game development thesis topics

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Affection of game elements on acrophobia therapy

The affective effect of objects in game with simple geometric features and motion

Analysis of immersive virtual reality vs. desktop 3D games

Analysis of serious games in biology

ARScape: exploring mobile augmented reality design for escape rooms.

Art styles rendering techniques survey and making a tool to switch art styles in Unity 3D

Augmented reality block building game for enhancing creativity: block sculptures.

Automated playtesting of platformer games using reinforcement learning

Backtracking: an ecological investigation to contextualize rewards in games.

The balance between monetization and player retention for free-to-play real-time strategy mobile games

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107 Video Game Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Video games have become a popular form of entertainment for people of all ages. From action-packed shooters to immersive role-playing games, there is a video game out there for everyone. With such a wide variety of games to choose from, it can be overwhelming to decide on a topic for an essay about video games. To help you get started, here are 107 video game essay topic ideas and examples to inspire your writing:

• The impact of violent video games on children's behavior
• The evolution of video game graphics over the years
• The rise of esports and its influence on the gaming industry
• The benefits of playing video games for cognitive development
• The representation of gender and race in video games
• The history of virtual reality gaming
• The psychology of loot boxes in video games
• The role of music in enhancing the gaming experience
• The ethics of video game journalism
• The impact of video game addiction on mental health
• The cultural significance of video game franchises like Mario and Pokemon
• The future of cloud gaming and streaming services
• The role of storytelling in video games
• The influence of video games on popular culture
• The relationship between video games and education
• The impact of video game censorship on creative expression
• The portrayal of mental health issues in video games
• The role of social media in video game marketing
• The history of video game consoles
• The impact of online multiplayer games on social interaction
• The evolution of game mechanics in the survival horror genre
• The representation of LGBTQ+ characters in video games
• The influence of Japanese culture on video game aesthetics
• The role of nostalgia in the popularity of retro gaming
• The impact of microtransactions on player experience
• The relationship between video games and violence in society
• The role of artificial intelligence in game development
• The impact of video game streaming platforms like Twitch
• The representation of disability in video games
• The influence of game design on player engagement
• The evolution of mobile gaming
• The role of virtual economies in online multiplayer games
• The impact of video game sound design on immersion
• The portrayal of mental illness in video games
• The influence of Eastern philosophy on game narratives
• The role of user-generated content in game communities
• The impact of fan culture on video game development
• The representation of indigenous cultures in video games
• The influence of literature on game storytelling
• The role of game difficulty in player satisfaction
• The impact of video game piracy on the industry
• The portrayal of war in military shooter games
• The relationship between video games and sports
• The influence of board games on video game design
• The role of player choice in game narratives
• The impact of virtual reality on therapy and rehabilitation
• The representation of historical events in video games
• The influence of film on game aesthetics
• The role of gender stereotypes in video game marketing
• The impact of game mods on player creativity
• The portrayal of mental health professionals in video games
• The influence of tabletop role-playing games on video game mechanics
• The role of game mechanics in promoting teamwork and cooperation
• The impact of game development crunch on industry workers
• The representation of animals in video games
• The influence of science fiction on game narratives
• The role of player agency in game storytelling
• The impact of game difficulty on player motivation
• The portrayal of addiction in video games
• The influence of mythology on game aesthetics
• The role of puzzles in game design
• The impact of game reviews on player purchasing decisions
• The representation of mental illness in horror games
• The influence of architecture on game environments
• The role of game soundtracks in enhancing the player experience
• The impact of game tutorials on player learning
• The portrayal of robots and AI in video games
• The influence of fashion on character design in games
• The role of humor in game narratives
• The impact of game localization on cultural representation
• The representation of environmental issues in video games
• The influence of psychology on game design
• The role of game narratives in exploring complex themes
• The impact of game communities on player engagement
• The portrayal of mental health struggles in indie games
• The influence of mythology on game storytelling
• The role of player feedback in game development
• The impact of game accessibility on player inclusivity
• The representation of gender identity in video games
• The influence of surrealism on game aesthetics
• The role of morality systems in game narratives
• The impact of game tutorials on player retention
• The portrayal of mental health professionals in horror games
• The influence of psychology on game narratives
• The role of player choice in shaping game outcomes
• The impact of game aesthetics on player immersion
• The representation of LGBTQ+ relationships in video games
• The role of environmental storytelling in game design
• The impact of game streaming on player engagement
• The portrayal of mental illness in puzzle games
• The role of player feedback in shaping game development
• The impact of game aesthetics on player perception
• The representation of LGBTQ+ characters in horror games
• The influence of film noir on game narratives
• The role of environmental storytelling in shaping game worlds
• The impact of game tutorials on player skill progression
• The portrayal of mental illness in narrative-driven games
• The influence of science fiction on game aesthetics
• The role of player choice in determining game endings
• The impact of game aesthetics on player emotional response
• The representation of LGBTQ+ relationships in indie games
• The influence of literature on game design
• The role of environmental storytelling in immersive game worlds
• The impact of game streaming on player community building
• The portrayal of mental health struggles in interactive fiction games

Whether you are writing a research paper, a critical analysis, or a personal reflection on video games, these topics provide a diverse range of ideas to explore. From examining the psychological effects of gaming to analyzing the cultural significance of game narratives, there is no shortage of fascinating topics to delve into. So, pick a topic that interests you and start exploring the world of video games through the lens of your essay. Happy writing!

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Jan 28 2023

• 7 Research Topics for PhD Students in Game Technology

Joan Carlos (Edit)

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Research in the game industry is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, the game industry is a rapidly growing and evolving field, with new technologies and advancements being made on a regular basis. This means that there is a constant need for new research to explore and understand these developments, and to find ways to apply them to create better and more immersive gaming experiences.

Another important reason why research in the game industry is important is that it can have a significant impact on other areas of technology and society. For example, research in game technology can lead to the development of new tools and techniques for creating virtual and augmented reality experiences, which can be applied in fields such as education, medicine, and architecture. Additionally, research in game technology can also lead to the development of new algorithms and AI techniques that can be used in other areas such as robotics and autonomous systems.

Moreover, game industry is an industry that has a tremendous impact on people's lives. Game research is important to understand how the game affects people's behavior, emotions, and cognition. It is also important to explore how games can be used to educate, train, and entertain people. For example, games are used to teach languages, coding, and history.

Here are seven open research topics for PhD students who like Game technology

1- Real-time rendering techniques for virtual and augmented reality: This research topic would explore ways to optimize the performance of rendering algorithms in order to improve the visual quality of virtual and augmented reality games and applications.

2- Game AI and machine learning : This research topic would investigate the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques in game development, including the use of neural networks for game character behavior and decision-making, and the use of reinforcement learning to train game agents.

3- Game physics and simulation: This research topic would explore the use of physics-based simulations in games, such as rigid body dynamics, fluid simulation, and cloth simulation. The goal would be to create more realistic and immersive game environments.

4- Game design and player experience: This research topic would investigate how different game design elements, such as level design, game mechanics, and story, affect player experience and engagement. This could include user studies and player testing to understand how players interact with and respond to different game design elements.

5- Game localization and cultural adaptation: This research topic would explore the cultural adaptation of games for different regions and languages. It would investigate the challenges and opportunities of game localization, including the cultural differences that may affect the player experience and how to adapt the game to be more culturally relevant.

