Hello everyone and welcome to the Talks
with Experts series - episode number five
by Pixel Federation. My name is Matej
and today I am joined by Stanley, our
senior QA engineer. Hi guys.
We have prepared some questions for Stanley
and we're gonna ask them later, but right
now, if you're interested in these kinds
of topics like QA for example, feel
free to join our Facebook group called
free-to-play game developers. Link can be
found in the description below. So let's
start with the first question.
Tell us Stanley - why is the video game QA
so important? QA acts as a counterweight
to the design team, because as a game
developer you have quite limited and
slightly biased view about your game, and
it is good to have a seasoned and
experienced player to play your game and
tell you his opinions about performance,
bug issues, and design ups and downs. Tthe
main goal of QA is to ensure that the
product is in the intended quality, but
also to bend, break, abuse and exploit the
system to its limits so it can be
patched improved for the end-user. Also
QA acts as an information hub, because QA
is communicating mainly with designers
and programmers, but also sending reports
to the product managers about the state
of the game or update, and working
closely with the community management
about issues feedbacks and player moves.
So let's move to the next question.
Tell us Stanley - what are the main rules or
advices for being a good QA? Basically
you need to stick to the two basic rules
of testing. First one is - don't panic. If
you are dealing with several technical
design issues and communicating that with
your colleagues, it must be done in same
pragmatic goal-oriented way. Also, it shows
that situation is under control and
everybody can
because relax and focus on the goal. Next
thing is question of trust. Trust your
colleagues, but don't trust the code or
design. That means always check the work
if it's doing what it's supposed to do
and mainly avoid blaming and
finger-pointing.
Focus on the goal. As a QA, always keep
remembering the development priorities.
First one is survival.
Focus on the
functionality and shipping date. Second is
quality. Players like smooth and bugless
games, but can excuse some minor hiccups.
Also, you can score some bonus points
with them when you've prioritized
fixing issues according to them.
Third is efficiency. Always try to
improve the development process and
testing process to ensure you can speed
up the iteration of the updates and ensure
the best quality to the players. It is
important to always ask questions. You
don't know how some feature works
from the documentation? Ask the designers.
Something doesn't work as it should? Ask
the programmers. Asking questions is one
of the most important tools you can not
only inform and educate yourself, but
also check if the other party knows what
they are doing and how. Improving
technical skills in the IT industry and
gaming industry is a must.
Deeper insight of how code works,
infrastructure, design principles can
open a whole new level of perception how
games work. So Stanley, will share some of
the best practices used in free-to-play QA?
Certainly Matej. Risk prevention is the
main goal of the QA department. QA has
the best preview about state of the game
and update that is coming, and should use
this knowledge to communicate with the
product manager what is expected - what is
a reality in the game.
Next advice I can give you is
communication. I know I'm repeating but
it is very important, because most of the
issues arise from the bad communication
between people.
QA should always bring up problems
because if the problem is not brought up,
it's still a problem. Ideally QA
should bring up problems through
official channels, for example we use JIRA. 
Efficiency of the work can be greatly
improved by the tools we use. In the
beginning of the project it is the QA
that defines the basic features that
the tools should have and in the later
development is going to bring other
departments to pitch in their ideas about
new features from the tools. When your
game has a planned update, here are some
best advices. Plan the update early in the
week, so you can have enough time for
monitoring, tracking and occasional
hotfixing. Always have an emergency plan. If
you have weekend outage so you know who
you can contact to fix it ASAP.
Be ready to compensate your players for mistakes. If
you can, publicly test your new update. Your
hardcore players will happily give you
their feedback and bug reports and you can
also score a bonus points for listening
to the community. And the next advice
I can give you is: stop chasing
quality unicorns. As you can see in this
chart, the quality is a steep
function related to time and effort. It
is important to define the baseline
what is okay and what can slip away to
the players. Don't forget you're also
part of the product team and nobody is
happy when you stop update because some
feature that is bugged affects 0.001%
percent of players. But it also depends
what players in affects
and in what way. So Stanley what are the
latest trends in QA and what can we see
in the near future? Thank you for asking
first trend this automatisation. It's hot topic in the
latest years in the main goal is to make
computer to do the most boring and
tedious repetitive work. If you go for
automatisation, it's ideal to start from
the beginning of the project so you can
avoid hacks and workarounds and build
solid framework for you.
Automatisation is a long term
investment because it requires a lot of
work and effort not just a building but
also maintain it but in the end it really pays off. 
Also I recommend - if you go for this
endeavor have at least one dedicated
person for it. And then there is the holy
grail of the testing. AI. The most
used buzzword in the IT industry in
latest years. AI will surely truly come to
the testing. For instance game logs,
information about player's actions in
the right format can be fed through
machine learning model, so the AI BOTS
can learn player-like behavior or invent new
strategies just like alphago or open AI
in game of DOTA.  Through AI we can test
hundreds maybe thousands test cases at
once, and it is very good for the
ever-evolving games, where the
combinations are too big for manual
testing. The AI is certainly the future
of testing. Then the human testers can
focus on the more creative side of
things, like expert testing and by it
laying foundations for the new
test cases for the AI.
Wow! I don't have any more questions for
you Stanley. Thank you for a great
interview. My pleasure.
I hope you guys enjoyed it as well.If
you got any questions for Stanley, feel
free to post them below this video.
I'm sure Stanley will be more than happy
to answer them, and see you guys in
the next episode! Cya.  If you enjoyed
this video give it a thumbs up, and you
can subscribe to our YouTube channel
right here.
