A Digital Game Maturity Model (DGMM)

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Digital Game Maturity Model (DGMM) to evaluate and improve game development processes, addressing industry challenges through a structured assessment framework and case studies.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive maturity model specifically for digital game development, including assessment tools and validation through real-world case studies.

Findings

Assessed two organizations' game development maturity levels.

Provided a structured framework for evaluating game development practices.

Demonstrated the model's applicability in real-world settings.

Abstract

Game development is an interdisciplinary concept that embraces artistic, software engineering, management, and business disciplines. This research facilitates a better understanding of important dimensions of digital game development methodology. Game development is considered as one of the most complex tasks in software engineering. The increased popularity of digital games, the challenges faced by game development organizations in developing quality games, and high competition in the digital game industry demand a game development maturity assessment. Consequently, this study presents a Digital Game Maturity Model to evaluate the current development methodology in an organization. The framework of this model consists of assessment questionnaires, a performance scale, and a rating method. The main goal of the questionnaires is to collect information about current processes and practices. In general, this research contributes towards formulating a comprehensive and unified strategy for game development maturity evaluation. Two case studies were conducted and their assessment results reported. These demonstrate the level of maturity of current development practices in two organizations.