6- Game Analytics and personalization: This research topic would investigate the use of data analytics and player modeling to understand player behavior, preferences and adapt game content and mechanics to each player preferences.

7- Game development platforms and tools: This research topic would investigate the development of new game development platforms and tools that enable game developers to create more efficient and effective game development processes.

Tags: 7 Research Topics for PhD Students in Game Technology

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The MIT Game Lab has a long history of innovative research that spans game culture to design practice. Below are some highlights of our work. See specific pages in the pull down menu for more detailed information on some of them.

Games & Colonialism

2017-: mikael jakobsson (co-pi), mary flanagan (co-pi).

What does the history of colonialism-themed board games look like, and what can it tell us about the situation today? What does it mean to present these historical moments in such a lavish form and then let these artifacts serve as centerpieces to gather around for social interaction at board game cafes, meetups, and conventions? This greater project includes Playing Oppression , a forthcoming book to be published by MIT Press; Orderly Adventures, in which we play and analyze games with colonialist themes; and Creating Counter-Colonial Games, a series of workshops to prototype games through cultural engagement with people affected by the colonialist endeavor.

Diversity and Inclusion in Esports and Gaming

2015-: t.l. taylor.

Launched in 2015, AnyKey was co-founded by Dr. T.L. Taylor and Dr. Morgan Romine (with support from Intel and ESL) with the goal of building a more inclusive and accessible esports world for all. Since that inception, AnyKey has become the leading advocacy organization for inclusion and diversity in competitive gaming & live streaming. It now operates as a non-profit and Dr. Taylor has transitioned from being the Director of Research to Chair of the Advisory Board.

Playful Augmented Reality Audio Design Exploration

2018-2019: mikael jakobsson & philip tan.

The focus of this project was to explore the potential of audio augmented reality (AR) technology through design research methodology, particularly exploratory prototyping. Going into this, we understood that location-based audio AR allows the potential for telling stories using the players lived world, through innovative use of the affordances of mobile phone devices, particularly GPS. We also considered audio AR as a means of playing with sound and music. Utilizing the accelerometers of the Bose AR glasses and connected mobile device, body movement can be linked to the players’ own music collection or a music generation engine.

Our work culminated in the discovery of what we are calling locomotion-based gameplay, a modification to the assumptions that occur when considering location- based gameplay. From our explorative work, locomotion-based gameplay arises from the affordances and limitations of current audio AR technology. It considers a person’s movement through space as important, more so than their precise location. Locomotion also implies whole body movement through gestures including the nod of a head and the tap of a toe, not just the vector of movement on a map. These gestures are ephemeral and contain multiple meanings dependent on context and mood. We believe more work in discovering this style of gameplay would be fruitful, for purposes of art and entertainment, for education and tourism, and other currently unforeseen use cases.

Intimate Worlds: Reading for Intimate Affects in Contemporary Video Games

2016-2018: kaelan doyle-myerscough (s.m., comparative media studies, 2018).

When we think of pleasures to be found in video games, we often talk about power, control, agency, and fun. But to center these pleasures is to privilege certain stories, players, actions and possibility spaces. This thesis uses the framework of intimacy to closely examine three games for their capacity to create pleasure in vulnerability, the loss of control, dependence on others, and precarity.

Drawing from Deleuzian affect theory and feminist, queer and posthuman theorists, I read for intimate affects in the formal, aesthetic, proprioceptive and structural elements of Overwatch , The Last Guardian and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild . Ultimately, I argue two points: that video games have a unique capacity to generate intimate affects, and that my games of choice push us to rethink our assumptions about what constitutes intimacy more broadly.

When All You Have is a Banhammer: The Social and Communicative Work of Volunteer Moderators

2016-2018: claudia lo (s.m., comparative media studies, 2018).

The popular understanding of moderation online is that moderation is inherently reactive, where moderators see and then react to content generated by users, typically by removing it; in order to understand the work already being performed by moderators, we need to expand our understanding of what that work entails. Drawing upon interviews, participant observation, and my own experiences as a volunteer community moderator on Reddit, I propose that a significant portion of work performed by volunteer moderators is social and communicative in nature. Even the chosen case studies of large-scale esports events on Twitch, where the most visible and intense tasks given to volunteer moderators consists of reacting and removing user-generated chat messages, exposes faults in the reactive model of moderation. A better appreciation of the full scope of moderation work will be vital in guiding future research, design, and development efforts in this field.

Recasting Player Two

2016-2017: mikael jakobsson, claudia lo, kaelan doyle myerscough, richard eberhardt & dozens of game designers from near and far.

The game development industry is currently on a mission to include “non-gamers” in local co-op games. Within the development community and among players, these games are said to have a “girlfriend mode.” Developers often cast player one as an expert player in their own image, while player two is a projection of antiquated gender stereotypes who has less agency and control over their play experience. This type of interaction would be better described as mansplaining in motion. This project consists of a series of workshops with participants from the game development community, where we not just discuss and spread awareness of what is problematic with current games and development practices, but work together in creating better alternatives.

OpenRelativity

2012-2016: gerd kortemeyer, philip tan, zach sherin, ryan cheu, & steven schirra.

OpenRelativity is an open-source toolkit to simulate effects of special relativity by varying the speed of light, developed to help people create, test, and share experiments to explore the effects of special relativity. Developed by the MIT Game Lab, it contains open-source code for public use with the free and paid versions of the Unity engine. The toolkit was developed during the creation of the game A Slower Speed of Light.

Gender and Systems of Warm Interaction in Digital Games

2014-2016: kyrie caldwell (s.m., comparative media studies, 2016).

This thesis considers the ways in which digital game mechanics (interactive inputs) contribute to games’ worldbuilding. In particular, this work is concerned with the replication and reinforcement of problematic gender roles through game mechanics that express positive (“warm”) interactions between characters, namely healing, protection, and building relationships. Characters who are women and girls are often associated with physical weakness, nature-based magic, and nurturing (or absent) personalities, whereas characters who are men and boys often protect women through physical combat, heal through medical means, and keep an emotional distance from others. Relationships built through game mechanics rely on one-sided agency and potential that renders lovers and friends as characters who exist to support the player character in achieving the primary goals of the game. Even warm interactions in games carry negative, even potentially violent and oppressive, representations and that there is thusly a need for design interventions on the mechanical level to mitigate violence in game worlds and the reinforcement of negative real world stereotypes.

E-sports Broadcasting

2014-2015: jesse sell (s.m., comparative media studies, 2015).

Situating e-sports broadcasting within the larger sports media industrial complex, discussing e-sportscasters, and investigating the economics behind the growing e-sports industry. E-sports, often referred to as competitive or professional gaming, stands as a prime example of the merger of work and play. A growing body of literature has started focusing on this pastime turned profession. As more professionals enter the scene and audiences continue to grow, e-sports broadcasters look towards older models of broadcasting to inform their own style. This reapplication of former conventions stands in contrast to the trends in the larger sports media trajectory. E-sports broadcasting is largely informed by traditional sports broadcasting, yet remains unable to fully capture the success of the global sports industry. On-air talent, once informed solely by traditional sportscasters are now looking to their fellow e-sportscasters to create something new. Revenue streams which form the foundation of the sports industry are making their way into e-sports but not in the way that one might expect.

MIT Overseer: Improving Observer Experience in Starcraft 2

2013-2015: philip tan & nick mohr.

