Serco Games Research expands QA concept

Serco Games Research is providing a new games testing service that promises to expand on the remit of traditional QA offerings.

The range of services are designed to help developers understand what works for the end user before substantial development costs are incurred.

SGR, which has dedicated studios in central London, provides concept development, storyboarding, gameplay reviews and gameplay user testing as part of its QA.

"There’s often a danger that developers are so immersed in a project that they have difficulty seeing it from the gamers perspective," head of SGR, Ben Weedon. "Control mechanisms are a good example of this – how can developers guarantee that potential control actions are intuitive to the gamer?

"We can help developers by running game prototypes past users while still at beta stage, allowing them to refine the game during development rather than merely catching bugs at a later, more costly, stage of development."