User Requirements for Game Software Success: An Empirical Investigation (original) (raw)

User Requirements for Software Game Process; An Empirical Investigation

Cornell University - arXiv, 2021

This study attempts to provide a better understanding of the user dimension as a factor in software game success. It focuses mainly on an empirical investigation of the effect of user factors on the software game development process and finally on the quality of the resulting game. A quantitative survey was developed and conducted to identify key user dimensions. For this study, a survey was used to test the research model and hypotheses. The main contribution of this paper is to investigate empirically the influence of user key factors on software game development process that ultimately results in a higher quality final product. The results provide evidence that game development organizations must deal with multiple user key factors to remain competitive and handle high pressure in the software game industry.

Critical Success Factors to Improve the Game Development Process from a Developer's Perspective

The growth of the software game development industry is enormous and is gaining importance day by day. This growth imposes severe pressure and a number of issues and challenges on the game development community. Game development is a complex process, and one important game development choice is to consider the developer's perspective to produce good-quality software games by improving the game development process. The objective of this study is to provide a better understanding of the developer's dimension as a factor in software game success. It focuses mainly on an empirical investigation of the effect of key developer's factors on the software game development process and eventually on the quality of the resulting game. A quantitative survey was developed and conducted to identify key developer's factors for an enhanced game development process. For this study, the developed survey was used to test the research model and hypotheses. The results provide evidence that game development organizations must deal with multiple key factors to remain competitive and to handle high pressure in the software game industry. The main contribution of this paper is to investigate empirically the influence of key developer's factors on the game development process.

LINKING SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PHASE AND PRODUCT ATTRIBUTES WITH USER EVALUATION: A CASE STUDY ON GAMES

This paper presents an evaluation methodology to reveal the relationships between the attributes of software products, practices applied during the development phase and the user evaluation of the products. For the case study, the games sector has been chosen due to easy access to the user evaluation of this type of software products. Product attributes and practices applied during the development phase have been collected from the developers via questionnaires. User evaluation results were collected from a group of independent evaluators. Two bipartite networks were created using the gathered data. The first network maps software products to the practices applied during the development phase and the second network maps the products to the product attributes. According to the links, similarities were determined and subgroups of products were obtained according to selected development phase practices. By this way, the effect of development phase on the user evaluation has been investigated.

Analysis of Relationships among Diverse Types of Software Attributes for Assessing Quality Factors of Gaming Software

IJCSNS, 2010

The goal of this paper is to present a novel approach for assessment of the quality of Gaming software in terms of factors formulated by correlating its diversified attributes. All possible descriptive properties of customers, users and software products of the class Games were gathered under the three categories of 'customer attributes', 'user attributes' and 'engineering attributes'. The attributes were then put into category to category correlation and reduced. Some feed backs from the environment of functioning of the system were also considered to verify the reduction procedure and use the attributes for the purpose.

Video Game Development and User Experience

Human-Computer Interaction Series, 2009

In order to design new methodologies for evaluating the user experience of video games, it is imperative to initially understand two core issues. Firstly, how are video games developed at present, including components such as processes, timescales and staff roles, and secondly, how do studios design and evaluate the user experience. This chapter will discuss the video game development process and the practices that studios currently use to achieve the best possible user experience. It will present four case studies from game developers Disney Interactive (Black Rock Studio), Relentless, Zoe Mode, and HandCircus, each detailing their game development process and also how this integrates with the user experience evaluation. The case studies focus on different game genres, platforms, and target user groups, ensuring that this chapter represents a balanced view of current practices in evaluating user experience during the game development process.

Non-functional requirements that influence gaming experience

Proceedings of the 18th International Academic MindTrek Conference on Media Business, Management, Content & Services - AcademicMindTrek '14, 2014

Requirements engineering is an extremely crucial phase in the software development lifecycle, because mishaps in this stage are usually expensive to fix in later development phases. In the domain of computer games, requirements engineering is a heavily studied research field (39.3% of published papers are dealing with requirements [1]), since it is considered substantially different from traditional software requirements engineering (see [1] and [14]). The main point of differentiation is that almost all computer games share a common key-driver as requirement, i.e. user satisfaction. In this paper, we investigate the most important user satisfaction factors from computer games, though a survey on regular gamers. The results of the study suggest that, user satisfaction factors are not uniform across different types of games (game genres), but are heavily dependent on them. Therefore, this study underlines the most important non-functional requirements that developers and researchers should focus on, while dealing with game engineering.

Requirements engineering and the creative process in the video game industry

… , 2005. Proceedings. 13th …, 2005

The software engineering process in video game development is not clearly understood, hindering the development of reliable practices and processes for this field. An investigation of factors leading to success or failure in video game development suggests that many failures can be traced to problems with the transition from preproduction to production. Three examples, drawn from real video games, illustrate specific problems: 1) how to transform documentation from its preproduction form to a form that can be used as a basis for production, 2) how to identify implied information in preproduction documents, and 3) how to apply domain knowledge without hindering the creative process. We identify 3 levels of implication and show that there is a strong correlation between experience and the ability to identify issues at each level.

Playability in action videogames: A qualitative design model

Human-Computer …, 2002

In the 1990s, the videogame industry has managed to become the fastest growing segment of the entertainment industry in America. However, only a very low number of videogame products manage to cover the costs of production and generate earnings. According to traditional marketing wisdom, players' preferences are a core issue in creating successful products, and the game design process is crucial for guaranteeing players' satisfaction.

Games User Research: Practice, Methods, and Applications

Games User Research (GUR) is an emerging field that ties together Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Game Development. The GUR community has rapidly evolved over the past few years (spawning an Interna- tional Game Developers Association Special Interest Group). In this workshop, we are investigating different methodologies currently used in practice. We will high- light benefits and drawbacks in assessing game design issues hoping to gain insights into player experience. The outcome will be a collection of best practices on- line, showing practitioners and researchers how to ap- ply these techniques. We will also peer-review and pub- lish extended versions of paper submissions in a Cogni- tive Science Research Papers Special Issue on GUR. This will extend the discussion of topics beyond the workshop and serve as a platform for future work.