What goes into playtesting and debugging?

[ishouldntbehere]

I'm not familiar with how developers debug and playtest games in developement. Do they have designers and playtesters play the game all the way through while making comments about what needs to be fixed or changed? And then what happens, does R* go back, make some decisions and changes and then have playtesters play through the entire game again, and then again? That doesn't seem very efficient. We're a few months out from the game's launch, so i'm assuming this is what they're up to now.

[mark85]

they have people just replaying one bit a time to see how it works and plays,ive heard its crap.

[Timmons55]

Ok normally they have a large number of play testers and what happens is: Each one of them is give areas of the game to test over and over and making reports about whats wrong so forth so not all all the game testers play the entire game. However there are always a handful that are given the assignment to play the game through and make reports as a sort of double check

[Vanillainy]

I just completed Assassins Creed and at the credits it had all of the testers names, and there was like 100+ testers.

 

Most are give certain areas and things to test, whereas some just run through the whole game giving opinions and things. But its really not that fun.

[ishouldntbehere]

Thanks! feel free to lock now.