Towards Automated Video Game Testing: Still a Long Way to Go
It addresses the problem of inefficient manual playtesting for video game developers, but is incremental as it reviews existing gaps without proposing a new solution.
This study investigated the gap between academic research on automated video game testing and industry needs, finding that game developers are skeptical about using automated agents and that new approaches are needed to avoid disrupting workflows.
As the complexity and scope of game development increase, playtesting remains an essential activity to ensure the quality of video games. Yet, the manual, ad-hoc nature of playtesting gives space to improvements in the process. In this study, we investigate gaps between academic solutions in the literature for automated video game testing and the needs of video game developers in the industry. We performed a literature review on video game automated testing and applied an online survey with video game developers. The literature results show a rise in research topics related to automated video game testing. The survey results show that game developers are skeptical about using automated agents to test games. We conclude that there is a need for new testing approaches that did not disrupt the developer workflow. As for the researchers, the focus should be on the testing goal and testing oracle.