Abstract
Agile methods and practices are largely deployed in software engineering. Game development shares many features that have given rise to the emergence of agility in software engineering. There is, however, a lack of understanding of the extent to which agile methods and practices are actually deployed in video game development and with which impacts. This paper reports on a survey into Finnish game studios. It shows that Scrum and, to a lesser degree, XP and Kanban are frequently used in the game studios. The most positive impacts of agility concern communication, quality of video games, and finding fun and implementable features earlier.
Access provided by Autonomous University of Puebla. Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abbas, N., Gravell, A.M., Wills, G.B.: Historical roots of agile methods: Where did ‘Agile Thinking’ come from? In: Abrahamsson, P., Baskerville, R., Conboy, K., Fitzgerald, B., Morgan, L., Wang, X. (eds.) XP 2008. LNBIP, vol. 9, pp. 94–103. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)
Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J., Warsta, J.: Agile software development methods – Review and analysis, vol. 478. VTT Publications (2002)
Agile Alliance: Agile Manifesto (2001), http://agilemanifesto.org/
Ambler, S.W.: Surveys Exploring the Current State of Information Technology Practices (2011), www.ambysoft.com/surveys (accessed April 2011)
Anderson, D.: Kanban – Successful evolutionary change for your technology business. Blue Hole Press (2010)
Apperley, T.: Genre and game studies: towards a critical approach to video game genres. Simulation Gaming 37(6), 6–23 (2006)
Baskerville, R., Pries-Heje, J.: Short cycle time systems development. Information Systems Journal 14, 237–264 (2004)
Bates, B.: Game design, 2nd edn. Thomson Course Technology (2004)
Battarbee, K.: Co-experience. Understanding user experience in social interaction. Dissertation thesis, University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland (2003)
Beck, K.: Extreme programming explained: embrace change. Addison-Wesley (1999)
Beck, K., Anders, C.: Extreme programming explained: embrace change, 2nd edn. Addison-Wesley (2004)
Bethke, E.: Game development and production. Wordware Publishing, Inc. (2003)
Blow, J.: Game Development: Harder Than You Think. Queue 1(10), 28–37 (2004)
Boehm, B., Turner, R.: Rebalancing your organization’s agility and discipline. In: Maurer, F., Wells, D. (eds.) XP/Agile Universe 2003. LNCS, vol. 2753, pp. 1–8. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Chandler, H.: The game production handbook, 2nd edn. Infinity Science Press (2009)
Conboy, K.: Agility from first principles: reconstructing the concept of agility in information systems development. Information Systems Research 20(3), 329–354 (2009)
Crawford, C.: The art of computer game design. McGraw-Hill (1984)
FIGMA (2012), http://www.figma.fi/index.php/tiedotteet/113-suomen-pelimyynti-laski-viime-vuonna-pelikehittajat-huikeassa-kasvussa
Flynt, J., Salem, O.: Software Engineering for Game Developers, 1st edn. Software Engineering Series. Course Technology PTR (2004)
Forrester: From agile development to agile engagement. Forrester Research (May 2009), http://www.forrester.com/research
Fullerton, T., Swain, C., Hoffman, S.: Game design workshop: designing, prototyping and playtesting games. CMP Books, San Francisco (2004)
Gershenfeld, A., Loparco, M., Barajas, C.: Game plan: the insider’s guide to breaking in and succeeding in the computer and video game business. St. Martin’s Griffin Press, New York (2003)
Gibson, A.: Agile game development and fun. Technical Report, University of Colorado, Department of Computer Science (2007), http://www.cs.colorado.edu/department/publications/theses/docs/bs/andrea_gibson.pdf
Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., Zubek, R.: MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. In: Proc. of the Challenges in Game AI Workshop (2004)
Iivari, J., Iivari, N.: The relationship between organizational culture and the deployment of agile methods. Information and Software Technology 53(5), 509–520 (2011)
Kanode, C., Haddad, H.: Software engineering challenges in game development. In: 6th Intern. Conf. on Information Technology: New Generations, pp. 260–265 (2009)
Keith, C.: Agile game development with Scrum. Addison-Wesley (2010)
Kitchenham, B., Pfleeger, S.: Principles of survey research. Part 1: Turning lemons in lemonade. SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes 26(6), 16–18 (2001)
Kitchenham, B., Pfleeger, S.: Principles of survey research. Part 2: Designing a survey. SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes 27(1), 18–20 (2002)
Kitchenham, B., Pfleeger, S.: Principles of survey research. Part 4: questionnaire evaluation. SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes 27(3), 20–23 (2002)
Kitchenham, B., Pfleeger, S.: Principles of survey research. Part 6: Data analysis. SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes 28(2), 24–27 (2003)
Kniberg, H., Skarin, M.: Kanban and Scrum – making the most of both, Enterprise software Development Series, InfoQ (2009)
