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PhD Dissertation Defense - Sasha Volokh

Dissertation Title: Using Program Analysis to Determine Actions for Video Game Testing  
 
Date/Time: Tuesday, May 6th, 10:00am-12:00pm  
 
Location: Ginsburg Hall (GCS) - 402C - 4th Floor  
 
Committee: William G.J. Halfond (chair), Nenad Medvidovic, Chao Wang, Mukund Raghothaman, Andrew Nealen  
 
Abstract: In the competitive video game market, the quality of games released to consumers is crucial to their success. However, modern games often release with significant bugs, causing consumer dissatisfaction and a loss of business and reputation for the companies involved. Testing is a key mechanism by which such issues can be caught and addressed during the development process. Many testing approaches require a model of the game rules, which is not available by default for games built with typical game development practices. This poses a barrier to the adoption of more advanced testing techniques, requiring either an expert to model the game or a reliance upon imprecise generic models. At a minimum, knowledge of the possible player actions is crucial for thorough manual and automated testing, but determining a precise and complete model of the game actions is challenging for games built with typical game development practices. In my dissertation, I address these challenges through novel program analysis techniques capable of determining precise and complete models of the game actions. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques, I adapted them to specify the action spaces of automated game testing agents, as well as to generate instructions for assisting human testers. The results show that the action models determined via program analysis enable effective automated testing agent performance and are also capable of improving the exploratory testing performance of human testers.

Location: Ginsburg Hall (GCS) - 402C

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Sasha Volokh

This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.

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