Here are some of the interesting trends to watch in mobile game market –

DID YOU KNOW

Mobile Games Growth

A Newzoo research predicts that the global games market will grow at a CAGR of more than 8.2 percent for the period 2016-2020, with $143.5 billion of revenues in 2020. Half of the total revenues are expected to be generated by mobile devices. Mobile gaming is expected to continue its rapid growth through 2018 and beyond.

Virtual Sports

Esports, where players compete in organized video gaming events or tournaments ending in championships at an international level, is expected to touch about $1.5 billion by 2020, at a projected CAGR of 32 percent, according to Statista. Mobile esports are particularly benefiting from this trend, with gamers opting for iPad and iPhones to gear up for the competition.

Popularity of Esports

An Internet Trends report that esports is so popular that it is giving tough competition to traditional, physical sports. Currently, there is a 50-50 mindshare for the two types of sports amongst millennials, but it is likely that the percentage of those preferring esports will increase in 2018.

Indie Games Take the Cake

While established names in the games industry will continue to be watched for new releases, indie games are expected to give them a run for money due to high levels of creativity and unrestricted imagination. Games such as Indivisible, The Last Night and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night are but the tip of the iceberg.

VR in the Picture

The virtual reality gaming market is expected to grow more than $45.09 billion by 2025. New VR gaming headsets different from the current popular brands, new developments in haptic feedback and cloud-based VR gaming are some of the developments being predicted by experts.

Augmented Reality

Making games more real is yet another emerging trend with the introduction of multi-device physics-based games. AR is expected to play a larger role to make this possible. The AR and role-playing games (RPG) genre, after a dip in 2016, was able to sign up 14 million monthly users in July 2017.

As the complexities increase in mobile gaming, testing to ensure a smooth run despite will become even more critical.

Talk to us to know how iXie gaming can help mobile game developers overcome the challenges posed by the new technology and gaming developments.

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For many Pokemon fans, the dream came true.

Traveling around, capturing your Pokémon from, and visiting, a number of Poke stops is an amazing concept to experience. For every Pokémon you catch, you get “Candies” credited to its first stage of evolution, along with 100 Stardust Points, and experience for you, the trainer.

You get 600 points for newly caught Pokémon. The higher your level is, the stronger the Pokémon you’ll encounter. The Pokemon can also be lowered with Combat Power (CP) to the Professor to get one candy per Pokémon.

The Stardust and Candies can be used to power up the Pokémon. The best part is that the game has built-in achievements.

If you catch 50 Flying-type Pokémon then you get a medal.
Do these medals serve a purpose? No!
Then what is the point of giving us these medals without giving us some incentive to complete these wild Pokémon AI?

This is without a doubt the worst part of the game. Pokémon can break out of Poke balls, and run away. The problem lies within the frequency of times both of these things can happen. One can go through six or more Poke balls on one wild Pokémon. Then only for it to run away, which is pretty much disappointing the player. The game has raspberries that a gamer can give to the Pokémon. Giving raspberries can prevent the Pokémon from running away. However, sometimes even if you give raspberry to the Pokémon, it might still run away after a Poke ball.

This game had very high expectations. It became a game changer for both mobile and AR market. One of the major issues while playing this game is that the battery drains out quickly. This might annoy the gamer who is playing the game seriously. This is one of the reason, why users started uninstalling the game.

One another issue with this game is the gameplay becomes unresponsive after dodging an attack during a ‘Gym battle’. The development team is still working to fix this issue.

Since this game downloads the images each time you open the mobile application, it consumes much more data. The new update takes time for loading graphics.

There are some issues regarding this game because some Pokémon’s may locate in hills and top of the buildings these caused many people accidents and struck in trouble. People started playing while walking or while driving to catch the Pokémon. People are also walking into strangers’ yards, which could easily lead to confrontations. While it is often a bit hilarious to hear some of these Pokémon gameplay stories but sometimes it is also a bit disconcerting.

Conclusion

Conclusion is that the concept of the game is good and many have been playing since release. These are the biggest issues and concerns with Pokémon GO so far.

Ultimately, I think Pokémon GO is a cool game in many ways. The game is really a big deal for Nintendo. Certainly, it appears to be a success already.

Just remember, do not play the game while driving, and do not be a creeper.

Feel free to share yours in the comments, or tell how I am wrong

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This blog is dedicated to all aspiring gamers who want to pursue game testing career but are skeptical because of some misconceptions about the gaming domain. So, lets get down to the nitty gritty to understand the importance and criticality of a Game Tester’s role. 

