Babel launches new testing service

Babel has added a new testing product to its outsourced services for the games industry: the International Gameplay Testing Service.

The new service is intended to bridge the gap between market research and functionality testing. It goes live following the completion of four pilot projects for major publishers.

The International Gameplay Testing service will be based in Babel's offices in Brighton and Montreal. It will use the company's experience in localisation and localisation testing to give feedback on how games will be received in target markets across the world.

It will also cover subjective areas such as balancing, gameplay analysis, user evaluation and focus testing. Babel's testing teams will be able to draw on their experience of games from all publishers and genres during evaluation.

"We're able to give an independent and dispassionate opinion to publisher and developer alike at various stages of the process," commented Babel's managing director, Algy Williams.

"Using an outside source is particularly helpful when team members may be too close to a project to be entirely objective," he said.