The MIT Overseer project aims to provide casters with real-time graphics to help them tell the story of a game while it is in progress. We are trying out several different ways of displaying what happened in the past of a single game and anticipating what might happen in the near future.

Subversive Game Design and Meaningful Conflict

2012-2013: konstantin mitgutsch & steven schirra.

Movers & Shakers is used as a research tool to explore how a social component influences experiences in serious games. In addition subversive game design elements are implemented in the game to foster the players’ thinking process and to get them out of unquestioned routines. In the game the players are challenged to give up their prior egoistic goals to reach their common goal – to save the world. In a nutshell, the game shifts from a competitive to a collaborational gameplay – once the players start communicating.

Playstyle Motivation Explorations

2012-2013: todd harper.

Across game genres and communities, there are as many styles of play as there are players, from the highly competitive “powergamer” to the MMO fan who’s content to just take in the scenery and everything in between. Fugue is a game that asks: what are some of the motivations behind these styles? Do players reflect themselves — or a desired projection of the self — through playstyle? Or does the shape and context of the game itself direct such decisions? In order to explore these questions, we created a small, controlled gamespace that gives players an opportunity to express themselves via play.

Procedural Puzzles as a Design Tool for Games

2011-2013: alec thomson, clara fernández-vara.

Puzzledice is a set of tools and programming libraries for procedurally generating puzzles for a wide variety of games. These tools, developed by Alec Thomson at the MIT Game Lab from 2011-2013, are the result of multiple iterations of research and were used to develop Stranded in Singapore during the 2011 summer session of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Puzzledice is the result of research into how general purpose procedural puzzles can be used as a tool by game designers. These tools were designed to meet the following three goals: Solvability, Generality, and Usability.

Televisual Sports Videogames

2012-2013: abe stein (s.m., comparative media studies, 2013).

Over the three decade long history of sports videogame development, design conventions have lead to the emergence of a new sports game genre: the televisual sports videogames. These games, which usually simulate major professional or college sports, look and sound like television, and they use televised sports as a reference point for players. This thesis takes a critical look at how these televisual sports videogames are situated in the broader sports media industrial complex of North America, while also considering how the televisual design of these games is meaningful for fans of sports. Specifically, the text looks at how sports videogames reflect or reinforce dominant ideologies of hegemonic sports culture. Building on critical theories in sports studies, and through critical close readings of videogame texts, this thesis explores the relationship between sports television production, and sports videogames, with a focus on features that are found in both. Features such as introductory sequences, audio commentary, in-game advertising, news tickers, and instant replay are all commonly found in both sports television and sports videogames.

Purposeful Games for Social Change

2011-2012: konstantin mitgutsch & narda alvarado.

“ Purposeful Games for Social Change ” is a list of serious games designed to foster social change/justice or to raise awareness. This list was created in order to create the Purposeful Games Framework , a tool used to assess the cohesiveness in design of serious games.

Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab

The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab was a six-year research initiative that addressed important challenges faced by the global digital game research community and industry, with a core focus on identifying and solving research problems using a multi-disciplinary approach that can be applied by Singapore’s digital game industry. The Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab focused on building collaborations between Singapore institutions of higher learning and several MIT departments to accomplish both research and development.

Research topics explored included artificial intelligence, game design, computer graphics and animation, character design, procedurally generated content, interactive fiction, narrative design, and video game production. Game prototypes were made for these research topics during the GAMBIT summer internship program, many of which won international recognition at festivals like IndieCade and the Independent Games Festivals held at GDC and GDC China, as well as academic conferences such as Meaningful Play and Foundations of Digital Games.

What Empirically Based Research Tells Us About Game Development

• Open access
• Published: 24 September 2019
• Volume 8 , pages 179–198, ( 2019 )

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• Björn Berg Marklund   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1458-8557 1 ,
• Henrik Engström 1 ,
• Marcus Hellkvist 1 &
• Per Backlund 1  

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This paper reviews empirically grounded research on practices in game development with the intent to give a comprehensive overview of contemporary development practices used in the video game industry. While there are many intangible elements that inform game development processes, this review specifically covers the more immediate practical challenges. The review covers a total of 48 papers published between 2006 and 2016, which were all subjected to thematic analysis by three reviewers. The results of the review show that an almost universal characteristic of game development is that it is almost impossible to accurately plan a development project in detail, largely due to the soft requirements inherent in game production which emerge mid-process during development projects, during when testing is coupled with continuous ideation and refinement. Practicing game developers have created their own frameworks that accommodate for this lack of planning. They include flat hierarchies, democratic decision-making, creative autonomy, and informal communication, which are designed to create an environment that maintains creativity and openness to product changes long into the production process. These frameworks vary significantly between studios and often between individual projects. This review also shows that the term ‘Agile’, while often used by both researchers and developers to characterize the process of game development, is not an apt descriptor of how game developers actually work. Agile is used as shorthand for unstructured and flexible development, rather than serving as a descriptor of a definable or unified work method. Finally, as companies develop more complicated hierarchies of stakeholders and staff, the desired flexibility and autonomy of game development becomes increasingly complicated to maintain, and often necessitates more formalized management processes and company structures. In these cases, inherent tensions of game development become more pronounced, and continuous creativity is hard to maintain due to a growing need to formalize processes.

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1 Introduction

Research related to games has been steadily growing in popularity since the turn of the millennium. Between 2006 and 2016, for example, the annual publication of game documents (i.e. books, journal articles, conference papers, or chapters) rose from ~ 900 to ~ 3200 (Martin 2018 ). However, even though the academic output regarding games has been steadily increasing in volume, the processes through which games are actually produced are still relatively obscure (Martin 2018 ; Petrillo et al. 2008 ). In a recent literature review published in Game Studies , Paul Martin states that games are subject to scrutiny by experts from a myriad of different fields, but that scholars all primarily focus on understanding games’ potential ‘effects’, which is strongly linked to understanding their design (Martin 2018 ). In one of his paper’s concluding paragraphs, Martin posits that there are:

… potential gaps in game research. […] While other authors may occasionally discuss the game industries, no other authors have this as their main research topic. Furthermore, none of the non-game authors cited are experts on business or industry. (Martin 2018 )

In this paper, we present a literature review which addresses that particular potential gap, and surveys the development and production processes that underpin the games industry. Game development is often described in general terms with vague definitions, such as being subjective, flexible, and agile (Kortmann and Harteveld 2009 ; O’Hagan et al. 2014 ; Petrillo and Pimenta 2010 ). While these descriptors are not necessarily incorrect—in fact, as they are so often used they are likely to be fairly accurate—they are not particularly beneficial in helping the reader understanding what is actually happening during game development projects. As games are a complicated intermingling of various crafts and disciplines (e.g. audiovisual arts, design and user experience, genre conventions and tradition, software and hardware engineering, management, business and marketing, etc.) each game, and each studio developing it, is bound to have some unique quirks. Even though a universal answer is unlikely to exist, this review is an attempt to identify and highlight some of the patterns and commonalities that unify development practices.

