Application of combinatorial tests in video game testing

摘要

Video games comprise a multi-billion-dollar industry. Companies invest huge amounts of money for the release of their games. A part of this money is invested in testing the games. Current game testing methods include manual execution of pre-written test cases in the game. Each test case may or may not result in a bug. In a game, a bug is said to occur when the game does not behave per its intended design. The process of writing the test cases to test games requires standardization. We believe that this standardization can be achieved by implementing experimental design to video game testing. In this research, we discuss the implementation of combinatorial testing, specifically covering arrays, to test games. Combinatorial testing is a method of experimental design that is used to generate test cases and is primarily used for commercial software testing. In addition to the discussion of the implementation of combinatorial testing techniques in video game testing, we present an algorithm that can be used to sort test cases to aid developers in finding the combination of settings resulting in a bug.