According to Newzoo’s Global Games Market Report, the total game revenue is estimated is 27,547 Million Dollars in the US. Huge lumps off money is pouring in for the enhancement of games. So, it is not hard to understand that for a multi-million dollar industry the role of the game testers is concerned with a fact that behind every successful game there is an efficient team of experienced and quality game testers

Are we testing the game regularly?

Are we performing testing in a right way?

The above mentioned are the two main questions which every game development team should keep in mind. Let’s discuss a couple of case studies to understand the importance of Game Testing.

Case Study #1: BioShock 2 (2010)

BioShock 2, a sequel to the 2007 major international hit Bioshock, is a first-person shooter survival horror video game developed by 2K Marin for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was released worldwide in February 2010 for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, but there were a lot of UX related issues with the game due to insufficient Quality Assurance testing. However, the Windows version received some patches and downloadable content shortly after the release. In October 2010, 2K Games announced that they would not provide a final patch to fix remaining issues with the game.

Furthermore, 2K Games announced that they would not offer the Protector Trials or Minerva’s Den content on the platform due to ‘timing and technical issues’ that they could not work around. 2K later explained that while trying to prepare additional patches with support for the additional content, they encountered bugs under specific circumstances that they felt would not be acceptable for Microsoft certification process hence the game terribly failed to succeed.

Case Study #2: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2012)

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an action role-playing open world video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios, published by Bethesda Softworks, and released in November 2011, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. This is another good example of a game plagued by a multitude of technical issues, stemming from poor QA. As soon as the game was released, players reported a range of issues, mainly connected with the game crashing in various circumstances. Most notably, the PS3 version of the game suffered a fatal bug whereby, once the player’s save, file becomes larger than 6 MB. Players experiences frame rate issues and slowdown to the point of being completely unplayable. Other issues include texture downscaling.

Issue on the Xbox 360 version – when the game was running from the hard drive, unexplained crashes and slowdown problems, as well as with the various crashes on the Windows version.

Its prequel, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion also had numerous bugs, reported after release.

To avoid such scenarios, Game Production companies needs game testers to test their video games before the final version is released to the public. Without game testers, bugs and glitches would abound in games, possibly making them unplayable and destroying the reputation of the video game production company.

By the mid-2000s, higher consumer demands led to the rise of games that are more complex and ultimately causing an explosion in gaming revenue. With high definition video an undeniable hit and longstanding gamers seeking immersive experiences, expectations for visuals in games along with the increasing complexity of games have resulted in a spike in the development budgets of gaming companies.

The Seventh-generation console game came in, such as the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and the Wii. These were accompanied by a range of elaborate games like Gears of War, Halo 3, The Elder Scrolls IV and Oblivion. With the increasing need for more extensive game testing, the in-house game QA teams have become so big that there came a point where they proved too much to manage internally. All these led to the rise in popularity of external dedicated game QA vendors, and the gave birth to trend of outsourcing game testing activities.

Benefits of Outsourcing?

• Reduces Hidden costs of In-House teams
• Provides access to the large talent pool
• Minimizes overall operational cost
• The core focus can be shifted to the main business of game development
• Increase Productivity & enhances competitiveness
• Improve Time-to-Market

Happy Gaming!!

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What is Augmented Reality?
Augmented reality is a combination of digital information that is connected to the users in real time. AR collects the information of the environment and overlays new information on top of it. It helps the user to place life-size 3D models in the environment of their own choice. AR is becoming more popular in the gaming industries, to ensure the user gets the immersive experiences that utilize their actual surroundings. Pokemon go is one such example.
Click here to read more on AR/VR
There is a lot of competition among social media games and applications. Each one of them is trying hard to improve engagement rate through increased user interaction with advanced technologies. In this situation, leveraging the potential of Augmented Reality comes as a rescue.
Snapchat is the clear winner in the race of using AR for social media apps. This is the sure shot sign of increased use of this technology in social networking platforms in the near future.
Facebook: Facebook has designed an AR glasses so that user can experience the AR world right from their pockets.
The most successful application (mobile game) that has made a huge success in AR is “Pokemon GO”, the game spread so widely that it made a mark in the world of augmented reality.
AR Kit of iOS 11 is the new entry of Apple into the AR segment. WWDC 2017 observed some major announcements done by Apple. One of them was the introduction of AR Kit. This tech giant sees the bright future of AR in enhancing users’ experience. It brings forth a new framework called AR Kit for developers to experiment this technology to its fullest.
Apple has opened up ways for developers to build apps that go beyond the restricted screen size of the device. It is possible for them to craft immersive AR experience for users that provides perfect blending of digital objects with the real world.
Augmented reality social media and messenger apps have proven results of attracting users with its special effects. This technology has brought a new revolution among mobile phones users.  Technology leaders are now dreaming of living in a world that is at the intersection of their imagination and real scenario. Introduction of AR in social media app that gives users just what they expect could be a grand success.