An important distinction made in this review is that it is not concerned with hypothetical best practice prescriptions. There are many examples of research studies that describe how games should be developed: correlations between game design and models from UX and heuristics are made (e.g. Bernhaupt 2015 ; Koeffel et al. 2010 ); the viability of software development and standardizations on game development are discussed (e.g. Dormans 2012 ; Srisuriyasavad and Prompoon 2013 ); and project management and planning research are argued to be suitable approaches for solving challenges inherent in game development (e.g. McGregor 2013 ; Trantow et al. 2013 ; Vallance 2014 ; Vanhala and Kasurinen 2014 ). A persistent issue within this research field, however, is that such studies are rarely carried out by, or with input from, practitioners and experts from the games industry, and a large portion of literature on game development thus rarely takes everyday realities of practices into account (Martin 2018 ). With this in mind, this literature review specifically aims to examine how game development is described by individuals involved in game development, and thus this review exclusively focuses on empirically grounded research conducted on game developers and game development studios in order to present a picture of how games are developed.

The review presented in this article is part of a comprehensive literature study aiming to explore game development from a broad perspective, covering a wide set of disciplines. The details of the fundamental method of the study are described in Engström et al. ( 2018 ). To briefly summarize the literature selection process, a series of keywords related to game development, software engineering, and creative industries were used in several wide-reaching databases (Scopus, Springer, ACM, and DiGRA’s digital archives) to generate an initial set of 2278 publications. Through title and abstract analysis, this set was reduced to a set of 488 papers that were reviewed and coded. Two particular outcomes of this process are a research quality evaluation, and a case description that identifies whether a paper’s outcomes were based on empirical data from the games industry. The study presented in this article addresses one of four research questions identified in Engström et al. ( 2018 ), namely, “What are the current development practices used in the video games industry?” (p. 12).

It should be noted that the selection process was not limited to a pre-defined set of geographic regions. However, European and North American research studies dominate this area, so papers by authors from these regions are prominent in this review. The selection process involved identifying only papers written in English. It should also be noted that the vast majority of articles relating to game development have taken little or no consideration of regional aspects in their research approaches, and regional aspects that might affect game development are seldom discussed.

From the larger set of 488 articles, by applying the aforementioned method classifications, quality evaluations, and case descriptions, we have filtered out papers to produce a subset of 48 papers that fulfil the criteria that provide the foundation for this review: they contain empirical data from industry practitioners (i.e. not development conducted under academic auspices); they display a high quality of research (in terms of clearly stated research question, method description, and results); and, they are relevant to our understanding to the practices of game development.

The selected papers were subjected to a thematic analysis of the papers’ contents by the three reviewers. Thematic analysis is, as described by Braun and Clarke ( 2006 , p. 6), “a method for identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns (themes) within data. It minimally organises and describes your data set in (rich) detail. However, it also often goes further than this, and interprets various aspects of the research topic…” As this review aims to identify patterns and themes which can describe game development, the qualitative-oriented nature of thematic analysis is suitable for doing in-depth content analysis of the sizeable amount of data which this review entails. The process was conducted using the MAXQDA qualitative analysis software program (VERBI GmbH 1995 ) which allowed the three reviewers to analyse and keep personal notes on the papers independently of one another, and to later merge their work to see if there were obvious points of disagreements or agreements regarding the papers’ content.

The entire process can be divided into three distinct phases: a preparation phase, a content processing phase, and an analysis phase. These phases entailed a total of 6 steps.

Phase 1: Preparation

Familiarization and initial coding the full set of papers was quickly and manually surveyed by the three reviewers. Not only did this serve to familiarize the reviewers with the material under review, but each reviewer also wrote down suggestions of code categories, which were then discussed in a reviewer meeting. In this initial coding step, all reviewers devised their own set of codes independently from one another, which ultimately resulted in an amount of codes that would be unfeasible to process in a reasonable timeframe. Many of these codes were also overlapping or semantically identical, even though the reviewers phrased them slightly differently, compounding the codes’ unsuitability for a continued reviewing process.

Establishing a unified code vocabulary in order to establish a more unified code vocabulary between the reviewers, two papers (Musil et al. 2010 ; Vallance 2014 ) were subjected to a round of test-coding. After using the initial code set on the first paper (Musil et al. 2010 ) the reviewers met to discuss the definitions, usefulness, accuracy, and potential interpretations of the different codes. After refining the code set based on these discussions, the process was repeated once more with the second paper (Vallance 2014 ). These trial runs served the purpose of ensuring that reviewers agreed upon code phrasings that risked having multiple interpretations, as having reviewers interpret codes in their own different ways would complicate later analysis stages significantly. The established code set was imported into the MAXQDA program, providing each reviewer with the same baseline template for the content analysis and coding that was to follow.

Phase 2: Processing the Full Set of 48 Papers

Secondary content processing and coding each of the three reviewers analysed the complete set of 48 papers by reading through them and marking text segments with codes from the established code categories. Every reviewer was given a different starting point in the data set, in order to minimize the potential impact of reviewers’ fatigue affecting the coding of a few particular papers too heavily. This process resulted in a total of 5190 coded segments.

Reviewer code synthesis with all the material coded, the three reviewers’ coding projects in MAXQDA were merged to create a unified team version of the coded material. This version, which included all 48 papers with all reviewers’ codes, provided the primary foundation for the next phase of the thematic analysis, in which the material was analysed to see which themes and patterns praxis emerged from the coded material.

Phase 3: Code Analysis, Theme Creation, and Report Compilation

Searching for themes the compiled and coded materials were analysed by the three reviewers to search for themes. While some themes emerged from the material rather quickly, the reviewers did not discriminate between themes of varied weight. The result from the initial analysis was a highlighting of various themes and the codes associated with them, which was discussed during reviewer meetings and subsequently used as the foundation for the final step of the process.

Defining and naming themes after establishing an initial set of themes, the review group took them into consideration in preparation for another set of meetings to better define the roots of the themes in coded material, and to name the themes appropriately to make them easier to present and describe in this paper. The various connections between coded segments and the themes were mapped out more clearly, and the reviewers ensured that the various nuances of positives and negatives surrounding each theme (as stated by developers in the empirical data) were properly represented.

3 Review Results

As previously mentioned, the coding process resulted in 5190 coded segments. After the subsequent reviewing and further analysis of the compiled coded material, several clear themes emerged from the coded material. In essence, a theme constitutes an empirically supported pattern of experiences, observations, or statements made in the reviewed papers. If many coded segments from the studied cases had expressed similar challenges or solutions to various aspects of their development practices, the reviewers would cluster these code segments together to create a more unifying theme that described these similarities. The process resulted in eight themes clustered under the two main theme categories: creating an experience , and creating a product . Table  1 presents the themes and the papers from which they are derived.

4 Research Overview

As per the criteria of the paper sampling process, all papers included empirical findings from game developers. This naturally meant that the reviewed papers were highly reliant on case studies (e.g. Amanatiadou and Van De Weerd 2009 ; Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; McAllister and White 2015 ; Myllärniemi et al. 2006 ; O’Hagan and O’Connor 2015 ; Vanhala and Kasurinen 2014 ). There were, however, some examples of research conducted on individual developers independently of any ongoing projects or studio work that dealt with experiences and attitudes towards their craft in a more general sense (e.g. Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ). As for data gathering methods, most of the reviewed papers relied primarily on qualitative methods, and semi-structured interviews were particularly common (Kasurinen et al. 2013 , 2014 ; Kultima 2010 ). Some papers also used surveys, often to supplement or support the material gathered through interviews (Koutonen and Leppänen 2013 ; Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ). There were also a couple of examples of ethnographic research, in which the authors either recounted their own experiences working in development teams in the past (Walfisz et al. 2006 ) or kept journaled accounts of on-going development processes (Bryant et al. 2010 ; Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Nelson and Palumbo 2014 ).

