作者：Lindsay Lauters Miller

我是The Behemoth的UX和QA部门总监Lindsay，我们工作室曾开发过《Castle Crashers》、《BattleBlock Theater》等游戏。

我经常遇到这种情况：当我走进E3或PAX展会的大门，或者在其他地方总能遇到一些很棒的人。我们就会开始谈论自己所做的事情——他们制作游戏，我制作游戏并帮助测试。当我提到自己拥有用户体验（UX）以及质量保证（QA）测试背景，他们就会思忖片刻，然后问道，“这两者有什么区别吗？”

game test(from worldofwarships)

电子游戏中的测试

开发者可通过多种方法让一款出色的游戏更加出彩，测试就是这个过程的一个关键环节。

在我看来，测试具有双重目标：

*确保玩家获得开发者所希望的体验（这通常意味着许多乐趣）。

*确保最终的游戏正是开发者所梦想的成品——或者尽量接近这个目标。

我认为你必须同时利用UX和QA测试才能实现这一目标。

用户体验测试

那么究竟什么是用户体验测试呢？如果你去问一打用户研究人员，可能就会得到五花八门的答案（并且听到多种名称的测试类型）。

UX测试实际上就是检测真正用户对于一款正在开发中的游戏的反应和体验。

我们是用多种方法执行这种测试。最通常的做法是，将一批玩家带到我们实验室，让他们玩一款此前从未接触过的原型游戏的特定环节。

之后，我们会观察他们的行为，并提出一些问题，以便发现玩家究竟是否理解了游戏机制和流程（是否乐在其中，并且用开发者所希望的方式执行操作）。如果开发者对玩家体验感到意外，那么调查人员所展开的测试也将为之提供如何改进游戏的建议。

这种测试有助于找到游戏发布时真正玩家的体验，以及他们将执行的操作。但它并不能很好地找到崩溃、图像问题，或者其他漏洞——因为这是质量保证（QA）的工作职责。

质量保证测试

QA就是多数开发者听到“测试”一词所想到的内容。

这是一个通过多种功能和行为系统性排查游戏软件的过程，有助于在玩家看到游戏之前查找关键漏洞。

优秀QA测试的技巧就在于以智能，成本不高且基于风险的方式来执行。

二者如何结合

所以，我们可以这样总结用户体验测试：

*测试玩家对一款正在开发中游戏的看法和体验。

*反映玩家不理解的区域，意外的玩家反应，难度高峰或玩家因受挫而退出游戏的时间。

*其结果有助于更好的理解玩家游戏体验，调查人员会提出如何让玩家体验与开发者预期一致的建议。

而QA测试则是：

*检测软件行为

*输出漏洞

*其结果是成就能够以开发者所预期的方式运行的更明确更棒的软件。

这两种测试方法的结合创造了一款更棒的游戏。因为漏洞和误解可能导致玩家无法获得最佳游戏体验，我认为这两者对于游戏的成功发布来说都很关键。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

UX & QA Testing: What’s the Difference?

by Lindsay Lauters Miller

Hi there! My name is Lindsay. I’m the Director of The Research Centaur, the UX+QA divison of The Behemoth. We made Castle Crashers, BattleBlock Theater, and your favorite capsule machines at San Diego Comic-con.

I get into situations like this a lot: I’m walking the show floor at E3 or PAX, or wherever, and I meet somebody awesome (woo!). We get to talking about what we do — they make games, I make games and then help test them. I mention I have a background in both user experience (UX) and quality assurance (QA) testing, and they think for a minute.

Then they ask, “What’s the difference?”

Well… I’m glad you asked.

TESTING IN VIDEO GAMES

There are so many things developers can do to make a great game more amazing, and testing is a critical piece of that process.

The goal of testing is two-fold, in my mind:

Ensure players experience what the developers want them to experience (which usually means lots of fun!).

Ensure that the final game is the one its developers have dreamed about — or is as close to it as possible.

And I’d argue that you need both user experience and QA testing to help you get there.

USER EXPERIENCE TESTING

So what is user experience testing, exactly? If you ask a dozen user researchers that question, you’ll get a dozen answers (and hear two dozen names for various types of tests).

Ultimately, though, UX testing is about examining real player reactions to and experiences with an in-development game.

At The Research Centaur, we do this in a variety of ways. Most commonly, we’ll bring a group of gamers into our lab and ask them to play a specific part of a prototype game they’ve never seen before.

Then, we watch what they do and ask the right questions to help figure out whether the gamers are understanding the mechanics and game flow (or, failing that, at least enjoying themselves and reacting in a way the developers like).  If the developers are unpleasantly surprised by the player experience, the researchers running the test will also provide insight into and suggestions on how to change the game for the better.

This type of testing is great at finding out how real players will experience the game once it’s released, and what they’ll do. It’s not so great at finding crashes, graphical problems, or other bugs — which is where the quality assurance (QA) piece of the puzzle comes in.

QUALITY ASSURANCE TESTING

Quality Assurance is what most developers think about when they hear the word, “testing.”

It’s the process of systematically walking the game software through as many features and behaviors as possible, and seeing what it does. This helps catch critical bugs before the players ever see them.

The trick to good QA testing is doing it in a smart, risk-based way that doesn’t cost too much — but maybe I’ll talk about that more in a future blog post.

HOW THEY WORK TOGETHER

So, to summarize! User experience testing:

Is about examining the player’s perception of and experience with an in-development game

Outputs areas of misunderstanding, unexpected player reactions, difficulty spikes, or shelf moments (times when the player gets so frustrated they would give up on the game)

Results in better understanding of how players experience the game, and researcher recommendations on how to bring the player experience into alignment with the developer’s vision

And QA testing:

Is about examining software behavior

Outputs bugs

Results in cleaner, better software that behaves in the way the developer intends

Together, these two test disciplines create a better game. Because both bugs and misunderstandings can keep a player from having the best possible experience with a game, I’d argue that they are both equally critical to a fantastic launch.（source：gamasutra）