How can you identify and prioritize game features for testing?

Identifying and prioritizing game features for testing involves evaluating critical gameplay elements, such as core mechanics, user interfaces, and key interactions. Prioritize testing based on the impact each feature has on the player experience and overall game functionality. Focus on high-risk areas, including complex systems, newly implemented features, and critical paths in the game. Consider user feedback, developer insights, and potential issues identified in previous testing phases to guide prioritization. Implementing a risk-based testing approach helps allocate resources efficiently, ensuring that testing efforts align with the most significant aspects of the game's functionality and user satisfaction.

- Identify the game genre is important to understand what can be wrong or where. Open-world games present similar bugs, the same for online PvPs or FPS (as examples). - Play deeply the game a few times and observe the players in his habitat. Hear what they say. Webs like gametester.gg are very helpful to find skilled players and also newbies. Reactions to your game are essential to understand where are the weak points in design but also in the regular functioning. - Create a few high level bug checklists with the mechanics and features you want to compromise. Lower level checklists can be done after that. Where's the game failing the most? - Think as a player. As the most destructive one.

- You can use Confluence or other online tools as a Miro Board to create a submission checklist, or a bug checklist. - If your game has monetization layers, online features such registrations or battle passes, this is the most important features to check and compromise. - Save games / save files and not to lose the progression is one of the most critical areas to look into. Make a strong checklist with a generous battery test about this. - Gameplay, Performance, UI/UX, Core loop, connection features, Sound and gamefeel can be other categories too. - All your team needs to play with you. This is important. Your game is an appendix of you and your team. - As a QA/Tester, try on as much different devices you can.

Sticking to MoSCoW or a similar defenition of the elements you are testing allows for mitigating dissapointment. It also clarifies what that game will be. And hopefully stops the team from feature creep. It has proven quite important in our testing but also our whole development process to be able to "defend" features towards other teams. As in, "We all agreed to this" and this is what it is.

- Players are not liars or shammers. If something went wrong, you'll notice. If a player has a problem, for sure that problem happened, even if you aren't convinced. Try to ask directly to your players, and take their words as valid (at least on a first analysis. Of course you can discard the hypothesis later). - "One rat" theory: If you find a rat, there are more, for sure. Begin to suspect something is failing in your game when you receive at least two or more tickets pointing at the same direction or a few people complaining at something. - Reproduce the exact same scenario: If you can't reproduce a bug, try to replicate the exact scenario (same device, same configuration, same resolution, same steps...) And don't be afraid to ask!