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In this blog, we are going to discuss these stages of game testing and its importance.

How the game developer and end user get benefit from it?

Alpha Testing

It is the phase of game testing where the game is still in the development phase along with which parallel testing is done to ensure that the game is developed without any glitches and is working smoothly without crashing. This stage requires intense documentation of hardware and software failure so that the game developers can fix it at earlier stages.

As a game tester, one is not going to have fun during this phase as the some of the major game functionality and Graphical UI may still be under development phase. However, a tester who loves to solve the game problem and tries to map the solution for the betterment of the game will surely enjoy this phase. It is expected that the game tester provides some good piece of suggestions for further game development.

Beta Testing

During beta testing, the game is almost production ready with all the major issues being fixed. In this phase, the game testers are required to extensively find all the possible ways to break the game along the lookout for all minor issues.

During Beta Testing, the game needs to pass through many testing methodologies such as performance testing, stress testing, and game compliance testing. Tester runs the game seamlessly for hours together on many devices to check for any performance or server downfall.

As I say, a game is almost production ready; beta testing is done in two different ways.

Open Beta Testing: Open test is when the beta version of the game is made available for everyone interested. This interested group will play the game a share the reviews to the publisher.  This process is also called as pre-release of the game software.

Closed Beta Testing:  This testing is done only be the closed set of people who work closely with the game developers.

The issues or glitches found during beta testing is addressed before the game’s official launch.

Game Submission/Pre-Production Stage

In this stage, the game is ready to be published and the game testers must confirm the final checklist of the game QA process before the game is actually pushed to production.

Before moving into the production, the tester needs to run the game in the production environment to ensure that there are no broken codes. This phase also involves game compliance check and certification.

Game testing is not as easy as its sound since it passes through the many phases. Only a good game tester or game testing vendor will be able to progress the game seamlessly from one phase to another.

The last line I just want to add,

“Proper game testing sets the platform on which future of the Game rests.”

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This may sound challenging – especially when producers launch their games globally as the game must run well across devices.

If we look at the portion of Google Play and App Store revenues, they are generated by mobile games. There is absolute necessity to seamlessly test and test automation for the mobile game components

Challenges in Testing Mobile Games

The mobile game market segment has ferociously contended and the game users have short attention span. Customer’s lifetime value for each game is heavily dependent on additional content and user relationship. This means that everything has to work over several application updates, back-end updates over an extended period of time to recover the initial marketing investments.

What are the challenges to test the aspects of mobile games?

Firstly, a majority of games use direct screen access in form of OpenGL or ActiveX bypassing the OS level services. This leads to the problem that all of the native mobile test automation frameworks are becomes unusable with mobile games. Without access to the object level information the automation can only utilize XY clicks without ample feedback or validation about the internal status of the game.

Secondly, performance is a key driver for user experience and the real performance can only be monitored using real hardware. Frame rates also matter with the richness and variety of mobile devices, where every model counts.

In fact, sometimes supporting just one more popular Asian mobile device model can bring additional $5 million of revenue during the lifetime of a game.

Also for many game application binaries are massive (which sums up to 3Gb) and games consume a lot of memory, CPU, GPU, and battery. All these need to be accounted for performance testing so that the real end user experience does not face issues to physical realities of mobile devices.

Finally, most of the games utilize sensors or other hardware features that are not consistent from one device to another. This is left unchecked and will prove to be a nasty surprise down the road.

The range of tools used, methods, best practices and frameworks for mobile game testing is pretty huge, but there are certain things that all game developers do the same way. In spite of different game engines selected, over 90% of game developers use some form of image recognition.

We will discuss more about mobile game testing techniques in our upcoming blogs. Stay Tuned for updates.

HAPPY GAME TESTING!!!

