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

TL;DR

This survey analyzes postmortem reports to assess current software engineering practices in the video game industry, revealing a shift towards iterative and Agile methods but with continued use of traditional waterfall processes.

Contribution

It introduces a methodology for analyzing postmortem data and provides empirical insights into the persistence of traditional practices alongside Agile in game development.

Findings

Iterative practices are used in at least 65% of projects.

45% of projects explicitly adopt Agile practices.

Waterfall process is still used in at least 30% of projects.

Abstract

In the past 10 years, several researches studied video game development process who proposed approaches to improve the way how games are developed. These approaches usually adopt agile methodologies because of claims that traditional practices and the waterfall process are gone. However, are the "old days" really gone in the game industry? In this paper, we present a survey of software engineering processes in video game industry from postmortem project analyses. We analyzed 20 postmortems from Gamasutra Portal. We extracted their processes and modelled them through using the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). This work presents three main contributions. First, a postmortem analysis methodology to identify and extract project processes. Second, the study main result: \textbf{the "old days" are gone, but not completely}. \textbf{Iterative practices} are increasing and are applied to at least \textbf{65\% of projects} in which \textbf{45\% of this projects} explicitly adopted Agile practices. However, \textbf{waterfall} process is still applied at least \textbf{30\% of projects}. Finally, we discuss some implications, directions and opportunities for video game development community.