Computer Game supplier Blitz 1UP is the latest business
to use crowdsourcing as a means of cost effectively testing its
products.
According to a report on
Develop-online.net, the company does not have the resources
required to test the compatibility of games with different computer
platforms.
Blitz
1UP producer Neil Holmes reportedly said: "It's an area that
can be pretty expensive if you pay for the good external companies
to fully test your game on a wide range of hardware, and it doesn't
scale down in price just because you're a small indie game."
"Even though Blitz Games Studios [has over 200 employees], our
machines are all of a similar high spec so we can't do much to help
internally either. Crowdsourcing therefore makes perfect sense.
We'll be able to test on a huge and diverse range of hardware and
software, which will lead to improved stability for our partners'
games. At the same time the hardcore indie fans will be receiving
free copies of the games in return for their services, so
everyone's a winner."
Crowdsourcing is the process of outsourcing a job normally done
internally to a large number of people. This is usually done over
the internet and is being harnessed in software testing.
A recent competition for
software testers to reveal flaws in major search engines
unearthed over
600 in Google, Google Caffeine, Bing and Yahoo. The Battle of
the Search Engines, as it is known, was carried out by uTest, which
uses crowdsourcing to test software. Over 1,100 software
professionals from over 50 countries took part in uTest's Battle of
the Search Engines.
US-Israeli firm uTest has pioneered crowdsourcing to help
companies test their software. The technique is also attracting
growing number of converts, including Microsoft and Google.