GDC Vault is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC
This is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
The Automation Trap and How BioWare Engineers Quality
Test automation is received with great enthusiasm by many in the game industry. Yet given many of the unique challenges faced in game development, is it a useful tool for creating quality games?
Using real-world examples from the development of the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series of games, this talk examines the perceived vs. actual ROI of test automation, as well as its potential pitfalls. More specifically, this talk will show that many of our base assumptions, that manual testing can be effectively reproduced with automation and that doing so will reduce costs, aren't necessarily true.
Finally we'll look at some of the sensible approaches to automation and test-technology that BioWare has employed. This includes Tools-Assisted-Testing that augments the testing process and turns all testers into "rock stars" and applying automation at earlier stages of development to prevent defects outright, rather than just detecting them.
Did you know free users get access to 30% of content from the last 2 years?