ABSTRACT
X INTRODUCTION Quality assurance (QA) is the testing and tuning process that usually happens prior to a game’s release in order to ensure that the game looks, sounds, plays, and feels the way the developers intend. QA personnel-often called playtesters, quality analysts, and the like-are tasked with assaying the aesthetic, technical, and/or interactive elements of a game for possible improvement during various stages of development, sometimes even after a game has been released. QA locates bugs in the software, fi nds fl aws in a game’s design or controls, documents anomalies in the graphics and audio elements, and annotates any other potentially problematic phenomena using a set of predefi ned standards. Th ese standards may be defi ned by the developer, publisher, host platform or environment (e.g., Microsoft Xbox Live, Steam), rating organizations and systems (e.g., the Entertainment Software Rating Board), and public policy and laws. Th e standards may be aesthetic (e.g., a studio or publisher’s audiovisual benchmarks), technological (e.g., operational stability and connectivity over a given network or service), or moral (e.g., the importance of age and culturally appropriate content).
