Hey everyone :)
Proper, dedicated QA for smaller or indie game is an often ignored part of the game development process. It is generally looked down upon and the lack of pursuing it is justified and dismissed with such thoughts as "we can just test this ourselves" or "we don't have budget for that". When confronted with those attitudes, my answers are quite simply "how much is your time worth to you?" and "what will the cost be to your brand, image, and the earning potential of your title if you release a buggy game that is confusing for users to play and runs like shit on their devices?"!
Quite a few of you already know about the QA & Testing services that we offer here at 24 Bit Games, but it isn't something that we have really advertised locally, mainly because we've been very busy using our QA department for projects under development internally, and haven't had that much capacity to take on external ones.
Now that our QA team is comprised of 3 full time QA Testers, overseen by a full time QA Lead (with experience in QA overseas), we are excited to be able to take on more external-based project for QA services!
A quick breakdown of what we can offer on the QA front is:
Stress testing and bug hunting
General game play experience feedback
UX testing and evaluations
Performance reviews
Hardware compatibility and issue testing
Certification & guideline compliance scrubbing
Our rates are very competitive in a global sense, and modulate a lot based on the amount (duration) of the services required. For instance, 4 hours of QA is going to run at a much higher rate than 4 weeks of QA! Our basic starting rate for local QA work is R200 per hour, and for first-time relationships we generally offer a discounted model which often results in a rate somewhere in the range of R125 to R175 per hour, again, largely dependant on the amount of work booked.
This is an area of our business that we are also hoping to grow further as demand necessitates. What I mean by this is that we will expand it insofar as we are able to run at capacity on QA projects, both locally and internationally, with the goal of maintaining a self-functioning QA department that can continue to be of service to the South African game development community.
If making your game better is something that interests you, please drop me a DM here or an email at info [at] 24bitgames [dot] com for more information!