Video Game Mythbusting: Players Don't Test How Fun Games Are

One reviewer said that Republic: The Revolution did not feel as though players had actually tested it when it was being developed - a thought echoed by many others when reviewing video games who assume that games go through a "fun" testing stage. Well here's an interesting factoid about the game industry: players don't usually test the games to see how fun they are. In fact, player testing is usually low on the corporate priority list as far as the game industry goes.

When the idea of game testing is brought up, most people conjure ideas of sitting comfortably at least in a chair - at best in a giant bean bag, armed with a control pad or keyboard based on the platform they're testing, and enjoying an 8 hour work day of playing through video games. In this ideal gaming world, the tester will at the end of the day explain what would make the game more enjoyable, possibly making a small chart explaining each of the points that could have been done better, which parts dragged on too long, and what parts had their heads exploding with frustration.

The truth of the matter though is that there is usually a dedicated team titled Quality Assurance, or QA. These people can range anywhere from the multi-year experienced game testers to simple temps called in to fluff a project. Based on the corporate interests in the project, these teams can reach as high as the multi-hundreds of testers.

But what are they looking for exactly?

Are they sending in helpful feedback about just how fun it would be if the dragon in the dungeon sprung out another head and shot laser beams out of his eyes? Actually no, they're sending in streams of screenshots, data, and descriptions of how the dragon in the dungeon takes to swipes at you and disappears under the floor, never to be seen again.

Another one is looking from every conceivable angle at one of the character models, looking for the slightest hint of missing or stretched textures or clipping when the character is put into motion. Using a variety of tools to stay in constant contact with the game's developers (a common one is a program known as DevTrack which corresponds messages back and forth), the testers are assigning levels of severity for the bug, usually on a grade scale from A to D, categorized either by urgency or as a simple level of bug.

For example, all bugs that cause the software or hardware to crash is classified as an "A" bug, while game designs that prevent a player's ability to progress through the games are usually classified as "B".

In fact the only time players are actually involved in the mix is during the "beta" stage, which is usually broken down into various chapters. Sometimes a game will enter "beta 1" or "closed beta 1", and then transition into "beta 2" or "closed beta 2", or whatever designations the developers choose to assign to them. Each "chapter" of the beta testing involves a generation of players intended to examine a certain, specified aspect of the game.

Do the players test for fun factor?

Actually no. They are of course encouraged to include feedback on the games - and are always encouraged to pass along recommendations, but there is no part of the game solely devoted to "fun testing". This is a very hit-or-miss category as its all but impossible to effectively test if a concept will be "fun" and then make adjustments based on said fun factor.

During beta, most emphasis is put on stress testing and "negative" testing.

Negative testing is a term describing "undocumented" or "unconventional" methods of testing. There's no real way to "train" someone to negative test, and usually only a handful of QA testers have the "feel" necessary to be an effective negative tester. It requires you to be able to guess what types of strange situations players can put themselves in that may induce erratic behavior from the NPCs (non-player characters) that populate the game.

Like so many other things, the idea that there are dedicated play testers who scope out a game to see how fun it is is little more than a myth. There are, however, testers.

Hundreds and hundreds of testers.