Are the Old Days Gone? A Survey on Actual Software Engineering Processes in Video Game Industry

1. Are the old days gone? A survey on actual software engineering
processes in video game industry
Cristiano Politowski, Fabio Petrillo, Lisandra Fontoura, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc
Federal University of Santa Maria (Brazil)
École Polytechnique de Montréal
1/##
Fifth International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering (GAS 2016)

2. GDC 2016 State of the Industry Report
2
30%
16%
11%
Programmers

3. Does game industry have
the same problems that
"traditional" software
industry?
3

4. 2006
4

5. 5/##
20 game industry
postmortems

6. "In fact, all the main problems of the
traditional software industry are also
found in the games industry "
6
Petrillo, F., Pimenta, M., Trindade, F., & Dietrich, C. (2009). What went wrong? A survey of problems in game development.
Computers in Entertainment, 7(1), 1.

7. What are the most
important problems in
game industry?
7

8. 1) Unrealistic scope
2) Feature creep
3) Cutting features
8
Petrillo, F., Pimenta, M., Trindade, F., & Dietrich, C. (2009). What went wrong? A survey of problems in game development.
Computers in Entertainment, 7(1), 1.

9. So, how can we mitigate
these problems?
9

10. "We believe that adoption of agile
practices in game development can
achieve promising results. "
10
Petrillo, F., & Pimenta, M. (2010). Is agility out there? Agile Practices in Game Development. In Proceedings of the 28th ACM
International Conference on Design of Communication - SIGDOC ’10 (p. 9). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press.

11. 2016
11

12. 12

13. “[Game projects] requires novel
combination of strategies including
Waterfall and Agile to compete in the
market place.”
13
Gary Keith Brubaker - GAS 2016 Keynote

14. Today, Gary and Roger told
basicly about Process
Practices!
14

15. "The old days are gone. You can't expect producers or leads to
come up with a huge waterfall of everything they thought would
get done over the next three years. In the game development
business, it's insane to think you have any insight into what your
team will be doing one year from now. You can set major
milestones with hard dates, but filling in all the details between
those points is an exercise in futility. "
15
Fridley, M. (2013). Postmortem: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Retrieved from
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/197269/postmortem_kingdoms_of_amalur_.php

16. Are these claims general or
a "cherry picking" cases?
16

17. RQ: Are "the old days"
really gone in video game
industry?
17

18. Methodology
18

19. 19

20. Postmortem Search (2010 - now)
20
*63

21. 21
Postmortem Filtering (682 terms)

22. 22
Postmortem Analysis (20 articles)

23. Process Metamodel
23

24. 24
BPMN Process Construction

25. 25
BPMN Process Construction
Postmortem Analysis (20 articles)

26. 20 process models
26

27. 27
Iterative Process - Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

28. Hybrid Process - Brutal Legend
28

29. Ad-Hoc Process - Aaaa! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
29

30. Waterfall Process - Scooby-Doo
30

31. Results
31

32. 32
Process occurrences by category

33. 33
Agile practices in game projects

34. Conclusions
34

35. Conclusion 1
The “old days” are gone,
but not completely at all.
35

36. Conclusion 2
Iterative process is
currently mainstream in the
game industry.
36

37. Conclusion 3
Agility are increasing in the
last years.
37

38. Conclusion 4
Actually video game and “traditional”
software development share similar
processes and practices.
38

39. Discussion
We believe that iterative process and agile practice
benefits are yet misunderstood by some game developers,
managers, producers, publishers, and educators.
.
39

40. Suggestion
Educators include game agile
methodologies in game
development courses.
40

41. Future Work
41

42. Montréal/QC
is defining it as the gaming
capital of Canada!
42

43. Montréal
some 100 companies in the
video game industry
43

44. 10 thousand people were
employed in Québec’s video
game industry.
44

45. Perform empirical studies
on SE practices and process
on
game industry.
45

46. Perform empirical studies
on SE practices and process
on
game industry.
46

47. I would like invite you to
work together in this
research project! :-)
47

48. Are the old days gone? A survey on actual software engineering
processes in video game industry
Cristiano Politowski, Fabio Petrillo, Lisandra Fontoura, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc
48/##
Thank you!
fabio@petrillo.com