Game testing, a subset of game development, is a software testing process for quality control of video games. The primary function of game testing is the discovery and documentation of software defects (aka bugs). Interactive entertainment software testing is a highly technical field requiring computing expertise, analytic competence, critical evaluation skills, and endurance. In recent years the field of game testing has come under fire for being extremely strenuous and unrewarding, both financially and emotionally.
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)
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I worked for a gaming company in the early 90s, you know one of those companies that worked on several games at a time. Everyone was paid a decent wage. The founder began the company in the early 80s. The company grew.
A producer and director, sometimes the same person if they were great at their jobs, multiple programmers, multiple artists, multiple beta testers would make up each team. Still, game-breakers occurred, not ofter mind you. If they kept those game-breakers less than 10, they counted themselves damn lucky. More times than not 10 to 20 would occur, occasionally more.
Now, we have one person doing programming, artwork, beta testing, promotion, etc. And yes, with
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,
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,
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and other game engines, art programs like
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,
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, and
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, that makes doing a one-man team very doable. This makes the players alpha and beta testers.
The game you are playing is not a beta version, the company I worked for and other companies saw it as alpha, not a beta game as yet.
- Alpha is a game that does not have all of the components. Not all of the programming as been added, which means restarting the game is QUITE common, not all of the finalized artwork, etc. The testers are of course kept very busy during this time.
- Beta is when all of the components have been added. This is the bug-hunting time. Beta testers got their name from this part of the game development process.
- Finally, a game goes gold, gamma, final, whatever. These names were given almost exclusively to games just before release where floppy disks or later CD-ROMs, were burned, then sent to a company the specialized in this final stage of game development.
The game's team when to other games to save a small group who continued to test the software looking for large bugs, game-breakers, hopefully, they would be found during beta testing.
There are, of course, many other classifications within the game development team. The games we released were written for MS-DOS (disk operating system). Twenty-five years have passed since I worked there.
The game company was
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, who released the
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,
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,
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and many other games. The founder was
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.
Yeah, I got a bit carried away with the description of the game development and testing process; I had to pull in the reigns as it was.
I hope this gives you a wee bit of appreciation for the hard work developers on F95Zone go through. Some work at their actual jobs putting in work on their game as free time allows. Others, through sites like
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or
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, lessen the monetary crunch they incur on their game even to the point where their income surpasses their real job where they can quit it devoting all their time to game development.
I am waiting on my first release and hopefully my first subscribers to help me with the costs I game has cost me. We will see.
