- June 26, 2020
The mobile gaming market sprung to life with the release of smartphones. The mobile market has been growing year on year for the last 10 years. It is expected to increase to over $3 billion by 2023 according to Allied Market Research. The increase in usage of mobile games will lead to more technical games going into development. As a result, the value will continue to rise across the sector. In addition, mobile games are becoming more complex. Therefore, the requirement for mobile game testing.
Game development and testing differ from ordinary applications. Testing is an obligatory stage of any development process. You require testing to ensure the best user experience to a maximum number of users. Even now mobile developers aim to produce high-quality applications. Mobile game testing has a lot of similarities with the process of software testing.
Test plans and strategies are one of the major differences of game and ordinary app development. A normal application must be easy to use and work well across multiple devices. It normally contains straightforward user flows and a certain degree of predictability. On the other hand, games make it much more difficult to predict a player’s behavior. The very nature of high-quality mobile games is an invitation for users to act unpredictably. If you look at any major game release across any platform, players will find ways to abuse bugs the testers have overlooked.
Types of Testing
Black-box and White-box testing are typical types of testing. They are also great for testing mobile games. The goals of these forms of testing differ slightly for game testing.
Black-box testing – Includes testing the overall functionality and playability of the game. Focuses on several different areas such as user experience, visual appearance, user interface, animations, and gameplay. Black-box testing is a necessity to ensure your game is ready to go to market.
White-box testing – includes testing on the systemic, integration, and architectural aspects of a mobile game. Focusing on aspects such as how third part components and entities are integrated into the game. This could even include the entire game engine at times.
Methods of Testing
There are several different types of tests that have to be run for mobile games. By following the steps in mobile testing it is possible to develop a high performing game. Mobile users are now expecting fully functioning mobile games. Also, some game companies are trying to release old console games as a full-feature mobile game.
Functional Testing
The most common method of mobile game testing. Manually testing typical game functions usually involves playing the game. However, functional testing should be automated. As a result, testing can be agile and product delivery times can decrease. Functional testing is a type of Black-box testing.
Compatibility Testing
Focusing on making the game compatible across multiple different devices. Compatibility testing should be performed throughout the development phases. It will help to reveal any issues with incompatibility with parts of the game. Whether it is integrations or third-party components. It is important for the game to work well across all devices to maximise its possible player base.
Localization Testing
This becomes especially important when you want to target your app to different markets. This includes ensuring the titles and content is translated and tested with multiple languages on different devices. Most of these tests can be done automatically. As a result, they should not take up too much time.
Regression Testing
It is essential to perform regression tests when there are any changes in your software. This is because almost all mobile games today have server-client interaction. If your game involves any services that include uploading or downloading of data, it is important that all changes to the code do not cause defects in the functionality of the service.
Load Testing
Load testing involves testing your games limitations. Including factors such as the frames per second, number of players on a server, and memory consumption. It provides important data to several teams in the company allowing operations and the development team to adjust if a limit is being reached. It is possible to integrate test automation for your load testing. Test scripts can simulate test scripts for loads of data including usage and interaction. As a result, you can use test scripts to automate testing for real content coming from backend servers.