As game quality evolves, it is becoming one of the most diverse disciplines in game production. But what will define the craft’s future?
For those in games that work outside the realm of game quality, the likes of testing and QA can appear to be static disciplines. Perceptions that it all comes down to bug detection and purebred functionality testing persist, and perhaps understandably so. After all, the deep nuance of the craft only becomes truly apparent when you get hands on.
To those that have made game quality a career, meanwhile, it is clear that the specialty is undergoing a rapid evolution, as games themselves expand in size, complexity and breadth. Not that the forward journey is anything new; after all, game quality has always had to keep in step with the incessantly innovative medium it enables and champions.
All of which begs a question. What does the future have in store for the broad game quality discipline?
END-TO-END TESTING AS STANDARD
As games increase in complexity and live becomes the norm, many of those in the quality realm predict that we will see testing and assurance span considerably more of a given title’s production cycle, in step with a simultaneous increase in what falls under the discipline’s remit.
“We are, I believe, going to see better practice around the end-to-end quality approach, so that we can really be involved throughout a game’s production, and prevent defects and see that less bugs are introduced,” offers Pierre Jouen, Worldwide Quality Control Director at Ubisoft, and Qualicon Content Committee member. “That extends to live game support and community management and addressing the player experience. Testing can’t stop when the gold master is duplicated anymore.
“We need to make sure that we make the player journey the best they can expect, and we can improve it constantly in a live game, and reward players with greater experience. That has to happen, so we need to – and will see – testing and quality become part of the end-to-end of what a game is. That is also highly applicable to new areas that are now important to game quality, such as accessibility testing and player safety.”
Put another way, today and ongoing, the game quality discipline is increasing its scope, and has more significant and powerful contributions than ever to make across a release’s life, from inception onwards.
“We’re seeing testing and QA getting involved earlier, and this shift from detecting problems to preventing them, and that happens by being close to a game’s design, development and production from the very start,” says Ben Wibberley, Vice President of Games Operations, Jagex, and Qualicon Content Committee Co-Chair, and a discipline veteran of some 28 years. “That’s critical to the future of game quality, and where it’s going as a practice and craft. And then game quality still has this role once the game is live, where you have to listen and test not just how it looks and functions, but how the community is, and more abstract concepts like fun.”
This movement, in truth, is simply a reflection of game quality’s increasingly broad remit. Today game quality informs game design, enables the embracing of accessibility, tracks sentiment in the communities of live games, refines fun finding, and much more besides. What ‘quality’ now means to players has become an increasingly rich feast; a trend worthy of far greater recognition.
THE RISE OF NEW-GEN TOOLS
Next up comes a darling of current trend prediction articles of every kind – namely artificial intelligence. Of course, forms of AI and automation have long supported human testers. But we are very likely to be stepping into a new era for game quality tools, where AI augments teams’ abilities even more, as quality and development stalls become more integrated.
“We’re at this intersection where content is being generated at this tremendous rate, and much of it almost automatically” Wibberley proposes. “The speed at which all this gaming content is created has reached the point where we can’t just throw bodies at it. We can’t possibly hope that’s going to solve the issue. I’ve spoken to people in game QA on major triple-A titles who’ve seen more player hours put into the game in its first minute live than their testers have put in across the entire production cycle. That really puts this issue in perspective”
More intelligent, efficient tools, then, must surely be essential in paving the way to game quality reaching its new potential.
“Of course, automation has been part of game quality for a long time,” Wibberley confirms “But that has to increase. It’s not going to be generative AI replacing human testers, because we’ll always need humans to work on testing and QA for games for humans. But we will see, I’m sure, this new era of AI augment the work of human testers, and take on some of the automated tasks. That lets humans find the fun and the quality, and do more with their craft, bringing more prevention and creativity, and allowing more time for these new areas of the game quality remit. AI will take on more of the data and numbers generated by millions of players, which will be increasingly essential in this live era.”
And Wibberley certainly isn’t alone in that perspective.
“I’ve been really interested to hear how different teams are leveraging tooling and automation to expand their capabilities for testing, especially those who are using live telemetry to help validate coverage of certain player paths to supplement their overall testing coverage,” enthuses Esmeralda Perez, Director of Quality on VALORANT at Riot Games, and Qualicon Content Committee member. “I look forward to seeing more teams share what innovations they reach as they invest in these tools. I don’t think we share enough, that’s why I think Game Quality is such an important platform to help us share our learnings with each other. But if you’re asking me what I really dream about, it is how we could possibly leverage advances in AI models to help QA test coverage. I think this is a big area of opportunity for us to learn how to leverage it as another item in our quality tool box.
“With the increasing complexity of games today, we have to see better tools and technologies in the future,” Jouen adds. “Technology that supports QA has to be seen as a partner and not a threat. It can be something that will help us address that complexity. As part of that, we need to see – and will see, I think – more communication between tech and production teams [within game studios]. That communication can help production and tech not only make better tools for themselves, but also ones that support game quality. They don’t even need to be separate tools. I think we will increasingly see more studio technologies that will have roles in development and production and also game quality, even as part of a singular process.”
That’s something Perez also sees as critical to the evolution of what game quality and testing can be; and how it can evolve.
“I’ve been excited to see more organisations embracing embedded QA models to integrate their quality organisations closer with the teams. I’ve also been super interested to hear – especially in Qualicon presentations – how teams, especially in games as a service titles, are finding ways to optimise their testing coverage by really leaning into risk based testing coverage, which is important in fast moving ever growing titles.
QUALITY AND COMMUNITY
Time and again, it is the game’s medium’s now-established live nature that is highlighted as driving much of the change designing game quality’s future. And it’s not just about new content being added post release. Rather, the vast communities that inhabit live games offer a new entity for game quality professionals to monitor and serve.
“We’re now seeing game quality evolve into something that you can think of as a bridge between your game and your players,” posits Wibberley. “If your QA and testing teams have a link with your players, and really listen, they’re going to see those players talking about what’s working for them. And that’s what these communities offer; their conversations and interactions can inform testers looking to improve player experience. So we are not just talking about reporting bugs that emerge in a live context, but demonstrating how a live game functions through their interaction as a community. That almost highlights that this older attitude or approach of brute force testing just won’t work going forward. You can’t just throw 300 people at a live game for three months before public launch, because now it’s about what the game will become.”
For Jouen, that very opportunity also affords those in the game quality community an opportunity to communicate their work to other teams, from design staff to senior management.
“There has been a lot of investment across the discipline in how we can make best use of these new kinds of data and analytics. That information doesn’t just inform testing – it can also help us better understand and communicate our work – within QA and across studios. We will see more of this use of data to make our work and aims more tangible and clear. It can help us cut the noise and move away from a subjective approach and focus on facts. […] There’s been this misconception about the role, and what gets asked of QA when. It’s not about what we can’t do, but communication about how we function in a studio, and the ways we can contribute across a game’s production.”
Clearly, then, the future of game quality is bright, although the effort continues to evangelise the remit, potential and contribution of the craft. With more recognition and understanding of what game quality is, so come yet more potential for impact and creativity. The onus for that communication inevitably falls to those of us in game quality. But that is one trend that is far from new, and something testers and QA professionals are more than used to facing.
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