Importance of DevOps in Game Testing

The internet has brought a revolution in each and every industry, including online gaming. The market witnessed a major push during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it helped the people avoid emotional distress and kill boredom during the innumerable lockdowns. The pandemic catalyzed the growth of online gaming.

The rapid proliferation of mobile phones and affordable mobile internet are the other factors behind online gaming’s burgeoning growth. As per a report by Statista, the projected market volume of mobile gaming alone is estimated to be US$221.70 billion by 2027. The user penetration of mobile gaming is expected to be 29.2 percent by 2027, up from 22.9 percent in 2022.

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It is important to mention that the growth of online gaming (including mobile gaming) spans developed as well as developing economies. This also means that the gaming market is gaining widespread interest from game developers, gaming companies, AR/VR developers, to name a few.

There is a significant difference when it comes to development and testing of gaming software vis-a-vis other types of software (e.g. SaaS, fintech, etc.). Developers need to make extensive use of gamification principles so that there is maximum user stickiness and increased user retention on the game. In fact, user retention rate is one of the key KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that a game publisher measures on a regular basis to keep a track of its growth.

Be it a single-player game or multiplayer game, it is essential to focus on all the aspects related to development, testing, and deployment of online gaming. Every new feature or bug fix must go through rigorous testing cycles so that the end-user experience expectations are met. This is where DevOps (Developer Operations) in mobile/online gaming can make a huge impact on improving software quality and accelerating release velocity.

By the end of this blog, you would have learnt about the importance of DevOps in online gaming and when you should opt for game testing companies for building a scalable, secure, and reliable CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Deployment) pipeline.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is the combination of practices and relevant tools for automating and integrating the processes between the Development and IT teams. It is more of a mindset shift the involves tighter communication and collaboration between the development, IT, testing, and deployment teams.

As shown above, every piece of software change undergoes a rigorous process that includes development, test, release, deployment, and monitor so that issues are identified at a faster pace. Continuous testing (i.e. timely triggering of automated tests as a part of the delivery pipeline) is an integral part of the DevOps strategy.

Continuous Testing (CT) in DevOps helps in improving the product quality in a continual fashion since the developers receive the feedback at breakneck speeds, that too in a continuous fashion! Jenkins, Docker, Maven, and Gradle are some of the popular DevOps automation tools.

CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Bamboo, SemaphoreCI, Travis CI, and TeamCity are some of the popular DevOps CI/CD tools. Since automation is an integral part of the CI pipeline, it is integral to leverage the benefits offered by automation tools (or frameworks) like Selenium, Cypress, Appium, Playwright, Puppeteer, etc. so that automation test suites can be periodically triggered as a part of the CT process.

Since performance of online games (particularly mobile games) is of prime importance, you need to use tools like BlazeMeter, EggPlant, Gatling, Expertiest, etc. when testing mobile games in the CI pipeline. To summarize, all the integral aspects of the online game (i.e. navigation, performance, gameplay, leaderboard, load, and more) must be tested as a part of the CI pipeline.

Lastly, detailed reports must be generated at the end of every testing cycle so that various stakeholders can gauge the progress of the game at every stage!

Also Read: How To Incorporate Automated Testing In The DevOps Lifecycle?

Why DevOps in Game Testing?

Now that we have touched upon all the integral aspects of DevOps and CI/CD from a gaming perspective, let's look at some of the vital benefits of DevOps from the lens of online gaming.

Accelerated Developer Feedback

The game quality can only improve when bugs are identified at early stages of development. In DevOps, automated tests are run in a continuous manner for every piece of code that is checked-in the repository.

Due to this, issues are located earlier and developers receive the feedback at a faster pace. This provides game developers an opportunity to fix issues quickly, thereby improving the overall game quality.

This also results in improved ROI since fewer (ideally no) bugs are identified once the game goes into production.?

Continuous Testing

As mentioned earlier, CT is one of the guiding pillars of any form of DevOps strategy. Be it UX tests, load tests, performance tests, or security tests; all of them can be run as a part of the automated CI pipeline. You can also leverage the benefits offered by cloud-based automation testing tools to improve the test coverage and product quality.

Functionality of every module that is a part of the game can be tested thoroughly as part of the continuous testing.

Since a lot of online games, particularly fantasy sports and board games involve real money, it becomes essential to focus on the security aspects of the game.

This is where DevSecOps can be used to great effect. It integrates security tests at every stage of the software development and testing. In DevSecOps, the IT, development, and security teams work in collaboration to identify and fix any security loopholes and offer a secure gaming experience to the end-users.

Also Read: How To Use Performance Testing In Continuous Integration?

Continuous and Application Monitoring

Since graphics play a major role in enhancing the end-user experience of the games, gaming applications must compulsorily be tested on real devices. Not only that, relevant continuous monitoring tools like DataDog, InstaBug APM (Application Monitoring), SumoLogic, Dynatrace, etc. must be used to monitor important parameters of the application.

Mobile game start time, rendering time, performance, resource utilization, tracking user actions, and periodic collection of crash data can be done by using the appropriate continuous monitoring tool in the CI. All these factors help in accelerating developer feedback and improving game quality & reliability.

Enhanced Usability

Game development and testing involves many complexities in comparison to development and testing of software in the fintech, SaaS, software services, or some other type of domain. Most of the online games, irrespective of whether they are played on mobile or some other device, involves intuitive UX, engaging gameplay and leaderboard, social media integrations, and much more.

If it is a mobile game that can be downloaded from PlayStore or iOS stores, the development and testing teams must also take into consideration game testing on the plethora of devices used by the target users. All these factors make game testing a super complicated process that can be simplified and accelerated using DevOps. Continuous testing in DevOps results in improving the game quality, thereby enhancing the usability of the game in a continual fashion. Highly functional and extensively secure games can be built for scale with the combination of DevOps, Continuous Testing, CI/CD, and more.

Also Read: Game Testing - Types and How to Test?

It’s A Wrap

Game testing is significantly different when compared to testing other forms of software. This is why you should consider onboarding an experienced game testing services company that has worked with game development companies, individual game developers, and other vital stakeholders of the gaming community.

DevOps (Development + Operations) with automated testing can play a vital role in accelerating the development, testing, and release process for the respective game. The learnings of this blog can be a good starting point for devising a DevOps strategy for testing your game from a tester’s and end-user’s perspective.