It’s not for PC gamers but Razer’s new AI QA Copilot could ultimately benefit every PC gamer out there, and it’s looking like it could be a killer app that AI needs right now
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Making a big game that will stand out from the crowd and sell well requires many things to be exactly right. Alongside designing and building the story, graphics, and gameplay, developers have to battle through endless bugs—from a simple animation not syncing correctly to something that ultimately breaks the whole game. Any tool that can make the whole process of tracking and squashing bugs easier and quicker is going to be of interest to any developer, and now there’s a new one on the market from the most unlikely of companies: Razer.
Yes, that Razer. The one that makes mice, keyboards, chairs, RGB lights, all that kind of stuff. So what on Earth are they doing making quality assurance software for game developers?
To answer that question, we only need to go back in time a few months to the CES event in January, where Razer launched Project Ava, an AI-powered gaming buddy that gives you help, directions, and sassy advice during a game. Razer told me game developers had inquired whether it could be used to do the same for programmers and testers and that ultimately led to what I saw at the GDC—AI QA Copilot, part of Razer’s new software ecosystem, Wyvrn.
Essentially, it’s an automated system that will identify bugs during game testing, generating information about the nature of the bug, steps to replicate it, and capturing footage of the issue in question. It then gets entered into a database and flagged with a suitable severity level. The AI model is trained specifically for different genres of games, so a different model is used for a MOBA shooter than for open-world first-person RPG.
I watched a demonstration of it in action and while it was clearly a ‘staged’ scenario, it was detailed enough to capture a range of bugs, such as failing a hitbox check, incorrect damage being applied, an animation bugging out, and so on. It was certainly better than something very similar to Razer’s system that I also saw briefly showcased at the GDC: Nvidia’s own AI QA bug assessment system.
From a QA tester’s perspective, Razer’s system takes over the parts of the role that could be deemed tedious or time-consuming, such as the logging and tracking of the bugs themselves, leaving more time for exploring either more of the game or just going back over the bug again and again to confirm the issue. While Razer’s system can’t actually fix any bugs, it will eventually be able to offer suggestions on how some may be resolved.
One concern I have is that AI is well-known for being a tad unreliable at times and I’m certain there will be times when the system will generate false positives or incorrectly identify the steps that created the fault in the first place. I also wonder if Microsoft might have something to say about it being called AI QA Copilot.
But if it all works as intended, and it’s as popular and successful as Razer hope it will be, then gamers are the ones who are going to ultimately benefit from anything developed with AI QA Copilot helping things along the way. Just think about how many PC games launch these days with a raft of bugs—even if Razer’s model only helps reduce this by 30%, for example, it’ll be a very welcome change.
