Know Your Bugs: A Survey of Issues in Automated Game Testing Literature

As the complexity of video games continues to evolve, so does the importance of effective game testing methodologies. To this end, automated game testing has emerged as a pivotal approach to ensure the quality and functionality of modern games. The objective of the present paper is to identify, through a literature review and the application of Open and Axial coding, the most commonly analysed and mentioned issues in automated game testing literature. The results of the study provide a taxonomy of 26 different issues that are assessed in the software engineering literature by automated game testing practice, grouped in five higher-level categories. The elicited taxonomy can serve as an instrument for game testers, researchers and tool developers to evaluate testing approaches and techniques, enable comparability of research results, and design instruments to investigate functional aspects of games in development.