The use of post mortem analysis in game development
Heinäsmäki, Nuutti (2022)
2022
Master's Programme in Computing Sciences
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2022-06-27
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202206135634
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202206135634
Tiivistelmä
Post mortem analysis (PMA) is a method of development retrospection that has found its way into software development. PMA was the topic of a number of research papers in the 90s and early 2000s, but the research has since moved on to other subjects, despite leaving the discussion on some areas of PMA unfinished. Notably, the unsatisfactory rate of PMA adoption in the industry was identified but not addressed, while the new lightweight method of PMA was developed but not revisited with experience from the industry. PMA research is also very limited on the subject of game development, despite its interesting and unorthodox ways of utilizing PMA reports.
The thesis aims to study the adoption of PMA in the game industry, with a focus on the game industry’s PMA adoption rate and the PMA methods currently being used. Software development has trended towards more agile methodologies in the last decades and game development industry in particular is often noted to only use very lightweight or even ad-hoc methodologies during development, so the game industry offers a good viewpoint for studying if the traditional PMA methods are still in use and how they may have changed over the years.
Besides examining PMA adoption and methods in modern game development, this thesis also goes through the uses of PMA reports in game development. Game developers have publicly released hundreds of PMA reports, which is not a common practice in traditional PMA. The goals that the game developers have for the public reports also differ from the traditional ones. This thesis will focus particularly on public PMA report usage in game development research and the thesis will include a literature analysis on several game development research papers. The analysis shows that the game development research on PMA reports is consistent with other research and that it can also be complementary to other research, though limited in the discussed topics.
The study also features a questionnaire survey aimed at Finnish game industry professionals. The survey helps to answer the research questions of this thesis as it shows that PMA is a common practice and that the PMA method in modern game development has some similarities with traditional methods though it has adopted new lightweight practices in some aspects. The survey also brings to light that even though public PMA reports are well known in the games industry, the common uses for PMA reports in the industry have not changed from the orthodox uses presented in the prior research.
The thesis aims to study the adoption of PMA in the game industry, with a focus on the game industry’s PMA adoption rate and the PMA methods currently being used. Software development has trended towards more agile methodologies in the last decades and game development industry in particular is often noted to only use very lightweight or even ad-hoc methodologies during development, so the game industry offers a good viewpoint for studying if the traditional PMA methods are still in use and how they may have changed over the years.
Besides examining PMA adoption and methods in modern game development, this thesis also goes through the uses of PMA reports in game development. Game developers have publicly released hundreds of PMA reports, which is not a common practice in traditional PMA. The goals that the game developers have for the public reports also differ from the traditional ones. This thesis will focus particularly on public PMA report usage in game development research and the thesis will include a literature analysis on several game development research papers. The analysis shows that the game development research on PMA reports is consistent with other research and that it can also be complementary to other research, though limited in the discussed topics.
The study also features a questionnaire survey aimed at Finnish game industry professionals. The survey helps to answer the research questions of this thesis as it shows that PMA is a common practice and that the PMA method in modern game development has some similarities with traditional methods though it has adopted new lightweight practices in some aspects. The survey also brings to light that even though public PMA reports are well known in the games industry, the common uses for PMA reports in the industry have not changed from the orthodox uses presented in the prior research.