@ARTICLE{Politowski20-IST-GameIndustryProblems,
   AUTHOR       = {Cristiano Politowski and Fabio Petrillo and 
      Gabriel Cavalheiro Ullmann and Yann-Ga�l Gu�h�neuc},
   JOURNAL      = {Information and Software Technology (IST)},
   TITLE        = {Game Industry Problems: an Extensive Analysis of the 
      Gray Literature},
   YEAR         = {2021},
   MONTH        = {June},
   NOTE         = {18 pages.},
   OPTNUMBER    = {},
   PAGES        = {106538},
   VOLUME       = {134},
   EDITOR       = {G�nther Ruhe},
   KEYWORDS     = {Topic: <b>Video game development</b>, Venue: <b>IST</b>},
   PUBLISHER    = {Elsevier},
   URL          = {http://www.ptidej.net/publications/documents/IST21.doc.pdf},
   ABSTRACT     = {\textbf{Context:} Given its competitiveness, the 
      video-game industry has a closed-source culture. Hence, little is 
      known about the problems faced by game developers. However, game 
      developers do share information about their game projects through 
      postmortems, which describe informally what happened during the 
      projects. \textbf{Objective:} The software-engineering research 
      community and game developers would benefit from a state of the 
      problems of the video game industry, in particular the problems faced 
      by game developers, their evolution in time, and their root causes. 
      This state of the practice would allow researchers and practitioners 
      to work towards solving these problems. \textbf{Method:} We analyzed 
      200 postmortems from 1997 to 2019, resulting in 927 problems divided 
      into 20 types. Through our analysis, we described the overall 
      landscape of game industry problems in the past 23 years and how 
      these problems evolved over the years. We also give details on the 
      most common problems, their root causes, and possible solutions. We 
      finally discuss suggestions for future projects. \textbf{Results:} We 
      observe that (1) the game industry suffers from management and 
      production problems in the same proportion; (2) management problems 
      decreased over the years, giving space to business problems, while 
      production problems remained constant; (3a) technical and game design 
      problems are decreasing over the years, the latter only after the 
      last decade; (3b) problems related to the team increase over the last 
      decade; (3c) marketing problems are the ones that had the biggest 
      increase over the 23 years compared to other problem types; (4) 
      finally, the majority of the main root causes are related to people, 
      not technologies. Conclusions: In this paper, we provide a state of 
      the practice for researchers to understand and study video-game 
      development problems. We also offer suggestions to help practitioners 
      to avoid the most common problems in future projects.}
}

{"_id":"ovz4mNJuGveXRyjrs","bibbaseid":"politowski-petrillo-ullmann-guhneuc-gameindustryproblemsanextensiveanalysisofthegrayliterature-2021","author_short":["Politowski, C.","Petrillo, F.","Ullmann, G. C.","Gu�h�neuc, Y."],"bibdata":{"bibtype":"article","type":"article","author":[{"firstnames":["Cristiano"],"propositions":[],"lastnames":["Politowski"],"suffixes":[]},{"firstnames":["Fabio"],"propositions":[],"lastnames":["Petrillo"],"suffixes":[]},{"firstnames":["Gabriel","Cavalheiro"],"propositions":[],"lastnames":["Ullmann"],"suffixes":[]},{"firstnames":["Yann-Ga�l"],"propositions":[],"lastnames":["Gu�h�neuc"],"suffixes":[]}],"journal":"Information and Software Technology (IST)","title":"Game Industry Problems: an Extensive Analysis of the Gray Literature","year":"2021","month":"June","note":"18 pages.","optnumber":"","pages":"106538","volume":"134","editor":[{"firstnames":["G�nther"],"propositions":[],"lastnames":["Ruhe"],"suffixes":[]}],"keywords":"Topic: <b>Video game development</b>, Venue: <b>IST</b>","publisher":"Elsevier","url":"http://www.ptidej.net/publications/documents/IST21.doc.pdf","abstract":"\\textbfContext: Given its competitiveness, the video-game industry has a closed-source culture. Hence, little is known about the problems faced by game developers. However, game developers do share information about their game projects through postmortems, which describe informally what happened during the projects. \\textbfObjective: The software-engineering research community and game developers would benefit from a state of the problems of the video game industry, in particular the problems faced by game developers, their evolution in time, and their root causes. This state of the practice would allow researchers and practitioners to work towards solving these problems. \\textbfMethod: We analyzed 200 postmortems from 1997 to 2019, resulting in 927 problems divided into 20 types. Through our analysis, we described the overall landscape of game industry problems in