Game Development, Testing And Early Access

If you are following still unreleased video games, no matter how closely, from the day you first learned about them until they finally get release - you ideally should know a few basic things about game development.

There is no standard approach or general consensus about how games should be developed - so almost every develoment company is doing things their own fashion. Some do things more differently/unusually than others - but there are still a few rough outlines that can be applied to almost all of them.

Stages of Development

Source: Wikipedia

• Pre-alpha phase: usually all activities performed before formal testing begins, including (but not limited to) planning, design, early development, etc. (informal and automated testing may already occur)
• Alpha phase: alpha versions of a game are in-development incomplete (missing features, incomplete features), may have serious errors, instability, crashes and cause data loss. Alpha versions are not thoroughly tested by the developers, and are typically not made available externally (to people outside the company)
• Feature complete milestone: The moment when development stops developing and adding new features, called the feature freeze
• Beta phase: the game may still have known and unknown bugs, performance and stability issues, and can occasionally still cause crashes or data loss. This is when the most testing, bugfixing, balancing and polishing happens.
• Release Candidate & Release: this concludes the beta testing and pushes the final game out the door

Some companies may have slightly different opinions about certain smaller details in there, but as very rough outline, this should hold true for most projects regardless of approach to development.

Types of Testing

Testing generally happens in some form throughout all these stages. Developers test while progamming, automated tests might be run in regular intervals, etc. - but different forms of testing very often to go hand in hand with certain stages. I will mention which phase typically goes along with which form of testing - but there are always developers who do it ealier, or later. (With a tendency for small indie developers to be a lot ealier, and big budget publisher projects to be on the later side of things).

Internal vs. External

• Internal testing: company employees only. developers, professional testers, automated tests, etc. - this happens during all phases

• External testing: people outside the company, including press, fans, random people on the internet. external tests can be further divided in closed (invite-only) and open (everyone allowed) tests. - start of external testing varies, but most usually happens at the very end of the alpha phase.

Closed vs. Open

Applies to external testing only - internal is always “closed”.

• Closed Testing: is when a personal invite is needed to get into the test. most typically all testing but the later part of beta testing is closed.

• Open Testing: this is when anyone who signs up for testing will be let in. this most commonly happens during the second half of beta testing - first half being closed beta.

Alpha Testing vs. The Alpha Test

Confusingly, these two are not the same thing.

• Alpha testing: all testing that happens during the alpha phase of development - typically all internal. game still incomplete, missing features and balance, instead having bugs, crashes, perfomance issues.

• The Alpha Test: a big “acceptance test” at the very end of the alpha phase. this is often the very first external test. the goal is to get confirmation from a general audience that the game is indeed feature complete and thus beta may start.

QA Testing vs. Playtesting vs. Stress Testing

• QA Testing: professional bug hunting, regression checking and bug reproducing. typically an internal, paid job that involves long checklists of things to go through

• Playtesting: meant to gather feedback about what is and is not fun in the game - thus testers are supposed to play normally and try have fun

• Stress Testing: specifically for online games - testing how much load the servers can take, and how they behave under heavy load and when overloaded

Marketing “testing” vs. real testing

• Marketing “testing”: meant to drum up excitement and generate publicity for a game close to release. is not meant for any real testing purposes (other than maybe included stress testing). typically happens after the game has already been tested extensively and is close to final. This should probably be thought of more like a “demo” rather than a “test”.

• Real testing: when it’s actually about getting feedback and bug reports to help develop the game. when testers get confronted with unfinsihed, unpolished or otherwise WIP stuff.

What to Expect as a Tester

Depends massively on what form of testing you are supposed to do, and what phase of game development it is. This can basically range from…

• Marketing event public open “beta” weekend - where you actually get to play what’s basically a demo of the finished, well-tested, polished game - and it’s more about driving up pre-orders than testing - to -
• some indie game releasing an actual alpha-version that’s mostly unplayable, or just an exploration of ideas that the final game will feel nowhere near to similar too.

… and anything inbetween.

Your best guess it to look at what development phase the game is in, and set your expectations accordingly:

• pre-alpha: things will be raw and rough, broken and incomplete, possibly unplayable even
• alpha testing: should be somewhat playable, but still rough, still missing some parts, still bugs and issues
• “THE” alpha test: same as early beta
• early beta: all gameplay and meachanics should be in, but still buggy and unbalanced
• late beta (close to release): almost like the final game

There are post-mortems (“development reports” - what went well, what went badly tales) of big successful games out there, which describe the game as being a broken, near unplayable mess until just very few weeks before release all the things started to come together. It’s hard to have a working and fun game, when half of it is still missing.

And we sadly all know of examples where the broken, near unplayable mess is what got actually released, and needed several patches to turn into something acceptable. Sometimes into something redeemingly great even.

But as a general rule of thumb - the earlier you get in, the rougher and more incomplete things will be. The less the game will resemble it’s final form.

Early Access

And this is where things start to get really complicated.

(Steam) Early Access is the practice of financing continued game development by pre-selling copies of a game that is not finished and not ready for release yet.

But at which point of development developers to enter into Early Access has varied massively. Some games actually are still in alpha, releasing their incomplete and little-tested early versions to their fans. Others have used it as just a marketing event to demo the basically finished game - exactly like described for “marketing testing” above. Some just release little more than an engine’s demo-level and then stay in alpha forever and never finish the game. Others release the finished game and just call it “early access” to have an excuse for bugs and issues.

Ideally - I think - the game should be mechanically mostly complete, and just lacking content, when it enters EA. Using the funds generated that way, to then add more content. But that’s just my 2 cents.

Basically, with Early Access there’s no real telling what you are getting into. You really have to check out and investigate the individual game in question.