Are You on the Right Version? Live Ops and QA

In the last decade, live ops has grown to become a key phase of a game’s life cycle. Live ops can (and should, if your game is successful!) last for years, and in the cases of several exceptionally popular games, we can see it continuing for over a decade. Live ops is a new game development phase that has become increasingly important with the rise of free-to-play games. However, although everyone is talking about it, there are almost no available guidelines on best practices. There is not even a unified explanation of what live ops means, as different disciplines in the gaming industry will look at it from different angles.

Throughout this chapter, we will get a bigger picture of what live ops is, how it fits in the game development process, why is it so important, and where QA fits in. We will analyze how QA for live ops is different, not only by the methodology that we use but also by how QA works with the rest of the team...