In general, pre-production in the 1980s included sketches and test routines from the sole developer. As mentioned earlier in section 2, games have specific features that the conventional software development process cannot fully address. In recent years, research into the lifecycle problems of the GDSE process has become more active because games, unlike other software products, offer user entertainment and fun and developers should attach more importance to these aspects. The implementation phase is shorter than in the traditional software implementation process due to short time-to-market.
This intensity of the production phase study has attracted the interest of many researchers and the maximum research activity has been reported because the GDSE domain requires efficient development and coding techniques. McShaffry also emphasized the importance of the production phase to counteract poor internal quality. In the post-production phase, there is much less research activity than in the pre-production and production phases. The development of the game as a career option is a recent trend, in which the young generation shows interest. Since the career option is new, there are many misconceptions that raise doubts among new people who want to choose to develop the game as a race. Choosing the development of the game as a race depends on your interest in the field.
The results of this study will help researchers identify lifecycle research gaps in the GDSE process and highlight areas for future research contributions. This study is also part of a larger project with the aim of proposing a digital model for the maturity of games (Aleem et al. 2016a). The important identified dimensions are the developer’s perspective (Aleem et al. 2016b), the consumer, the company (Aleem et al. 2016c), and the process itself. The GDSE process proved incredibly challenging as game technology, including game platforms and engines, changes quickly and encryption modules are very rarely used in any other game project.
Creating assets in the production phase is the fundamental phase in which game developers create the different assets and then use them in the game implementation phase. Media production company (https://wallawallastudio.com/) et al. developed an audio processing library for the development of Flash games. Contains commonly used audio processing routines and web games for sound interaction.
The multidisciplinary nature of game development processes that combine sound, art, control systems, artificial intelligence and human factors makes the practice of software game development different from traditional software development. Underlined software engineering techniques help game development to achieve maintainability, flexibility, less effort and cost and better design. The aim of this study is to evaluate groundbreaking research into the game development software engineering process and highlight areas to be further explored by researchers. In the study, we used a systematic literature search methodology based on well-known digital libraries. The largest number of studies have been reported in the life cycle production phase of the game development software engineering process, followed by the pre-production phase.
A game engine is a kind of special software framework that is used in the production phase to create and develop games. Game engines mainly consist of a combination of core functionalities such as sound, a physics or collision detection engine, AI, scripting, animation, networks, memory management and scene graphics. Hudlicka identified a set of requirements for a game engine, including identifying the player’s emotions and social interactions between the characters in the game. This is the only study that has highlighted the important functionalities that an affective game engine should support. The first type is the high-level script engine that includes packaging and refinement of the script engine. The second type, the low-level scripting engine, contains only feature packages associated with API.
Osborne-O’Hagan et al. has carried out a systematic review of the literature on game software development processes. In total, 404 industry and academy studies were analyzed and various software development models used for game development were discussed. The results of the study were that qualitative studies reported more agile practices than the hybrid approach.
A game developer must obtain a diploma; It can be in computer or computer technology. A degree in game programming includes C ++ classes, calculus, object-oriented design, game algorithms, computer graphics and network fundamentals. Students can obtain a degree in game management through regular college or online courses. Studies in this category suggested different types of platforms for game development.
However, the proposed stages of the development of the GDSE process life cycle do not guarantee a quality development process. In addition to research themes, more researchers used exploratory research methods; As far as empirical research methods are concerned, more researchers have conducted studies than case studies and experiments. In general, the results of this study are important for the development of good quality digital games.