Why bug reports matter

Bug reports are the main mean of communication between different stakeholders: coders, QA, game designers, producers, art, and any other discipline involved with game creation. In the past, it was common to have the whole team sitting in the same room or not too far from each other, sharing the same office space. As outsourcing practices became more dominant and parts of game development were handled by outsourced partners, the importance of well-written bug reports grew. During the last few years, as a consequence of the pandemic, we saw more employees working predominantly from home. That further contributed to the importance of having high-quality bug reports.

Today, we have game teams that are geographically dispersed and might come from different working cultures and working in different time zones. If our bug reports are unclear, there is missing information, or they are written poorly, the coder can’t just walk to QA in the next room and ask...