The Future of Game Automation Testing

In the past few years, it has been observed that the game testing industry has changed drastically and is now booming. Considering the expected boost in the near future, game development businesses are accelerating and investing their resources to dive deep into this domain so that they can maintain speed with the ever-growing technology seeking to deliver comprehensive, well-planned automated game testing services to their customers.

With the growing trend of automated game testing in the software industry, there are several tools available in the market that are impacting industries and altering the SDLC process to be more strong, efficient, and impactful.

However, one has to also deal with some challenges too while functioning on automating games.

Benefits of Automated Game Testing

• Save time and effort on QA which guides to providing clients’ products on time.
• Test automation establishes to be much more efficient in noticing bugs at an early stage of game development.
• Automated tests can be conducted round the clock (24/7) hassle-free and without any manual interference.
• With the automated test, testers can come and test specific levels of the game which can consume a lot of manual effort and time. In some circumstances, there might be some scenarios or situations due to which they might fail to accomplish using their manual efforts.
• Evaluation of executed test results can be easily examined via test reports which get developed after running test suites/test scripts.
• Automated tests help in carrying out testing on numerous platforms in parallel which helps in speeding up test executions and adding much more significance to game testing.
• Decrease manual testing efforts so that QA can concentrate on other edge case scenarios which cannot be covered through automation.
• Decreases business costs and helps in better utilization of manpower in-game development-related tasks.
• Automated tests help reduce the stressful activity of a manual tester, so they acquire enough time and bandwidth for coming up with better test scenarios.
• Automated tests can help you maximize your test coverage for covering complicated and difficult scenarios.

There are some false myths that one should eliminate from its mind before regarding the scope for automated game testing.

• Game Code Reusability: Unlike other software products like finance apps, and ebook apps, each game is created on new code employing various game engines so it becomes very hard to reuse the code. To accomplish this needs great effort in planning and coming up with a particular testing procedure that helps in creating and maintaining such functions that hide the game object code particulars from the automated tests to maximize test re-usability.
• Eradicate Human Involvement: Automated game tests do not eradicate the requirement for manual testers cause at the end of the day, it is the utmost reality that some tests cannot be automated like ad-hoc or play-testing.

Factors To Consider Before Considering About Automating Games

• Return on Investment: Provide to expect better ROI from your automation efforts.
• Maintenance: We require to stay committed and invest our time and cost in script maintenance activities till the time problems are managed.
• Consider Tech Stack: Before considering automating any set of game functionalities, we require to invest an immense amount of time in identifying and estimating the tech stack that would satisfy and support the game engine which is used in creating the game.
• Documentation and Tracking Framework Workflow: Maintaining documentation for the executed framework demonstrates to be worth the effort when it comes to sharing any knowledge with new automation members in the team, beginning any new projects, and much more.

What Are the Different Methods Utilized for Automating Games

In order to save time and effort when testing games, QA engineers require to utilize certain methods that can automate their testing procedures. Some of those methods are mentioned below:

Handwritten Test Scripts

This approach leads to building and executing testing frameworks from scratch where skilled test engineers write, maintain, and execute test scripts employing some programming language (Java, C#, and Python). The main benefit of this method is that the engineers get the freedom to execute a well-structured framework, through scripts that help in delivering complete QA coverage for the game.

Record-Playback Approach

This method is less error-prone as it’s a code-free execution method where no handwritten code is written, but it is generally more limited in functionality. With this method, tests can be quickly recorded and played back to back against various OS versions and device configurations.

Automated Game Testing Challenges

Let’s take a look at the various challenges that are encountered during the automation of games testing:

• The biggest challenge that automation engineers encounter while automating test scripts for games is that games are highly unpredictable and can have an unlimited number of gameplay strategies(with many permutations and combinations.) Due to this, we cannot just depend on the automation framework where manual inference and observation are needed.
• Unavailability of skilled resources that have knowledge of designing and executing the accurate framework.
• The performance of the game may range relying upon the combination of hardware and software that are being employed.
• Game automation testing is reliable only when conducted on real mobile devices. The accuracy level of game code cannot be indicated through emulators/simulators.
• In some cases, locator methods (for example “Xpath”, “id”, “class name” etc) cannot be determined for some web-based games.
• Synchronization between gameplay and test scripts sometimes becomes hard as the user interface (UI) and responsiveness of games are very fast.
• Software and data complexities like audio, cinematic effects, big data, and localization are inquiring to automate.

Also Read: 6 Things You Require To Concentrate On Video Game Testing

Conclusion

Successful automation for a gaming product could only be accomplished if the scope is planned at the very start. Having a skilled team employed for the job who are aware of their roles and duties followed by using a standardized testing method with the proper selection of tools to be utilized are the factors you should be looking for. To know more about game automation testing, contact TestUnity now.

At TestUnity, we strive for the highest quality in every project, and our professional QA specialists are ready to ensure it. Contact us if you’re looking for a dedicated team to enhance your product’s quality.

TestUnity

Testunity is a SaaS-based technology platform driven by a vast community of testers & QAs spread around the world, powered by technology & testing experts to create the dedicated testing hub. Which is capable of providing almost all kind of testing services for almost all the platforms exists in software word.