Chapter 6: Software Quality

Software quality can be determined by how well the product performs the functions for which it was intended. For game software, this includes the quality of the player's experience plus how well the game features are implemented. Various activities can be performed to evaluate, measure, and improve game quality.

In his book, Quality is Free , Philip Crosby states that, well, "Quality is free." This should be the high concept (remember that from Chapter 5?) of your quality program. If the cost of performing some quality function is not expected to produce an eventual saving, find a way to do it cheaper or better. If you can't, then stop doing it.

Game Quality Factors

Different gamers may have different criteria for what makes a game "good" for them. Some qualities are likely to be important to many game customers:

• Quality of the story

• Quality of the game mechanics

• Quality (for example, style, realism ) of in-game audio and visual effects

• Beauty of the visual style

• Use of humor and exaggeration

• "Human-like" non-player character Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Additionally, games should have an interface that is easy to use and clear to understand. This includes both the graphical user interface elements presented on the screen during gameplay and the game control(s) provided for the player to operate and affect the game. The user interface can consist of multiple elements such as on - screen displays and menus . The game control includes the way players control and operate their characters (or teams , cars , armies, and so on) during the game, as well as the way they can control their experience through point-of-view and lighting settings. The game should also support a variety of controllers, such as joysticks for air combat and steering wheels for driving, that are especially suited for the game's genre .

Another factor in providing a quality experience for the user is to ensure game code and assets are compatible with the memory constraints of the target platform. This includes the available working memory required for the game to run properly and both the size and number of target media such as cartridges, CD-ROMs, or DVDs used for distribution of the game.

Higher memory requirements may affect game performance while time is spent switching game assets in and out of memory during play. Each additional disk or higher-capacity memory card affects the cost of manufacturing and distributing the game. A price increase to compensate for the additional media cost could affect sales. Adding a disk without increasing the price will reduce profits. The vast majority of console games are expected to fit on only one disk, but complex PC games can take up anywhere from 2 ‚ 6 disks. Handheld device memory is not upgradeable like PCs are. Games have to fit within the memory constraints of the onboard memory chips and removable memory devices that are supported. Mobile games tend to be the most constrained in terms of available fixed and removable memory.

Any efforts at "code crunching " get more and more expensive the later they happen in the game development cycle. The cost isn't just in the labor to do the reduction work. Shrinking game code or reformatting assets to fit on the target media or memory footprint can introduce new hard-to-find bugs late in the project. This creates an extra burden on development, project management, defect tracking, version control, and testing.