Video Game Developer Glossary "B"

Glossary by George Spanos with Special thanks to Xan

Suggest a term here

Beta:

A Beta version of a video game has all features completed. In addition, no new content should be added to the game at this point and only bug fixing should remain. This is the stage that happens after Alpha and just before Certification.

Black Box:

A black box design is a level that can have many different paths for the player to investigate. For example, the game designer may setup a level for the player to play through stealthily so as to covertly evade enemies. But if the player wanted to, they could also play through in a more combative state, alerting all nearby enemies.

Bug:

All software contains "bugs" or software errors. It is virtually impossible to ship a game without some level of errors, or bugs in it. The goal by the quality assurance department is to find these bugs and report them so that programmers can fix them before the game is released to the public. A game will have a large amount of bugs as it goes through it's development cycle. Bugs are a fact of life when creating software and will be found at various numbers through a development cycle.

Build:

A build is a version of the game that can be played in a standalone format. It has all the required computer code and is effectively a "snapshot" of the game as it currently stands. A build may be said to be "broken" if it does not run. Through a game's development there will be many, many builds of the game made, and content creators often need a build in order to run the game and view or hear their contributions to the game. The game does not run without a build.

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