As a game developer, you want to create a game that is engaging, fun, and high-quality. But how can you ensure that your game meets these criteria and satisfies your players and stakeholders? In this article, we will explore some tips and best practices to help you design, test, and improve your game and achieve QA standards.
Before you start developing your game, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and how you will measure your success. What is the genre, theme, and target audience of your game? What are the core features, mechanics, and aesthetics that define your game? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will track your game's progress and quality? By defining your goals, you can create a roadmap and a scope for your game development and avoid feature creep or unrealistic expectations.
For engagement, focus on creating immersive experiences and fostering emotional connections with players. For QA, prioritize delivering a bug-free experience, ensuring compatibility, optimizing performance, and adhering to industry standards. Aligning efforts with these goals helps prioritize features and address issues to meet player expectations and quality standards.
Engagement is the degree to which your game attracts, retains, and motivates your players to keep playing and enjoy your game. To design for engagement, you need to consider the following aspects of your game: challenge, feedback, choice, story, and social. Challenge refers to the difficulty and variety of your game's tasks and goals. Feedback refers to the rewards and consequences of your game's actions and outcomes. Choice refers to the options and agency that your game gives to your players. Story refers to the narrative and emotional elements that your game conveys. Social refers to the interactions and connections that your game enables or encourages among your players. By balancing these aspects, you can create a game that is fun, immersive, and meaningful.
Quality is the degree to which your game meets the expectations and requirements of your players and stakeholders. To test for quality, you need to conduct various types of testing throughout your game development cycle, such as: functional testing, usability testing, compatibility testing, performance testing, and security testing. Functional testing checks if your game works as intended and has no bugs or errors. Usability testing checks if your game is easy to use and learn and has a good user interface and user experience. Compatibility testing checks if your game runs smoothly on different devices, platforms, and browsers. Performance testing checks if your game loads fast and has no lag or crashes. Security testing checks if your game protects the data and privacy of your players and prevents unauthorized access or attacks. By testing for quality, you can ensure that your game is reliable, accessible, and secure.
Feedback is the information and opinions that you receive from your players and stakeholders about your game. Feedback can help you improve your game by identifying its strengths and weaknesses, validating or invalidating your assumptions, and suggesting new ideas or features. To improve with feedback, you need to collect, analyze, and act on feedback from different sources, such as: surveys, reviews, ratings, analytics, user testing, focus groups, and forums. Surveys, reviews, and ratings can help you measure the satisfaction and loyalty of your players. Analytics, user testing, and focus groups can help you understand the behavior and preferences of your players. Forums and social media can help you engage and communicate with your players and build a community around your game. By improving with feedback, you can enhance your game's engagement and quality and meet your players' needs and expectations.
Standards are the guidelines and best practices that you follow to ensure that your game meets the industry and legal norms and expectations. Standards can help you avoid common pitfalls and errors, ensure consistency and compatibility, and comply with regulations and policies. To follow the standards, you need to be aware of and adhere to the standards that apply to your game, such as: coding standards, design standards, documentation standards, accessibility standards, and ethical standards. Coding standards define the rules and conventions for writing and formatting your game's code. Design standards define the principles and methods for creating and organizing your game's assets and elements. Documentation standards define the format and content of your game's manuals and guides. Accessibility standards define the features and options that make your game usable and enjoyable for people with disabilities or impairments. Ethical standards define the values and responsibilities that guide your game's development and distribution. By following the standards, you can ensure that your game is professional, trustworthy, and respectful.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines," and Oscar Wilde said, "Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative." Don’t mistake consistency for quality.
Learning is the process of acquiring and applying new knowledge and skills to improve your game development. Learning can help you stay updated and competitive in the dynamic and evolving game industry, as well as expand your creativity and innovation. To keep learning, you need to seek and embrace opportunities to learn from different sources, such as: courses, books, articles, podcasts, videos, blogs, webinars, events, mentors, peers, and communities. Courses, books, articles, podcasts, videos, and blogs can help you learn new concepts, techniques, tools, and trends in game development. Webinars, events, mentors, peers, and communities can help you learn from the experiences, insights, advice, and feedback of other game developers. By keeping learning, you can enhance your game development skills and knowledge and create better games.
Sigue probando, sigue aprendiendo y sigue haciendo pruebas. Constantemente están saliendo nuevas tecnologías y nuevas formas de hacer juegos y mecánicas. Es muy importante que te puedas adaptar a los nuevos mercados que se abren con las nuevas tecnologías. Sigue aprendiendo, sigue probando con tus juegos con tus mecánicas y cuando estés listo lanza!