Koivisto, E., Suomela, R.: Using prototypes in early pervasive game development. In: Sandbox Symposium, San Diego (2007)
Kreimeier, B.: Game design methods: A 2003 survey (2003), http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2892/game_design_methods_a_2003_survey.php
Lewis, C., Whitehead, J.: The Whats and the Whys of games and software engineering. In: Proc. of Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, pp. 1–4 (2011)
Manninen, T., Kujanpää, T., Vallius, L., Korva, T., Koskinen, P.: Game production process: A preliminary study. University of Oulu, Finland (2006)
McGuire, M., Jenkins, O.: Creating Games: Mechanics, Content, and Technology. A K Peters (2009)
Moore, M., Novak, J.: Game industry career guide. Cengage Learning, Delmar (2010)
Musil, J., Schweda, A., Winkler, D., Biffl, S.: Improving video game development: Facilitating heterogeneous team collaboration through flexible software processes. In: Riel, A., O’Connor, R., Tichkiewitch, S., Messnarz, R. (eds.) EuroSPI 2010. CCIS, vol. 99, pp. 83–94. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Musil, J., Schweda, A., Winkler, D., Biffl, S.: A survey on a state of the practice in video game development, Report IFS-QSE 10/04. Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Vienna (2010)
Petrillo, F., Pimenta, M.: Is agility out there? Agile practices in game development. In: Proc. of the ACM Int. Conf. on Design of Communication, pp. 9–15 (2010)
Petrillo, F., Pimenta, M., Trindade, F., Dietrich, C.: What went wrong? A survey of problems in game development. ACM Computer in Entertainment 7(1) (2009)
Poppendieck, M., Poppendieck, T.: Lean software development – An Agile toolkit. Addison & Wesley (2003)
Potanin, R.: Forces in play: the business and culture of videogame production. In: Proc. of the 3rd International Conf. on Fun and Games, pp. 135–143 (2010)
PricewaterhouseCoopers: Global entertainment and media outlook 2012-2016; Video games (2012), http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/global-entertainment-media-outlook/segment-insights/video-games.jhtml
Rabin, S.: Introduction to game development. Charles River Media (2005)
Rodriguez, P., Markkula, J., Oivo, M., Turula, K.: Survey on agile and lean usage in Finnish software industry. In: Proc. of ESEM 2012 Conference, pp. 139–148 (2012)
Rollings, A., Morris, D.: Game Architecture and Design. The Coriolis Group (2000)
Rouse, R.: Game Design: Theory & Practice. Wordware, Inc. (2000)
Rucker, R.: Software engineering and computer games. Addison Wesley (2002)
Runeson, P., Höst, M.: Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Empirical Software Engineering 14(2), 131–164 (2009)
Sanders, E.: Virtuosos of the experience domain. In: IDSA Education Conf. (2001)
Schwaber, K., Beedle, M.: Agile software development with Scrum. Prentice-Hall (2002)
Schwaber, K., Sutherland, J.: The Scrum guide – The definitive guide to Scrum: The rules of the game (2011), http://www.scrum.org/storage/scrumguides/Scrum_Guide.pdf
Schofield, B.: Embracing fun: Why extreme programming is great for game development. Gamasutra: The Art & Business of Making Games (March 2007)
Stacey, P., Nandhakumar, S.: Opening up to agile games development. Comm. of the ACM 51(12), 143–146 (2008)
Tran, M., Biddle, R.: Collaboration in serious game development: a case study. In: Proc. of the 2008 Conf. on Future Play, pp. 49–56 (2008)
VersionOne: State of Agile Survey – The state of Agile Development (2011), http://www.versionone.com/pdf/2011_State_of_Agile_Development_Survey_Results.pdf
Vijayasarathy, L., Turk, D.: Agile software development: a survey of early adopters. Journal of Information Technology Management 19(2), 1–8 (2008)
Wang, X., Coboy, K., Pikkarainen, M.: Assimilation of agile practices in use. Information Systems Journal 22(6), 435–455 (2012)
van de Weerd, I., de Weerd, S., Brinkkemper, S.: Developing a reference method for game production by method comparison. In: Ralyté, J., Brinkkemper, S., Henderson-Sellers, B. (eds.) Situational Method Engineering: Fundamentals and Experiences. IFIP, vol. 244, pp. 313–327. Springer, Boston (2007)
Womack, J., Jones, D.: Lean thinking: Banish waste and create wealth in your corporation. Simon & Schuster (1996)
Ye, Z.: Genres as a tool for understanding and analyzing user experience in games. In: Proc. of Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 773–774 (2004)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Koutonen, J., Leppänen, M. (2013). How Are Agile Methods and Practices Deployed in Video Game Development? A Survey into Finnish Game Studios. In: Baumeister, H., Weber, B. (eds) Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming. XP 2013. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 149. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38314-4_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38314-4_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-38313-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-38314-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)