Cops and Robbers

Team:

Me | Testing Manager, part-time

Eric Littell | Project Manager

Gustavo Kares | Educational Lead, Level Designer

Aki Koivula | Lead Programmer

Sirumilla Kotilainen | 2D Artist

Hong Chae-Won | 2D Artist

Arsenii Panov | Programmer

Daniil Serov | Programmer

Ha Hai | Programmer

Miia Jeskanen | Programmer

Roni Rissanen | Programmer

Ville Tamminen | Programmer

Project Description

Cops and Robbers is a 2D mobile game for Android that is targeted for children aged 6 to 10 years old and their families. The game was commissioned by the city of Kotka's Cultural Center for Children. There was also another project commissioned by the city of Kotka but it didn't get finished during the internship.

The main objective is to get families (especially children) to move more: walk around the city, exercise and interact with their environment. To do that, the game has a map that has crime scenes all over Kotka that need investigating. On the crime scene player gets tasks that they need to complete to "clear" the crime scene. The given tasks are from different categories like physical, empathy, logical thinking etc. By clearing the crime scenes player gets collectable items that can be used to unlock new characters. In addition to pre-made crime scenes, the player can create their own crime scenes and choose what types of tasks they want to include.

Cops and Robbers is available in Google Play Store.

My part

I got an internship in Xamk Game Studios and I was offered a position as a part-time testing manager. Even though that wasn't the thing I wanted to do in the summer, I accepted the offer. Originally the position included working as a testing manager to everyone in the internship but because I could only work part-time due to other work my job description was reduced to include only my own team.

As a part of the team I took part in planning the project but I was also part of the manager team so it was my responsibility to handle all things testing and to make sure the game is working and meets the clients requirements. Even though I was in managing position I felt left out and like my job wasn't appreciated as much as other managers' and my thoughts were not listened. When we decided to let players create their own crime scenes I told there has to be some restrictions like if there's already a crime scene nearby, the player can't make a new one and it was just ignored until we had a testing day with all teams and suddenly had 20 crime scenes on top of eachother because everyone wanted to make their own and no one knew which one was theirs and couldn't even choose which one they wanted to clear..

Tasks

I was asked to make a testing plan and testing policies that each of the intern teams could use during the summer and to provide all necessary documents. We just had a game testing course in the spring so I used the materials to check what needs to be in a testing plan. The internship wasn't really that long of a time period so I narrowed down the plan so it would be simple enough for the teams to follow.

During the summer we checked each teams' progress with a staff member and talked about the importance of testing. When asked how many had read my policies and the plan, almost everyone admitted that they hadn't read them. My team was the only one that was somehow following the policies. Even most of my team didn't do testing as instructed and the only ones to actually fill the documents were me, our project manager and our lead programmer (still mostly me). Everyone thought testing was pointless.

When the whole internship-wide testing day was approaching, I was asked to provide guidelines about our virtual testing environment because we were in the middle of a pandemic and were all working remotely. So I did a lot of research on virtual testing environments and quantitative and qualitative testing methods and created the guidelines. My team was yet again the only one somewhat following them.

Otherwise my days were full of testing with and without the code and filling documents. I had to remind our programmers multiple times to comment their code so I (who didn't have any prior experience in programming and just got out of my first year) could understand what the code was supposed to do but it again got ignored until the lead programmer also reminded them to comment their code.