How can you optimize your game testing workflow for maximum efficiency and quality?

Speaking globally, before starting game testing, it is advisable to draft a test plan and testing strategy. In these documents, you should: - Break down the project into stages - pre-production, tech. launch, soft launch, etc. - Collaborate with project owners to define the goals of the project at each of these stages - Based on the project goals, establish testing objectives, as different project stages require varying coverage and testing approaches - Determine tools and approaches for testing based on the testing objectives - Identify risks at each stage and outline measures for their management - Additionally, don't forget about the potential expansion of the QA team at each stage if necessary

After you have a testing plan, it's time to start designing test cases. - Decide on a test case management tool. - Determine when you will start writing test cases. - Specify the level of detail: whether they will be detailed test cases or if checklists will be sufficient. - Consider creating a template for how your test cases should look (or not). - Communication is key – engage with other teams in the company, if any, to understand how they organize test cases. It's better to learn from others' mistakes than to make them yourself. All of this will assist you in the future, especially when the project enters the active development phase. It helps avoid distractions from planning and allows you to focus on game quality.

The more frequently we run test runs, the more opportunities we have to uncover discrepancies or inaccuracies. Unfortunately, it's not always feasible to execute a complete regression test suite. A good practice, in my opinion, is to have newcomers go through test cases. For instance, you can have them go through the entire regression suite in their first few days of work. Benefits of this approach: - The newcomer becomes familiar with the structure of test cases. - The newcomer may identify some non-obvious aspects—remember, test cases should be understandable not only to you but to any tester who reviews them. - The newcomer may discover some uncovered areas in your game. - The newcomer may find outdated cases and update them.

- In my experience, before the test scope is defined, question need to asked on the requirements specified. This is one of the most crucial things that will give the answers of those grey areas which the test team might realise or face during the post alpha testing phase like number of users need to planned for load tests, server capabilities in order to process client connection or ping requests per second etc.

Don't forget to include checks for various 3rd party integrations in your test cases. Whether it's analytics, crash analytics, or anything else, these integrations can occasionally break and stop working at the most inconvenient moments.