The Most Common Mobile Game Testing Concerns for QA Engineers
The mobile gaming market is currently emerging and is likely to continue growing in the next 10 years. According to the recent data, it will reach $311.2 billion by 2023. The mobile games are becoming an inevitable part of our lives, attracting billions of users in all countries worldwide. Therefore, producing quality applications and utilities continues to be on the top for most mobile developers. Mobile game testing is one of the obligatory stages of any development process that is performed to ensure a perfect user experience to the maximum number of users across different devices.
The mobile game testing has much in common with the process of software testing. A QA engineer is expected to make sure that the game is clean, bug-free, up-to-date, and perfectly fits the descriptions and requirements, provided by the developers. Moreover, the QA should also check whether the game meets the expectations of most users. Technically, the tester is responsible for detecting any errors in the game’s code. Therefore, a perfect QA should not only be a passionate mobile game player but also have deep knowledge and skills in testing. In this article, we’ve collected a number of concerns each QA management team should take into account when testing a mobile game.
Why Is Testing So Important for Gaming?
The first step of any QA process is to detect bugs and report about the issues. It is also important to make sure that the game perfectly fits the user experience level. This way, a QA Engineer should test the product from the common user’s viewpoint but with technical details in mind.
Some companies hire a single skilled QA Engineer for performing the tests. However, most gaming products usually require crowd testing to provide a better quality of the game. Crowd testing companies, such as Ubertesters, are able to use various game testing tools by different QA experts in different locations.
Interface Testing
User interface testing is one of the most important steps of pre-launch testing. The QA expert should check whether the interface of the mobile game is top-notch, understandable, and user-friendly. Interface testing is considered to be even more vital for ensuring the game’s high quality than functionality testing.
The most common things any QA will check are fonts, color effects, instructions, resolutions, as well as the location of the main menu and how it behaves when rotating the screen of the mobile device. The tester will also make sure that the app’s navigation is working properly and has the highest possible loading speed.
Interface testing is also about testing alignments, sounds, animation, timing, messages, notifications, and other effects that have a significant impact on the mobile game’s performance. For all these purposes, testing on various types of smartphones under different conditions in real life is surely preferable.
Graphic Testing
High-quality graphics is a key to the overall perfect performance of the application. The matter is that poor graphic design is usually incredibly disappointing for any user, providing with a feeling that the game was developed by low-skilled developers but not professional team.
What are the main types of graphic testing? The process of graphic testing usually includes stress tests and battery life tests. Stress tests are performed to make sure that the app always works in a stable and reliable way. How will the game behave in case hundreds of new users sign up within the shortest period of time? What if it requires to operate in extremely load conditions? All these factors and much more should be carefully checked by the professional QA Engineers during stress testing.
As for the battery testing, the battery support should be simply excellent, providing the user an opportunity to play the mobile game for a long time without the device drying out too quickly. In this case, testing on real devices is a must for ensuring the best game performance on various types of smartphones.
Moreover, the more features the game offers, the larger the number of testers it usually requires. The matter is that most modern mobile games are based on multiple players, both real and virtual. In this case, the testers are able to interact with each other by the means of the game and check, whether its features are performing properly. At the same time, the QA professionals will check the synchronization of the game positions and the game’s ability to connect to the server.
Security Testing
Checking for security issues and weaknesses is one of the vital fields of each mobile game testing process. Security testing is extremely important when testing whether the apps containing any third-party codes, especially when these codes are supporting the main functionality of the app. The truth is that third-party codes are the most sensitive parts of any mobile game. Therefore, it is important to eliminate the risks of any crashes or bugs in these areas.
AI Features Testing
There are lots of modern mobile games that contain some features of artificial intelligence, managed digitally. Testing AI features is one of the most challenging parts of the QA process since it usually requires making complex and complicated tests.
Chess is a bright example of a simple AI-based game. It contains lots of features of Artificial intelligence making the testing process even more elaborate.
3D Testing
The modern mobile games are becoming more and more realistic, making the QA process more precise and demanding. As a rule, 3D games include lots of physical simulations, such as mimics of the main characters and their clothes, natural phenomenons (clouds in the sky, the waves, wind, etc.), movement of bullets, and other real-to-life features. The QA Engineer should be skilled and experienced enough for checking the performance of 3D objects and models in the mobile game.
Game Installation Testing
The game installation is one of the most important steps of mobile game testing. QA Engineer should make sure the process is completely understandable, easy, and fast. The installation of the game should be as simple as possible, to ensure that even beginner users will get the app with no efforts. The fewer stages the installation process has, the more users will complete it to the end.
Multiplayer Games Testing
Multiplayer games are a significant part of the mobile game market. Multiplayer games are one of the most difficult kinds of mobile games to test – you never know what the other user will do, so the QA process requires checking hundreds of various combinations. That is why multiplayer game testing requires many different people to test the app, in different combinations of number of users.
Other Types of Testing
In addition to the different types of testing as described above, it is extremely important to test the device diversification as well as operating systems and their versions. The market is full of hundreds of different devices made by different manufacturers and the “one size fits all” approach will not work. Further to the different operating systems and versions, one must test the resolution and screen size. The resolution may affect the user interface of mobile game and result in a bad playing experience.
Generally, any quality assurance process of a mobile game requires multi-functional testing of lots of app’s features. Although you can test the application with the help of a small QA team, crowd testing might become a much better choice.
The truth is that it will allow you to test the mobile game on different devices with various systems and batteries, as well as perform real-life tests in completely different conditions. Moreover, the QA process made by several independent QA Engineers will allow you to find even the smallest drawbacks in the mobile game, as well as check the interaction between the users in real conditions.
In case you are looking for professional help with testing your mobile games or need some expert advice on QA services, don’t hesitate to contact us at sales@ubertesters.com.
