right demographic for advertising to.
Finally, don’t consult with an external testing team that promises the moon and the stars. The most likely scenario there that they’re just marketing the service and don’t really know what they’re talking about. They’re more likely to take your money, and you for a spin as well.
Looking at the mission statement of Blizzard (of course we’ll use them as an example), they don’t really care of a game is late in its release. What was important is that people said they had an awesome time playing their games.
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