A Digital Game Maturity Model (DGMM)

A Digital Game Maturity Model (DGMM) Saiqa Aleem, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Faheem Ahmed A R T I C L E I N F O Article history:
Received
Received in revised form
Accepted

Keywords: Software game
Game performance Video game Online game Process assessment Game development methodology

A B S T R A C T 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.

1. Introduction The digital game market throughout the world has grown by over 7%–8% annually and has reached annual sales of around $5.5 billion in 2015 [1]. Newzoo [2] has also reported that the world-wide digital game market will reach $113.3 billion by
2. The tremendous growth rate of the digital game market makes it obvious that game technology is easily accessible and has become more convenient. As a result, more and more people like to play games and have become motivated to design their own games. Furthermore, the game industry is so innovative that any technological advances either in hardware or software are applied to games before being adopted by other scientific fields [2],[3]. This remarkable growth of the digital game industry is capturing everyone’s attention and also contributing to economic growth on a national level. Digital games are software applications that are installed on hardware devices such as video game consoles, computers, handheld devices, and PDAs. Digital game development involves multidisciplinary activities, which make it a complex task that is different from traditional software development. The multidisciplinary nature of the processes involved, which combine sound, art, control systems, artificial intelligence, and human factors, distinguish game development from other types of software development. It has become critically important to improve the game development process to address the issues faced by game development organizations in developing high-quality games to remain competitive and meet their financial objectives.
   Digital game development is a complex task requiring real-time, high-quality performance. A number of game development tasks like real-time audio playback, high display frame rate, and fast processor response have an impact on game performance. Game programming is another difficult task that requires expert programmers dealing with thousands of lines of code. The variety of multi-disciplinary tasks, the low level of programming, and the large size of programs demand straightforward documentation, flexible design, and sustainable implementation. These will also help to ensure effective collaboration among the various development groups and to expedite future developments. Consequently, game developers need best practices guidelines and an assessment model to deal with the challenges they face in carrying out current processes. Ultimately, this will help them to improve current practices and will enable them to achieve high-quality levels. Many researchers have discussed game development challenges. Pertillo et al. [5] surveyed the problems faced by game development organizations. The problems identified are categorized into four groups: scheduling problems, quality problems, budget problems, and management- and business-related problems. The overall game development process combines both an engineering process and the creation of artistic assets. Ramadan and Widyani [6] compared various game development strategies from a management perspective, and some researchers [7], [8], [9] have proposed frameworks for game development. To manage the development lifecycle effectively, guidelines based on best practices are required. Pertillo and Pimenta [10] highlighted the presence of agile practices in game devel

…(Full text truncated)…