Games Testing

This week's reading teaches us the importance of game testing.
The point of this is to find and squish as many bugs as possible before the game releases as well as ensuring the game is fun and balanced.
Firstly, you want to try out an early prototype and make sure all the numbers are correct (things like player abilities, amount of health, damage, money, experience points, etc).

Next, we start debugging. This aims to get rid of as many glitches, loopholes and stalemates as possible.
One can of course solo test, and that may be enough for some games. However, for many other games this will be inadequate. Most, if not all multiplayer games need to be tested with multiple players, sometimes more than the design team has (see: MMO's like World of Warcraft). In this case, we turn to the QA team and open beta testers.
These testers can be anyone from friends, family, to people who signed up for a beta on your website.

After reading all of the material we were given, I can say without a doubt say that there is a lot more to game testing than I initially thought. It must be a pain in the ass, and I can sorta empathise with game designers who have to deal with game breaking bugs in strict deadlines.

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