The vast majority of studied cases focused on what could be classified as more “straight forward” entertainment products for various platforms. There were a few exceptions, however, that focused on development of serious games (Ruggiero and Watson 2014 ; Tran and Biddle 2008 ). In this review, we do not make a particular distinction between the genres of games being developed, and we consider serious game developers to also be part of the broader games industry.

The investigated game companies in these papers have a varied international spread. Research studies in northern Europe and Canada constitute the largest portion of the reviewed set, while other regions are more sparsely represented. For example, no papers mention anything about Australian or African game development, making them the only excluded continents. Several papers investigate several game studios from different countries simultaneously (Chung and Fung 2013 ; Musial et al. 2015 ; Stacey and Nandhakumar 2008 ), while the most common approach seems to be to focus on one particular region; this is likely due to the researchers’ chosen methods (interviews) making it preferable to confine their study to one region (Hotho and Champion 2011 ; Zackariasson et al. 2006 ). Some of the papers do not include any descriptions of where the study was conducted (Drachen et al. 2013 ; O’Hagan et al. 2014 ; Tran and Biddle 2008 ).

The game studios studied in the reviewed papers differ from one another both in terms of size and organizational structure, ranging from small startup companies with a few people working on a single project (e.g. Llerena et al. 2009 ; O’Hagan and O’Connor 2015 ; Tran and Biddle 2008 ) to large established AAA studios with hundreds of employees working on multiple projects, sometimes across international borders (Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Drachen et al. 2013 ; Walfisz et al. 2006 ); a number of studios fell somewhere in-between the two extremes (Hotho and Champion 2011 ; Myllärniemi et al. 2006 ; Nelson and Palumbo 2014 ). The studied game studios also worked with different platforms, such as PC (Kasurinen et al. 2013 ; Walfisz et al. 2006 ) mobile (Kultima 2010 ; Llerena et al. 2009 ; Myllärniemi et al. 2006 ) console (McAllister and White 2015 ) and web-browsers (Tran and Biddle 2008 ). It is difficult to determine whether there is a significant weighting towards any particular platform as many papers did not clearly state the examined studio’s target platform, and many studios also worked across many different platforms simultaneously. Thus, the set of reviewed papers seem to represent many different types of game development situations.

4.1 Creating an Experience

The first main theme in the studied material relates to how the game experience is created. This includes questions such as: how game ideas are born; when and how is the game design made; and what is the role of game testing. Testing, design, and ideation may not be exclusively relevant to game development as they, for example, happen in software and information system development as well. They are, however, uniquely approached in game development in that they are considerations that extend beyond functionality and effectivity. Many of the reviewed papers aimed to understand this distinctive characteristic of game development, making it a frequently recurring and nuanced theme in this analysis.

4.1.1 Creativity and Ideation

Creativity is an aspect of game development that is addressed in a majority of the papers. In many of them, there is an explicit focus on creativity and innovation in game development (Hagen 2012 ; Hodgson and Briand 2013 ; Hotho and Champion 2011 ; Kultima 2010 ; Lê et al. 2013 ; Llerena et al. 2009 ; Musial et al. 2015 ; Tschang and Szczypula 2006 ).

One theme that is present in most articles relates to knowledge architecture and the flow of ideas in game production. This includes the inspiration of original game ideas (Hagen 2012 ; Kultima 2010 ), how ideas transform during the process (Kultima 2010 ; Tschang and Szczypula 2006 ), and how ideas are formed in the interplay between different development groups and testers (Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Lê et al. 2013 ; Simon 2006 ; Stacey et al. 2007 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ). There are strong indications that the creative endeavours in the game industry involve many individuals, and that collaboration is important:

The sources of creativity as well as efficiency at [Company] rely on a subtle alchemy among communities of scriptwriters, game-designers, graphic artists, sound designers, software programmers and even testers. The team is important for the creative process. (Cohendet and Simon 2007 , p. 591)

Not only are interpersonal relationships important for this type of creative ideation, but several studies (Lê et al. 2013 ; Stacey and Nandhakumar 2008 , 2009 ; Tschang and Szczypula 2006 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ) also report how the interplay between ideas and the technology used to realize them affect the process. New technological possibilities, as well as limitations in the technology and even bugs, can give rise to new game concepts. The creative game development process is non-linear, whereby ideas evolve during the development and test process: “Game ideas are prone to be altered in one way or another during the design process. This was emphasized by virtually all of the interviewees” (Kultima 2010 , p. 36).

A related issue observed in a large number of papers (Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Hotho and Champion 2011 ; Kultima 2010 ; Musial et al. 2015 ; Simon 2006 ) is how creativity affects management of the game development process. These studies give a uniform message that creativity implies the need for more flexible processes, room for collaboration, and openness to change. As stated in one paper, “Management of creativity at work is merely seen as the art of setting the material, social and symbolic limits of the workspace collectively experienced as a creative play-ground” (Simon 2006 , p. 121).

The auteur tradition, which is strong in the movie industry, has very limited support in the game industry. Only one study (Hotho and Champion 2011 ) reports on a case where one person tried to control the whole creative process. This study reports on how this effort had several negative consequences. In summary, the empirical studies on game development give a relatively uniform picture: that creativity is achieved through a collaborative, test-driven process where structure, documentation and control are de-emphasized.

4.1.2 Testing and Player Experience

Despite the lack of standard development methods and loose requirement specifications, game features, feature changes, and development goals still have to originate from somewhere. Play testing is an activity that is highlighted in many studies as one of these origins, and is often described as tightly connected to the “player experience” goal that many game developers pursue. As summarized by one interviewee in Kasurinen and Smolander ( 2014 ), “You can plan for a large number of things, but ultimately the final decision is made when actual people try out the idea.” Overall, developers are highly aware of, and accepting towards, change, and it is treated as an inevitable part of the process and crucial for honing the experience: “The game experience rules. Change is imperative” (Walfisz et al. 2006 , p. 492).

This has implications on the conception of a product, and in particular how developers discuss the scope of a prototyping process. In game development companies the term ‘prototype’ is used in broad sense to refer to a game under development and its large number of different incarnations throughout the development process:

Further, the first prototypes produced by the R&D team are replaced by others (including the one working with the SDK), which will subsequently be replaced by game prototypes. In a sense, there are only prototypes in videogame development. (Lê et al. 2013 , p. 55)

The role of testing and player experience strongly influences the way game development is organised. Many studies report that companies adopt some kind of staged process. A common structure is to have the following four stages: ideation, pre-production, production, and post-production. A stage-gate methodology is discussed in some cases (Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Hodgson and Briand 2013 ; Zackariasson et al. 2006 ), but it appears that the nature of game production makes it hard for developers to adhere to it even at its most general formulation. Play testing is conducted in all stages of the development process, and the result of these tests can have an impact on the product, irrespective of phase. As stated by an interviewee: “If a tester comes to say that this does not work, there is not fun in it, you really cannot leave that in the game, you have to fix it” (Kasurinen et al. 2013 , p. 14).

The testing of the game may also lead to the identification of new ideas (see Creativity), which were not possible to foresee at an early ideation stage. Ideas can appear in all stages of game production, and they can originate from any of the involved actors, including testers: “You never know where the next great idea is coming from—as we saw at Goo, some even came from secretaries” (Stacey and Nandhakumar 2008 , p. 145).

