Test Cases and Video Game Testing

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to work as a video game tester, you probably wondered what a test case was. Test cases are a unique tool used by programmers and testers to communicate specific actions needed during a build test.

For example, if the game has just gone to beta testing and the programmers want to make sure the fixes they provided for a particularly nasty disappearing wall bug work, they might write up a test case that forces the testers to walk in certain patterns around the wall.

The test case might focus only on a certain action, or a combination of menu options that have been resulting in bugs up until this point. The goal, however, is to communicate from programmer to tester a specific thing that needs to be tested.

When One Becomes Many

The thing about test cases, however, is that there are usually a lot more than just one of them being sent out with each build. A single build of a game might have thousands of bug fixes that all need to be checked. So, instead of writing up one complicated list of instructions, the programming team (and sometimes lead tester) will develop what is called a test suite.

The test suite will document a series of test cases that all need to be checked in turn. Each test case will usually be an independent run of changes that have been made to the game, but in some cases, test cases are placed in chains. If a single fix worked, does it have any impact on other parts of that level? What about the game as a whole?

The testers are then tasked with tackling individual test cases or parts of the suite to ensure that the data requested by the programmers is available.

The Testing Process as a Whole

What makes game testing such a long process is that the test cases are only one part of a much larger testing environment. While game testers might spend 80% of their week going through test cases and checking the bugs that have been fixed, they will also work tirelessly to turn up new bugs that were never caught in the initial run throughs. Longer games with more interactive features may have thousands of builds and test cases.