Clasificación de los sistemas de BR

A vast majority of the problems facing the entertainment industry and its development are deeply rooted in the production methodology employed. Teams of approximately 100 people are still using methodologies that were developed at a time when ten people were consid-ered an excessively large team[97]. Specific features of game development have been found to prevent the success of great games. The major problems that arise are in the areas of

project management. The use of methodology focuses on game development, and takes into account the project management concept to help avoid management problems.

Games and software engineering comprise important aspects that can be mutually beneficial to understanding, as in the main they share the same methodology and problems. A game contains a confluence of interesting properties, such as emergence, real time interaction and challenging components, which create a new field of study [91].

Software engineering has greatly assisted the entertainment industry in its resolution of problems. The unique aspects of gaming, which are not available in traditional software development include the requirement for the game to be ‘fun‘, which cannot be assessed by any metric, and is purely subjective.

After a survey of the current game development methodology problems, we will highlight the main problems found in the literature:

Schedule Problems: According to Flynt [62], a key reason for a project being delivered behind schedule is that no target has been established. Likewise, problems may occur when an estimated deadline does not include the time needed for communication, and lacks doc-umentation or emergent requirements that may alter the system architecture and thereby cause serious problems. Furthermore, delay can be caused by a multidisciplinary approach;

as it is essential to include input from different teams, as delays may occur. A task involves a series of risks that imply underestimates, resulting in cumulative schedule delays. Flynt et al [62] report that developers recurrently fail in their estimates, due to a lack of historical data to assist them in determining a realistic time frame to complete a task [111].

Crunch Time Problems: In the entertainment industry crunch time is a term that is typically used for the period of work when overload may occur; this is usually, in the final weeks before the validation phase or the deadline for project delivery. During this period, the developer may work in excess of 12 hours a day and take between 6 and 7 days to complete unfinished tasks. In the entertainment industry, crunch time is a fact of life [111].

Scope and Feature Creep Problems: Feature creep is a term used in the entertainment

70

industry when a new functionality is added during the development phase. This increases the project scope and alters the schedule timing [111]. Any new functionality should be evaluated carefully. Any unmanaged feature creep can lead to increased error, possible de-fects and increased likelihood of failure. However, some feature creep is unavoidable, since it adds fun to the game [78]. Flynt et al [62], report the biggest reason for game project imperfection is the failure to accurately establish project scope.

Risk management helps a project manager to understand the changes to a plan and identify the potential costs in terms of time and money. The project scope will never be a true reflection of required effort, due to the iterative and exploratory nature of game develop-ment; however, it can be an effective guide when predicting success, such as when discussing milestones, time lines, and budgets[78].

Technology Problems: All games are technology dependent. Technological components generate risks to game projects that can require greater effort and a higher investment of time. According to Gershenfeld et al [64], the risks associated with technology risks are generally higher when a team works on a new platform, because of two factors; the first being that the developer has not worked with the technology before. The second being that related hardware frequently contains problems.

Documentation Problems: Lack of documentation is a common source of additional dif-ficulties. Documentation can be valuable in reducing feature creep. Having a finite amount of documentation is useful when game developers work on difficult projects, as this helps them to obtain a good estimate of project scope and schedule. Usually, Game Design Docu-ment(GDD) generates considerable uncertainty around a game’s goal and solution require-ments [87].

Collaboration and Team Management Problems: One of the main problems when creating games is communication between teams. The teams in games include people with distinct profiles, such as developers, plastic artists, musicians, scriptwriters and designers.

Different teams need to collaborate and explain their work and instructions to others.

Training Problems: One of the biggest problems with Agile game development especially, and in game development methodology generally, is new employee training.

Linear Process Problems: Game development is not a linear process [62]. Iteration in-forms the lifeblood of game development. Game developers use the Waterfall methodology with enhancements, adding iteration to the methodology.

Petrillo et al[111] present in Figure 5.1 the histogram of occurrence of problems in a decreas-ing sequence. From the previous study, we can observe that the most traditional software problems are the same as the game development problems.

Figure 5.1: Occurrence of Problems in Current Game Development Methodology [111].

72