Interestingly, only a few studies (Koutonen and Leppänen 2013 ; Petrillo et al. 2009 ; Walfisz et al. 2006 ) discuss the concept of ‘feature creep’, which is a risk that arises when changes are allowed during all stages of production. Since it is difficult to clearly identify which features (e.g. themes, game mechanics, aesthetics, technologies, etc.) will ultimately result in the desired player experience, game developers often remain open to new ideas late in the production process (Petrillo et al. 2009 ). The main downside of this open-ended ideation is the high risk of feature creep, which is present in game development to a larger degree than in, for example, software development (Wang and Nordmark 2015 ). Developers try to minimize this risk by emphasizing a flexible and comprehensive early stage of game production (Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Schmalz et al. 2014 ). Companies can have several potential products in the ideation and pre-production phases, and early and frequent playtesting of these prototypes will determine which should go into production. One of the papers conclude that the open-ended nature of game development is inherently risky, but that “the project structure itself often mitigated risk by emphasizing prototyping, pre-production and the early jettison of troubled projects” (Schmalz et al. 2014 , p. 4332).

4.1.3 Requirements, Subjectivity and Flexibility

The vast majority of papers that discuss requirements as an aspect of game development characterize them as being highly subjective (Alves et al. 2007 ; Kasurinen et al. 2014 ; Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ; O’Hagan and O’Connor 2015 ), unpredictable (Kasurinen et al. 2014 ; Tran and Biddle 2008 ), and flexible (Daneva 2014 ; Schmalz et al. 2014 ). The subjectivity is often tied to the artefact itself, as gameplay goals (e.g. aesthetic goals, or gameplay goals such as being fun or thrilling) are mentioned as something that is difficult to approach in a formalized and well-defined way (Kasurinen et al. 2014 ; Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ). While the subjective concept of “fun” has often been described as something defined by the developers themselves in smaller studios (Zackariasson et al. 2006 ), larger studios have used identified subjective preferences and usability concerns of their target audiences as a guiding requirement (Alves et al. 2007 ; Bryant et al. 2010 ; Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ). The unpredictability and changing nature of requirements are mostly discussed in terms of how they necessitate iterative working processes (Schmalz et al. 2014 ). Constant team communication (Land and Wilson 2006 ; Tran and Biddle 2008 ) and testing (Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Kasurinen et al. 2014 ; Tran and Biddle 2008 ; Walfisz et al. 2006 ) are often mentioned as efficient means in scoping out and identifying requirements as production progresses. In essence, the nature of requirements in game development is often seen as one of the primary causes for why game development processes turn out the way they do.

This subjectivity is what distinguishes game requirements from other software development practices. For example (Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ) highlight this stark difference through interviews with game developers who have also had non-game software development experience. According to their work, game requirements differ from those of regular software development, and requirements also vary from game to game, meaning that there are few, if any, constant transferable requirements between games (Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ). A developer interviewed in (Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ) for example, stated that:

… in an e-commerce application, a user has a task to complete that typically takes only a few minutes. … the requirement for games is that the user should be able to stay engaged on multiple timescales, and the mechanism to achieve that will vary from game to game. (Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 , p. 4)

When requirements are mentioned, they are often seen as a necessity due to their prevalence in traditional software development (Kasurinen et al. 2014 ; Land and Wilson 2006 ; Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ); however, their merits and actual practical application in game development is debatable. In one of the reviewed papers, for example, developers were asked to evaluate how applicable ISO standardized software development processes were to their own working processes, to which they responded: “The first thing I see here is that requirement analysis is completely done before construction. So design is finished before anything is implemented… that’s just not the way it happens” (Kasurinen et al. 2014 , p. 13). For most game developers, requirements are rarely seen as an identified goal that must be fulfilled, but rather something that is to be discovered during the development process (Daneva 2014 ; Tran and Biddle 2008 ).

4.1.4 The Technology and Creativity Schism

The general ebb and flow of control and unrestricted creativity constitute a common thread in the material, and has often been described as a source of ambivalence and conflict:

We also found that conflicts may occur between designers and developers. This happens because game designers, who are especially creative individuals, generally try to include features that are very hard to implement. They argue that such features may improve the gameplay and the overall look and feel of the game. However, there is no formal process to assess that; just common-sense is used. Normally, the final game is the result of trade-offs among creative design, technical constraints and platforms constraints. (Alves et al. 2007 , p. 279)

A constant thread is the strong emphasis on the importance of a communal, democratic, and flexible production pipeline (e.g. role overlap, informal communication, team-based decisions, and shared knowledge architecture). Creativity was also equally emphasized as the driving force, and ultimate outcome, of game production (Kasurinen and Smolander 2014 ). There were, however, a few notable exceptions to this openness and flexibility: developers working with the software and technology aspects of game production had a comparatively protective approach to their work and contributions. Programmers in game studios could, for example, regard management with various levels of distrust if they were perceived to lack the necessary technological know-how to make realistic decisions (Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ).

In some cases, this concern was proven to be well founded, as managers sometimes professed to lacking the necessary understanding of implementation for making sound evaluations and management decisions regarding software aspects of game development; this could sometimes jeopardize a project’s success (Schmalz et al. 2014 ). Programmers sometimes held a similar level of distrust towards their peers working in different disciplines of production—perhaps more so towards graphics artists and designers—whose creativity could seem detached from realistic implementation (Alves et al. 2007 ; Kasurinen and Smolander 2014 ; Stacey and Nandhakumar 2009 ):

When a game-designer asks a programmer to design an animated “rope” as a decorative object in a virtual setting, he thinks its a very simple task and does not understand the rebuttal from the programmer, rather promoting a stick. (Simon 2006 , p. 120)

In essence, programming and technological knowledge seem to be under-appreciated and misunderstood in terms of their contribution to creativity (Kasurinen and Smolander 2014 ; Musial et al. 2015 ; Simon 2006 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ). In a study by Kasurinen and Smolander ( 2014 ), this was coupled with a sentiment that programming was the linchpin making the creation of games fundamentally possible: “…In their perspective the software development work was the actual requirement to create a game; without programming skills there would be no game product, but even without a competent artist you could create at least something.”

While input and ideas from designers and artists are of course seen as an important part of the production process, they could be regarded with increased skepticism if they came from colleagues with little programming knowledge.

4.2 Creating a Product

The second main theme in the studied material concerns the industrialization of game production. This theme is focused on how production aspects, applicable in most production processes, are approached in the games industry. This includes project management, documentation, planning and the role of tools used during production.

4.2.1 Methods in Theory and Execution

One theme that emerges clearly from the studied papers is that there is no standard for game development, and that developments methods are applied differently from how they are prescribed (Kasurinen et al. 2014 ; Kasurinen and Smolander 2014 ; Koutonen and Leppänen, 2013 ; Lê et al. 2013 ; Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ; O’Hagan and O’Connor 2015 ; Schmalz et al. 2014 ; Stacey and Nandhakumar 2008 ; Walfisz et al. 2006 ; Zackariasson et al. 2006 ). Developers’ reasons for deviating from established project management and software engineering methods mainly stem from the focus on player experience (Kultima 2010 ; Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ; Walfisz et al. 2006 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ). As stated by Hodgson and Briand ( 2013 ): “Our results suggest that game developers focus on soft values such as game content or user experience, instead of more traditional objectives such as reliability or efficiency.”