In case you’re interested to try out this for your game, please contact us and we’ll be happy to share some great cases and show how it can be done for your game.

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The global augmented reality and virtual reality market is anticipated to witness remarkable CAGR of $150 Billion during 2017 – 2025

Advancing technology has given us so much new tech in a short span of time. One such inroad into development led to the emergence of AR & VR and the gaming industry is too eager to try it on

The mark of Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality game is that it seeks to awe the players by warping their perception of reality. This is done by combining storytelling and imagery with the latest hardware. The storytelling and imagery should totally immerse the players in the experience and the latest hardware is the platform in which you present it.

Since 2015, the likes of Oculus, Microsoft, and Sony have given us Virtual Reality devices that have created brand new opportunities to create these immersive experiences. These devices are reliant on content creators, without which it’s just a piece of expensive hardware. This rapid device-content collaboration has resulted in some standout experiences.

Together, virtual reality and augmented reality are predicted to generate about $150 billion by the year 2020.

An enormous flow of money into these industries is no surprise, despite the fact that there are only few hardware platforms presently available in the market. Thus, we will witness many newer gears to be launched shortly.

At the moment, the QA/Testing is predominantly focused on Mobile apps, analytics, IoT and other digital areas. As the AR/VR will have much to offer in the future, it will be a good move for the QA/Testing providers to build testing competency in Augmented and Virtual Reality applications.

Future Applications and Uses:

A broad range of industries like consumer goods, entertainment, aerospace and defense, commercial, and medical fields are being influenced by advancements in AR and VR.

VR could be ideal for environments that are expensive, dangerous or complex to simulate in other ways. For example, emergency services training. VR is already used by a number of military forces around the world for precisely that purpose. It is currently being used to train medical staff, oil workers and teach students. But the potential audience is much bigger.

In the last year, we have seen consumers getting access to a number of AR/VR hardware and also some exciting software that is providing an exciting experience to the customers.

Between now and 2022; the AR/VR market will definitely grow to current $ 150 Billion. This growth will clearly come from the content.  As with anything, without content, even the most sophisticated hardware is not of much value. It is in this area that the future growth of AR/VR Testing will come from, and the QA/Testing providers need to participate in this growth and grab the opportunity.

Game titles created for VR and AR have taken a huge step forward in 2016. Multiple VR headsets are available in the market, with some mind-blowing titles that are changing the very nature of gaming. VR has gotten off to an exciting start, but it’s AR gaming that has already seen its first mega-hit.

Some of the applications that may come up in AR space are Games, Theme park rides, Web Browsing, Commerce, Consumer Applications, Advertising, Voice calls, and film/TV streaming (both 2d and 3D) etc.

These are the areas which the QA/Testing companies need to capture in the near future.

There is a lot to be developed in AR/VR space: Apart from design and development, sensors, imaging, and processing are few related things that are considered in the development phase. Each of these requires specific expertise, they will, in turn, contribute towards cost escalation. By providing the right expertise at a lower cost the QA/Testing firms can play a critical role in bridging the gaps and improving the ROI.

To perform AR/VR testing, the QA vendors need to understand the lower level requirements of the applications and the UI/UX.

Few of such expertise should be into Art design, Gyro and accelerometer sensor, speech recognition and image processing.

The testing expert should use manual testing for user interface and can further use their existing test automation expertise to test the functionality of the application.

In AR/VR applications, the user can interact with every object in the virtual environment. A further level of challenge will be presented due to various combinations of possible user interactions. The testing team should follow, adopt and master the testing tactics to test the user interactions.

We will discuss in detail about AR/VR Testing in our later blogs. Stay updated by subscribing to our blog.

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To give an idea of what a Game tester’s day looks like, we are talking about a guy who goes by the gamer tag ‘Dalda’

The first job I got was in company, one of whose Executive was a friend’s Uncle. Knowing the bunch of us and our addiction to gaming we got offered a job.

Worst part would be, after working for a whole day on a game, I ended up dreaming myself as a character stuck in the game and being unable to clear the level to get out!

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PLANNING
Our work was mapped out to include testing for:

• Functionality
• Compatibility
• Compliance
• Regressions
• Smoke
• Test case preparation

INVESTMENT
After understanding the requirements for the testing, we invested in:

• Purchase of mobile devices
• Purchase of high-end PCs
• Network (exclusive leased line, backup network lines)
• Firewall
• Hiring of full-time resources

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