What is Closed Beta Testing?

Closed beta testing comes after alpha testing. This stage is often split into several short-focus sessions known as stress tests. However, in some instances, it is executed in one longer session. The time committed to this testing phase may vary depending on the developer’s requirements.
As the name suggests, closed beta testing is designed to be “closed” from the public. Therefore, you must register and approve the testers before they can download the game for testing purposes. Like in alpha testing, the number of testers is limited. Since closed beta testing isn’t open to the public, developers often “wipe” the servers after this testing stage is over. This implies that character information and game progression details are permanently removed and reset. Usually, closed beta testers are compensated with unique rewards for their efforts to test the game.

7 Strategies to Consider to Run an Effective Closed Beta Test

Here are several key strategies to consider when running closed beta tests to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the exercise:

1. Create Clear Goals and Objectives

Any closed beta test should start with defining clear goals and objectives. Ask questions like, “What do you want to achieve with closed beta test?” These goals and objectives guide the closed testing process while helping focus feedback on aspects that need improvement. Simply put, clearly defined goals help closed beta testers understand the focus areas. The outcome? Actionable insights and more targeted feedback from the closed beta testing exercise.

For example, you can create several objectives like evaluation, communication, and understanding. For evaluation, outline the areas of the game that testers should evaluate, such as user interface (UI), gameplay, game level design, and mechanics, to mention a few. In terms of communication, clearly communicate to the selected beta testers about your goals and objectives. Also, ensure the closed beta testers understand the most valuable feedback. This way, the selected group of testers can offer tailored testing feedback and insights that address your goals.

2. Pull Testers from Diverse Groups

Diversity is crucial when it comes to selecting the group of testers to engage in close beta testing. It helps avoid repetitive feedback or missing out on key feedback. Choosing a diverse pool of testers ensures they bring a wide range of experiences and perspectives into the testing process. This helps identify issues that may impact various player demographics.

When selecting testers for closed beta testing, consider the following criteria:

• Playstyles. Find testers with varying playstyles, such as exploratory, competitive, and casual. Doing so will help bring diverse perspectives into the game testing process. Also, it helps assess how different players interact with your game.
• Gaming experience. Seek testers with varying experience levels, from newcomers to experts in the genre. This helps identify basic to complex issues that may affect the overall gameplay.
• Demographics. Target diversity in gender, geographic location, age, and other relevant demographics. This will help identify and address gaming issues affecting varying groups of gamers.

3. Offer Comprehensive Instructions

Closed beta testing is crucial to ensuring seamless gameplay. Therefore, providing detailed instructions is essential to guiding the selected beta testers through the testing process. Also, it ensures their feedback is actionable and comprehensive, as they follow the given instructions.

Give detailed instructions about how beta testers can access your game, report bugs, and provide feedback.

4. Monitor and Analyze Feedback

Monitoring and analyzing beta testers’ feedback is crucial in identifying common issues and prioritizing key improvements. Regularly check the tester’s feedback for new updates and submissions. This way, you can prioritize the reported issues based on their frequency, impact, and severity. Also, identify common trends and themes in the feedback provided by testers. This ensures you address the widespread issues thoroughly and more efficiently.

5. Engage With the Testers

Testing is a comprehensive and complex process that requires collaborative efforts. Engaging with your closed beta testing team creates a collaborative environment for testing your game. Therefore, consider maintaining open communication channels with your testers through live streams, emails, or forums, and encourage everyone to participate actively.

Acknowledge your testers’ efforts and contributions and express gratitude for their invaluable feedback and time. Also, host Q&A sessions with your testers to address any concerns or questions raised. This helps foster a positive relationship.

6. Test Iteratively

Iterative testing is crucial as it helps implement changes based on the testers’ feedback. Also, it helps monitor how the changes made affect the gameplay mechanics. Continually test and iterate on gameplay, progression systems, and difficulty levels. This way, you can ensure the game delivers optimal balance, performance, and satisfaction.

7. Honor Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs)

If necessary, put a requirement for the selected testers to sign NDAs to protect sensitive information about your game. Clearly highlight the terms and conditions of the NDA, including what data is confidential and the repercussions of violating the NDA. Respecting the NDA instills professionalism and trust, ensuring confidential information remains secure.

Wrapping Up

Closed beta testing is a crucial process in game development. It provides developers with vital insights to finetune and enhance their games. However, you must consider several best practices to ensure successful closed beta testing. These practices include outlining clear goals and objectives, offering detailed instructions, tracking and analyzing feedback, engaging with testers, and respecting NDAs. By considering these strategies, you can easily navigate the challenges of running closed beta tests, enhancing the overall quality and efficiency of the final product. If you struggle to implement these practices, consider engaging a professional in the industry to help you run an effective closed beta test campaign.

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But what is beta testing? What are the several types of beta tests? And what does it matter in game development? Join us as we explore the role of beta testing in game development, ensuring high-quality games while preventing costly post-launch errors.

What is Beta Testing?

When it comes to game development, you must ensure a high-quality game that meets players’ expectations. However, you can’t determine whether a game is good unless you play it. This way, you can evaluate a game’s performance and behavior from the player’s perspective. And that’s where beta testing comes in.

Beta testing is a software development stage where developers thoroughly test their product before its official release. In the game development space, developers perform beta testing as part of user acceptance testing, whereby they involve people outside the organization to evaluate the game’s reliability, performance, and usability.

The ultimate goal of beta testing is to ensure that your game meets its intended use when released to the intended audience. Therefore, beta testers can be paid professionals (for thorough feedback and testing), or volunteers drawn from existing fans or users of the game.