Many companies’ working methods are based on concepts from Agile development philosophy (Kasurinen and Smolander 2014 ; Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ; Nelson and Palumbo 2014 ; Schmalz et al. 2014 ; Stacey and Nandhakumar 2008 ; Walfisz et al. 2006 ), but there are indications of challenges and problems when Agile is put into a game development context. One reason identified for this is the mix of professions involved in game production:

We’ve got so many specialists on the team, so the kind of planning that you usually do in Agile doesn’t work quite so well… You know [specialists] are more concerned about the creative process than an engineering process. (Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 , p. 7)

The Agile methods are thus applied unorthodoxly, compared to the “regular” software industry, which regards Agile, and associated processes such as Scrum and eXtreme Programming, as being flexible but relying on an underlying structure and framework of planning, iterations, and backlogs (Hodgson and Briand 2013 ). This is, again, exemplified by studies which have analysed the applicability of ISO development standards in game development, and which conclude that the standard is difficult to implement in game companies (Kasurinen et al. 2013 , 2014 ). Interviewed developers in other studies state, in clear terms, that Agile is unsuitable for their working processes: “We have a problem because the artists aren’t Agile. They detest it! … That’s a problem. There’s a dual system happening here.” (Hodgson and Briand 2013 , p. 320).

The challenge of controlling and standardizing the process of creating a product that is largely unpredictable and open to creative input until a very late stage of development is an issue that has been discussed in many papers (Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ; O’Hagan et al. 2014 ; Tschang and Szczypula 2006 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ), and these discussions are anchored in many different parts of the development ecosystem. It has been described as an issue with requirements, creative autonomy, technical constraints, or as a management issue, which might suggest that game development does not easily adhere to one particular methodological framework.

4.2.2 Documentation and Shared Objects for Collaborations

A strong trend in the game development literature is a very low focus on documentation and a strong focus on playable prototypes. The most frequently mentioned documentation (Alves et al. 2007 ; Kasurinen et al. 2014 ; Stacey and Nandhakumar 2009 ; Wimmer and Sitnikova 2011 ) is the game design document. It is worth noting that several of these studies more often identify shortcomings than benefits with the documental approach to game design. For example: “Even an apparently complete [game design document] is likely to change during the development process” (Alves et al. 2007 , p. 278). Or, as stated by an interviewee: “When the production started, the specifications went out of the window… There simply is not enough knowledge to make a full design at the early stage.” (Kasurinen et al. 2013 , p. 14).

In place of an agreed-upon design document, one important element of the development process that is addressed in several studies comprises the softer aspects of team cohesion and interdisciplinary collaboration (Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ; Tran and Biddle 2008 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ). Frequent and open knowledge-sharing (Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Dezso et al. 2010 ; Llerena et al. 2009 ) and continuous informal dialogue (Tran and Biddle 2008 ) emerged in the papers as more widely used methods of keeping a team’s collaborative creative vision intact during development. For example:

It’s very much a dialogue, we try not to have too formal split between tech and creative team when thinking about this, but prioritize what the user experience should be and when we can ship at target quality. (Wang and Nordmark 2015 , p. 279) Learning about experiences from others exposes each member to the different aspects of the game development process. As a result, the team is more empathetic to different disciplinary perspectives and approaches. (Tran and Biddle 2008 , p. 51)

It is also important to note that the producer is sometimes highlighted as having an important role in facilitating these processes; however, almost none of the reviewed papers focused on describing the role of the producer in game development, with only Schmalz et al. ( 2014 ) being a notable exception.

4.2.3 The Tools Used in Game Development

Software tools within game development are sparingly discussed in the reviewed literature. The papers that discuss software tools to a larger degree (Kasurinen et al. 2013 , 2014 ; Kasurinen and Smolander 2014 ; Llerena et al. 2009 ; O’Donnell 2011 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ; Vanhala and Kasurinen 2014 ) clearly highlight the differences between game studios and how they use them. Some game studios create their own development tools from scratch, some modify existing ones, and some use third-party tools to create games. There is a difference between how these tools are selected and used, depending on company structure and size (Kasurinen et al. 2013 , 2014 ; Stacey and Nandhakumar 2009 ). Small-to-medium sized game studios in particular outsource their game engine development (Kasurinen et al. 2013 , 2014 ; Kasurinen and Smolander 2014 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ; Vanhala and Kasurinen 2014 ). The tools used in larger organizations reflect a more structured and formalized development process. Development support tools such as version control and file-sharing services, however, are commonly used in game development organizations, irrespective of size.

The articles that do discuss software tools often focus on the importance of an effective tool pipeline, tool selection and usage, and game developers’ experience. The use of software tools is very dependent on organization and surrounding circumstances. Therefore, they are often used differently.

4.2.4 Requirements, Structure and Formalization

There are a few specific areas in game development in which requirements are described in a more “traditional” manner as a list of fixed, objective, necessary goals that developers need to achieve. In papers dealing with large development projects, for example, AAA studios working with external stakeholders such as publishers, platform holders or investors, technical requirements seem to become significantly more explicit and static (Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Hodgson and Briand 2013 ; Walfisz et al. 2006 ). For example, games released on major hardware-specific platforms (e.g. Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo consoles, or different brands of phones) need to adhere to rigorous lists of requirements on performance, compatibility, and usability; in essence, software architecture seems to be one of the main areas of games that have rigorous requirements (Alves et al. 2007 ; McAllister and White 2015 ; Myllärniemi et al. 2006 ; Stacey et al. 2007 ; Wang and Nordmark 2015 ).

In situations where spontaneous communication is difficult, there is a need for formalized documentation and requirements (Alves et al. 2007 ; Schmalz et al. 2014 ; Stacey et al. 2007 ). In companies that did extensive outsourcing, or engaged in other forms of cross-company collaborations, requirements are often described as a crucial tool to ensure that the—normally quite messy and informal—act of game development could be channelled towards a clear goal (Hodgson and Briand 2013 ; Stacey and Nandhakumar 2008 ). In these cases, requirements seem to be used as a form of risk management, as it gives stakeholders an opportunity to present their expectations on developers’ performances, which developers then become beholden to (Hodgson and Briand 2013 ; Stacey et al. 2007 ; Walfisz et al. 2006 ).

In summary, there is no real consensus on the exact requirements for game development. The use of formalized requirements in development seems to be closely tied to a game studio’s size and “maturity”.

5 Discussion and Conclusion

The picture that the 48 reviewed papers paints of game development is a complex and ambivalent one: games are created in an entangled web of content development intertwined with production processes, in which technological and creative requirements may clash but also give rise to new opportunities.

There are some themes that emerged from this review that are prevalent enough across cases that they can be considered general truisms of game development. There is a conspicuous avoidance of firm methods and explicitly unified language among developers, and ad-hoc development driven by subjective experience requirements is the most prevalent praxis across the industry. The outcome of this review puts into question whether ‘Agile’ is actually an apt description of the development model that game projects employ. Several of the reviewed papers stated that while Agile is a term often used to describe game development due to its association with flexibility, game developers rarely use actual Agile methods (Hodgson and Briand 2013 ; Koutonen and Leppänen 2013 ; Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 ; Schmalz et al. 2014 ; Stacey and Nandhakumar 2008 ). As phrased in one of the papers, “Interviewees [implied] that Agile is sometimes a euphemism for a lack of process.” (Murphy-Hill et al. 2014 , p. 6) Some developers also more or less explicitly stated that Agile is not a good fit for their working processes (Hodgson and Briand 2013 ; Koutonen and Leppänen 2013 ).

