Producing Games

C H A P T E R

THIRTY NINE

The Quality Assurance (QA) Process

The QA team, also referred to as testers, are the team members responsible for reviewing game builds, scrubbing them for bugs, and making sure they function properly and follow the first-party requirements. QA staffers have roles to play on both the developer and publisher sides of the fence. At the developer, QA is much smaller, sometimes consisting of just two or three team members, while at a publisher the QA team can grow to the size of other departments.

So why have testing at both the developer and publishing ends? While the developer’s QA setup is to verify that the games are acceptable enough for the milestone submission, and to help track down major bugs in the game, they ...