Game Development Software Engineering Process Life Cycle: A Systematic Review

TL;DR

This systematic review analyzes the current state of research on the game development software engineering process life cycle, highlighting the focus on production phases and the need for more research in post-production.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of existing research across all phases of game development and identifies gaps, especially in post-production activities.

Findings

Most studies focus on the production phase.

Pre-production phase is also well-studied.

Post-production phase has limited research.

Abstract

Software game is a kind of application that is used not only for entertainment, but also for serious purposes that can be applicable to different domains such as education, business, and health care. Although the game development process differs from the traditional software development process because it involves interdisciplinary activities. Software engineering techniques are still important for game development because they can help the developer to achieve maintainability, flexibility, lower effort and cost, and better design. The purpose of this study is to assesses the state of the art research on the game development software engineering process and highlight areas that need further consideration by researchers. In the study, we used a systematic literature review methodology based on well-known digital libraries. The largest number of studies have been reported in the production phase of the game development software engineering process life cycle, followed by the pre-production phase. By contrast, the post-production phase has received much less research activity than the pre-production and production phases. The results of this study suggest that the game development software engineering process has many aspects that need further attention from researchers; that especially includes the postproduction phase.