1. COIT23003 Games Development
Quality Assurance

2. References
Meigs, T., Ultimate Game Design: Building Game Worlds, McGraw Hill.
Rabin, S. (ed.). Introduction to Game Development, Charles River Media, 2005.

3. The Game Design Lifecycle
3 Phases:
Concept (output = game concept)
Elaboration (output = entire design)
Tuning (output = “polished” design)
Outputs for Phases 2 and 3 would normally include prototype software
Precedes the development/production phase of the game lifecyle

4. The Game Lifecycle Game development lifecycle consists of two streams:
Design Stream
Concept
Elaboration
Tuning
Pre-Production
Production
Post Production
Production Stream
Game development lifecycle consists of two streams:
A design stream
A production stream

5. The Production Stream (Rabin, 2005) Preproduction Production
Secure finance, determine budget, determine resource requirements, develop schedule …
Follows on from concept stage of design stream
Production
Follows on from tuning stage of design stream
Game is created
Typically consists of 3 stages (alpha, beta, gold master)
Postproduction
Bugs fixed, game tweaked, package and manual created
(Rabin, 2005)

6. The Production Stage Alpha Stage Beta Stage Gold Master
All required features of the design implemented, but not necessarily working in the desired manner
Beta Stage
All features delivered in the alpha stage are working and locked down. Final sound effects, music, voice added.
Gold Master
Copy protection, device drivers added, installation software integrated

7. Why Gold Master?
Named after the gold-coloured recordable discs originally used to send final mastering assets to the publisher for mass duplication

8. Quality Assurance: Design
Incorporate stakeholder feedback on concept/design documents and prototypes
Same principle applies as in Software Engineering – catch problems as early in the lifecycle as possible

9. Quality Assurance: Production
Alpha stage:
incorporate gameplay feedback from focus groups/testers, design team, publisher …)
Perform functionality testing (requires formal test plans)
Beta Stage:
Perform testing on any added content
Public testing if appropriate

10. Console Games vs PC Games
Console games will require
Conformance testing to meet platform standards
More rigorous testing as patching is problematic