Types of Beta Testing in Game Development

There are two types of beta testing. Here’s a quick guide on each of these beta-testing approaches:

Open Beta

As the name suggests, open beta testing is open; anyone can play the game during the beta testing period. With open beta testing, developers collect feedback from a wider audience. This enables them to get more data from a diverse audience, leading to better identification of issues.

Also, developers can assess how well their games run on multiple platforms through open betas. This is because they enable users from different platforms to join the testing phase.

Closed Beta

Closed beta testing is the opposite of open beta testing. This approach to beta testing is done with a restricted number of testers who are selected beforehand. The testers are granted access to the game before its official launch. They are required to thoroughly evaluate its performance, reliability, and usability and offer feedback from within the game. Developers use closed betas to discover major game balance issues or bugs that must be addressed before releasing the game to the public.

Benefits of Beta Testing in Game Development

Beta testing plays a critical role in game development. In fact, it benefits both developers and players. So, beta testing is a win-win for all. Here are some benefits of beta testing in game development:

1. Improved Gameplay

During beta testing, testers provide extensive feedback on game balance, AI behavior, graphics quality, and control schemes, to mention a few. This enables developers to understand how the game fits the current gaming landscape. Also, it helps them improve the game based on the feedback, driving better gameplay and gaming experiences.

2. Identification of Bugs and Glitches

Bugs and glitches can have a significant negative impact on your game performance. These bugs can range from simple errors to logical issues that affect a player’s gaming experience. Therefore, you must identify and mitigate these issues before releasing your game to the public. And that’s where better testing comes in handy.

Beta testers experience the game through the lens of the final player. Therefore, they can spot and report glitches or bugs, ensuring they’re addressed before the official release. The outcome? Players get to enjoy the best possible gaming experience when playing the game after it is officially released to the public.

3. Reduced Risk

When you create a new game, you don’t know how the potential audience will respond. This uncertainty increases the risk of spending valuable resources on game development, which may have low or limited return on investment. However, game testing solution helps minimize this risk. But how?

Well, beta testing allows game developers to test their ideas on an actual audience without officially launching the game. This minimizes the risk by offering an opportunity to modify your game based on user feedback without going through the entire launch process again.

What’s more, it gives game developers insights into what players think about the game. This way, they can modify the game to better suit the players’ preferences and needs, increasing the chances of success in today’s highly competitive gaming environment.

4. Better Game Compatibility

We live in a world where more gaming devices and operating systems are emerging at an unprecedented rate. With such diverse gaming devices comes a major compatibility issue. For instance, how do you ensure your game runs seamlessly across tens or even hundreds of devices with varying software and hardware configurations? That’s where beta testing comes in.

Beta testers often use varying devices to test the game’s performance. This enables developers to identify potential compatibility issues across multiple platforms and devices before launching the game commercially.

5. Improved Player Loyalty

Beta testing, especially open beta, allows players to explore new game features and content before everybody else. This gives them a sense of ownership over their gaming experience because they access and try out new features before anyone else. As a result, it helps promote player loyalty, as players feel like they’re part of the game development process. This player loyalty is crucial in today’s highly competitive gaming environment, as it boosts the chances of your game’s success.

Final Thoughts

Beta testing is crucial in game development. It enables developers to gather feedback on their game before its official release. This form of testing benefits both players and developers, ensuring the delivery of high-quality gaming experiences. Players can experience the game before its official release, providing valuable feedback on areas of improvement. On the other hand, developers can identify issues before releasing the game and act upon user feedback to improve the gaming experience. The outcome? A better, more compatible, and smoother game, enhancing player satisfaction.

Ready to kickstart your beta testing journey? iXie has got you covered.

Our team of qualified beta testing professionals conducts exhaustive tests, evaluating your game’s performance, usability, and reliability across different display resolutions, hardware configurations, and operating systems. So, why wait? Partner with us today and revolutionize your gaming experience.

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Game Testing steps

Collecting Information

The game testers need to understand the detailed gaming requirements such as story headlines, structure of the game, features of the game, characters, concepts, rules, game points, levels and so on.

Strategy for game testing

Strategy must include testing cycles, types of testing to be performed, testing for risks, defect life cycle, reporting process, what needs to be tested, what’s not tested, risks and mitigation, service level agreements etc. and after that it’s important to test hardware components such as consoles, Wi-Fi, joysticks etc.

Game Test Cases Creation

Both positive and negative test cases must be designed. Some effective testing methods that can be adopted to design the test cases – Critical path testing, Exception path testing, Boundary value analysis, Equivalence partitioning

Game Test Cases Execution

This helps to identify more defects in a particular gaming environment and hardware configuration. Also, performing the alpha and beta testing and the testing of the game for specific age groups helps to enhance the game’s quality. Another type of testing that mustn’t be ignored when it comes to games is content testing. This helps to ensure that the content of the game is right for the viewers and is understandable.

Test Results

The consequences of the game testing performed must be listed. This helps the testers to understand the behaviour of errors being made and improve upon them.

Defects Categorized

All the defects that have been identified must be listed and categorized based on priority. This helps the developers to easily rework the errors.After game testing is performed and the changes have been made, the game is then sent to the client for feedback. It is then further improved upon based on the feedback before it is released in the market for the audience to enjoy a hassle-free gaming experience.

Conclusion

While game testing job may sound like a dream come true, it is not easy as it sounds. As a game tester, you will be spending hours in front of television and consoles playing the game. This process could become tiresome without proper plan and might lead you hate your job. Following these simple steps will not only ease your job but will also keep your passion intact towards gaming.

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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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