An approach to automated videogame beta testing

Videogames developed in the 1970s and 1980s were modest programs created in a couple of months by a single person, who played the roles of designer, artist and programmer. Since then, videogames have evolved to become a multi-million dollar industry. Today, AAA game development involves hundreds of people working together over several years. Management and engineering requirements have changed at the same pace. Although many of the processes have been adapted over time, this is not quite true for quality assurance tasks, which are still done mainly manually by human beta testers due to the specific peculiarities of videogames. This paper presents an approach to automate this beta testing.