Editing Video game development (section)

==== Testing ====
{{Main|Game testing}}

[[Quality assurance]] of a video game product plays a significant role throughout the development cycle of a game, though comes more significantly into play as the game nears completion. Unlike other software products or productivity applications, video games are fundamentally meant to entertain, and thus the testing of video games is more focused on the end-user experience rather than the accuracy of the software code's performance, which leads to differences in how the game software is developed.<ref name="gamedev survey">{{cite arXiv | last1 = Politowski | first1= Cristiano | first2= Fabio |last2= Petrillo | first3= Yann-Gäel |last3 = Guéhéneuc | title = A Survey of Video Game Testing | eprint=2103.06431  | date = 2021 | class= cs.SE }}</ref>

Because game development is focused on the presentation and gameplay as seen by the player, there often is little rigor in maintaining and testing backend code in the early stages of development since such code may be readily disregarded if there are changes found in gameplay. Some [[Test automation|automated testing]] may be used to ensure the core game engine operates as expected, but most game testing comes via [[game tester]], who enter the testing process once a playable prototype is available. This may be one level or subset of the game software that can be used to any reasonable extent.<ref name="gamedev survey"/> The use of testers may be lightweight at the early stages of development, but the testers' role becomes more predominant as the game nears completion, becoming a full-time role alongside development.<ref name="gamedev survey"/> Early testing is considered a key part of game design; the most common issue raised in several published post-mortems on game development was the failure to start the testing process early.<ref name="gamedev survey"/> 

As code matures and the gameplay features solidify, then development typically includes more rigorous test controls such as [[regression testing]] to make sure new updates to the code base do not change working parts of the game. Games are complex software systems, and changes in one code area may unexpected cause a seemingly unrelated part of the game to fail. Testers are tasked to repeatedly play through updated versions of games in these later stages to look for any issues or bugs not otherwise found from automated testing. Because this can be a monotonous task of playing the same game over and over, this process can lead to games frequently being released with uncaught bugs or glitches.<ref name="gamedev survey"/> 

There are other factors simply inherent to video games that can make testing difficult. This includes the use of randomized gameplay systems, which require more testing for both game balance and bug tracking than more linearized games, the balance of cost and time to devote to testing as part of the development budget, and assuring that the game still remains fun and entertaining to play as changes are made to it.<ref name="gamedev survey"/> 

Despite the dangers of overlooking regression testing, some game developers and publishers fail to test the full feature suite of the game and ship a game with bugs. This can result in customer dissatisfaction and failure to meet sales goals. When this does happen, most developers and publishers quickly release [[Patch (computing)|patches]] that fix the bugs and make the game fully playable again.<ref name="gamedev survey"/> Certain publishing models are designed specifically to accommodate the fact that first releases of games may be bug-ridden but will be fixed post-release. The [[early access]] model invites players to pay into a game before its planned release and helps to provide feedback and bug reports.<ref name="gamedev survey"/> [[Mobile games]] and games with live services are also anticipated to be updated on a frequent basis, offset by pre-release testing with live feedback and bug reports.<ref name="gamedev survey"/>