the past 23 years and how these problems evolved over the years. We also give details on the most common problems, their root causes, and possible solutions. We finally discuss suggestions for future projects. \\textbfResults: We observe that (1) the game industry suffers from management and production problems in the same proportion; (2) management problems decreased over the years, giving space to business problems, while production problems remained constant; (3a) technical and game design problems are decreasing over the years, the latter only after the last decade; (3b) problems related to the team increase over the last decade; (3c) marketing problems are the ones that had the biggest increase over the 23 years compared to other problem types; (4) finally, the majority of the main root causes are related to people, not technologies. Conclusions: In this paper, we provide a state of the practice for researchers to understand and study video-game development problems. We also offer suggestions to help practitioners to avoid the most common problems in future projects.","bibtex":"@ARTICLE{Politowski20-IST-GameIndustryProblems,\r\n AUTHOR = {Cristiano Politowski and Fabio Petrillo and \r\n Gabriel Cavalheiro Ullmann and Yann-Ga�l Gu�h�neuc},\r\n JOURNAL = {Information and Software Technology (IST)},\r\n TITLE = {Game Industry Problems: an Extensive Analysis of the \r\n Gray Literature},\r\n YEAR = {2021},\r\n MONTH = {June},\r\n NOTE = {18 pages.},\r\n OPTNUMBER = {},\r\n PAGES = {106538},\r\n VOLUME = {134},\r\n EDITOR = {G�nther Ruhe},\r\n KEYWORDS = {Topic: <b>Video game development</b>, Venue: <b>IST</b>},\r\n PUBLISHER = {Elsevier},\r\n URL = {http://www.ptidej.net/publications/documents/IST21.doc.pdf},\r\n ABSTRACT = {\\textbf{Context:} Given its competitiveness, the \r\n video-game industry has a closed-source culture. Hence, little is \r\n known about the problems faced by game developers. However, game \r\n developers do share information about their game projects through \r\n postmortems, which describe informally what happened during the \r\n projects. \\textbf{Objective:} The software-engineering research \r\n community and game developers would benefit from a state of the \r\n problems of the video game industry, in particular the problems faced \r\n by game developers, their evolution in time, and their root causes. \r\n This state of the practice would allow researchers and practitioners \r\n to work towards solving these problems. \\textbf{Method:} We analyzed \r\n 200 postmortems from 1997 to 2019, resulting in 927 problems divided \r\n into 20 types. Through our analysis, we described the overall \r\n landscape of game industry problems in the past 23 years and how \r\n these problems evolved over the years. We also give details on the \r\n most common problems, their root causes, and possible solutions. We \r\n finally discuss suggestions for future projects. \\textbf{Results:} We \r\n observe that (1) the game industry suffers from management and \r\n production problems in the same proportion; (2) management problems \r\n decreased over the years, giving space to business problems, while \r\n production problems remained constant; (3a) technical and game design \r\n problems are decreasing over the years, the latter only after the \r\n last decade; (3b) problems related to the team increase over the last \r\n decade; (3c) marketing problems are the ones that had the biggest \r\n increase over the 23 years compared to other problem types; (4) \r\n finally, the majority of the main root causes are related to people, \r\n not technologies. Conclusions: In this paper, we provide a state of \r\n the practice for researchers to understand and study video-game \r\n development problems. We also offer suggestions to help practitioners \r\n to avoid the most common problems in future projects.}\r\n}\r\n\r\n","author_short":["Politowski, C.","Petrillo, F.","Ullmann, G. C.","Gu�h�neuc, Y."],"editor_short":["Ruhe, G."],"key":"Politowski20-IST-GameIndustryProblems","id":"Politowski20-IST-GameIndustryProblems","bibbaseid":"politowski-petrillo-ullmann-guhneuc-gameindustryproblemsanextensiveanalysisofthegrayliterature-2021","role":"author","urls":{"Paper":"http://www.ptidej.net/publications/documents/IST21.doc.pdf"},"keyword":["Topic: <b>Video game development</b>","Venue: <b>IST</b>"],"metadata":{"authorlinks":{}}},"bibtype":"article","biburl":"http://www.yann-gael.gueheneuc.net/Work/Publications/Biblio/complete-bibliography.bib","dataSources":["KfXmPhaoCuAwjS2aX","8vn5MSGYWB4fAx9Z4","cy4HQkWZAA34xFEsF","HGSdZxjT9bHyLwMDX"],"keywords":["topic: <b>video game development</b>","venue: <b>ist</b>"],"search_terms":["game","industry","problems","extensive","analysis","gray","literature","politowski","petrillo","ullmann","gu�h�neuc"],"title":"Game Industry Problems: an Extensive Analysis of the Gray Literature","year":2021}