Emergent properties: game testers are “stuffed”
Illustration: Alexis Demetriades
Chris Lewis, a member of the Software Introspection Lab at UC Santa Cruz has his game testing work profiled in Science Notes 2011, in the article “Fixing Glitchy Games” by Donna Hesterman.
Games increasingly have emergent properties brought about by the complex interactions between the player, AI-driven non-player characters, level geometry and items in the game world. Except for the player, all of these have become more complex in the latest generation of AAA titles, leading to an exponential increase in potential interactions. Lewis states it well: