Quality Assurance In The Games Industry

Posted by simoniker on Monday October 20, 2003 @02:16PM from the make-it-better-somehow dept.

Thanks to NTSC-uk for their opinion piece discussing the perceived lack of 'quality assurance' in the videogame industry. Amid oft-repeated claims that "many games fall short of the mark" on overall quality, there are some more interesting arguments that QA testing "rarely promotes the criticism and fine-tuning of the most important aspect of design - gameplay." The author even goes on to suggest that hardware manufacturers should again get more involved in the quality of games on their machine: "Nintendo demonstrated during the 80s and early 90s how the power of the manufacturer can be used... to ensure that the design of new games, and particularly good gameplay, was top of the agenda - hence Nintendo's 'Seal of Quality'."

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Re:Double-edged sword by Goldberg's+Pants · 2003-10-20 14:31 · Score: 2, Informative

Driver 2 springs to mind in regards to console titles being released with huge problems. In Driver 2, at certain areas of the map, the framerate drops to unplayable levels and you just have to hope nothing goes wrong until you get past the area.

Now if I recall, all games for the PSX had to be cleared by Sony to be approved for release on the console. Now while there was nothing like Nintendo's seal (which I personally take with a pinch of salt), this was a huge glitch in Driver 2 that was obviously ignored as anyone playing the game for five minutes would noticed it.