Practicing game developers have created frameworks that accommodate for this lack of planning, including flat hierarchies, democratic decision-making, creative autonomy, and informal communication, which create an environment that maintains creativity and openness to product changes long into the production process (Cohendet and Simon 2007 ; Llerena et al. 2009 ; Tran and Biddle 2008 ). A prevalent theme in the reviewed studies is that play-testing has a central role in all phases of game development (Kasurinen and Smolander 2014 ).

Some of the reviewed papers seem to be focused on making game development more “mature” by arguing for ways of standardizing (e.g. employing ISO standards) game development practices (e.g. Kasurinen et al. 2013 ; McAllister and White 2015 ; O’Hagan and O’Connor 2015 ; Seung et al. 2006 ). While the findings of these types of papers were often that standardization is unfeasible due to the unpredictable requirements inherent in game production, the conclusions were often that formalization needed to be pursued with different semantics so that developers understood their values better (Kasurinen et al. 2013 ; O’Hagan and O’Connor 2015 ), rather than acknowledging that the fluid practices that game developers use might be deliberate and carefully honed in spite of their sometimes chaotic appearance. In short, researchers’ ways of considering a practice as being “mature” might be at odds with game developers’ ways of working.

That being said, however, one interesting outcome from this research is that there is an uncertainty regarding whether even developers’ stated impression of what game development is, matches what they actually do. The general axiom of games being subjective, and game development thriving under flexibility and autonomous work, might be so strong as to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. One paper in particular featured an interesting case where an increase in studio autonomy in relation to creative direction (i.e. dropping external stakeholders to focus on the development team’s own intellectual properties) led to a more complicated and unhealthy working climate due to increasing economic uncertainty and changed power dynamics (Hotho and Champion 2011 ). Another paper raised the issue that, despite the conviction that Agile work processes facilitate autonomy and prevent the emergence of stifling power structures, empirical studies of developers’ day-to-day work have “highlighted the persistence of power hierarchies within and around the project team” (Hodgson and Briand 2013 ). Yet another paper brought up the issue of developers’ perceptions and expectations of their colleagues’ and their own passion for development leading to a form of peer pressure, which subsequently worked to maintain and exacerbate unhealthy working climates (Marie-Josée and Kathleen 2012 ). These types of findings suggest that the processes that developers pursue and value might not always be positive. While this review does not intend to provide prescriptions for how the craft of game development should evolve in the future, the outcomes do hint at a need to examine whether or not these universally agreed-upon practices exist because of the inherent values they bring to development projects, or if they primarily persist due to tradition.

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Open access funding provided by University of Skövde. This research was funded by the University of Skövde, the Game Hub Scandinavia (NYPS 20200428) and the Game Hub Scandinavia 2.0 (NYPS 20201849) projects under the EU regional development fund Interreg Öresund-Kattegat-Skagerrak.

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Berg Marklund, B., Engström, H., Hellkvist, M. et al. What Empirically Based Research Tells Us About Game Development. Comput Game J 8 , 179–198 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-019-00085-1

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Thesis Topics

We offer topics within the following areas:

• Player Motivation [ download ] (eLearning topics are no longer available)
• Player Assessment in Games [ download ]
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You can find more details below. Feel free to email or visit the corresponding contacts if you are interested in one of the advertised topics or topic areas.

Additionally, we offer the following thesis topics:

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Topic Area: Player Motivation

[BT/MT, several theses possible] Player Motivation in Games: Maximizing player motivation is key to making (serious) games successful. Not only does it increase players’ attachment to the game; it has also been found to be beneficial for learning success. Currently, research is lacking in determining which game elements or combinations thereof are especially motivating. Theses in this area can focus on developing games to showcase specific elements and evaluate their effect in user studies. Contact:     Julia Brich

[BT/MT, several theses possible] Player-Game Adaptivity: In an increasingly individualized world, adapting (serious) games to player characteristics is the next big thing. Theses in this area shall research the effect of adapting game elements during runtime. Which elements are eligible for adaption? How could the actual adaption be designed? How far can elements be adapted without negative effects? Theses in my area will focus on adapting games with the goal of maximising player motivation, based on potential player type and learning preferences. For more topics concerning adaptivity, please see the other bulletins. Contact:     Julia Brich

Topic Area: Player Assessment in Games

[BT/MT, several theses possible] Integration of Self-Reported Data Collection in Games: Research in human-computer interaction often requires the acquisition of self-reported data. An easy way of collecting data consists of questionnaires. In a first study we found that questionnaires that are integrated in game environments might be better than questionnaires in pen-and paper or electronic form. Theses in this area aim to advance this concept. How can different questionnaire elements be integrated in games? Is there a general concept of mapping questionnaire elements? Is the accuracy of the measurement equal to other forms of questionnaires? Contact:    Julian Frommel

[BT/MT, several theses possible] Game Events: During game play a lot of events happen in-game, e.g. the player completes a level. Therefore, games provide a quite unique source of valuable information. The theses in this topic should investigate how to exploit this source of information for the assessment of player characteristics and state, and thus the adaptivity of games. How are game events defined? How can game events be used to assess player characteristics (e.g. demographics) player state (e.g. emotion)? Can players be identified by game events? How should game events be integrated in a framework for player assessment? Contact:    Julian Frommel

[BT/MT, several theses possible] Avatars in Games: Avatars serve many different functions in games, e.g. as representations of the player, as non-player characters or as a feedback mechanism in Serious Games. Theses in this topic area concern questions on how to use avatars for player assessment. What data can be collected through assessment that is hidden in dialogues with non-player characters? Is it possible to assess characteristics of players from their designed in-game avatars? Contact:    Julian Frommel

[BT/MT, several theses possible] Games in Virtual Reality: Virtual Reality is finding its way in the consumer market at the end of 2015 with the market start of the new VR HMDs (e.g. Oculus Rift CV1 and HTC Vive). A major selling point might be games in VR. However, there is little research on this topic. Theses in this topic area therefore aim on investigating the challenges and opportunities that stem from the application of this new technology to games. How does VR affect the way games are designed? How can the new hardware be used to assess player state and characteristics? What benefits do Serious Games have from VR technology? Contact:    Julian Frommel

Topic Area: Adaptivity in Games

[BT/MT, several theses possible] Adaptivity Triggers in Games: This topic area investigates the fusion and weighing of adaptivity triggers in games. The choice of adaptivity triggers lies with the student, but includes game events and biophysical signals, such as the player’s heart rate. A thesis in this area consists of the implementation of a prototype game that analyses how incoming triggers can be merged and weighed in regard to player experience modeling. Finally, the interpretation of the player state can be integrated into the game's adaptive mechanisms. Contact:    Katja Rogers

[BT/MT, several theses possible] Rule-Based Game Adaptivity: The focus of this area lies in the implementation of game adaptivity. In particular, a thesis in this area will investigate the design and implementation of goal-based rule engine architectures. The thesis focuses on the implementation of a goal-based rule engine underlying a prototype game. The game uses the rules to react to incoming triggers in order to progress towards a specific goal (e.g. a particular sequence of game events, or player states). For this purpose, the game requires a simple unit-testing system to simulate triggers. The thesis can be concluded by a technical evaluation or user study. Contact:    Katja Rogers

[BT/MT, several theses possible] Evolutionary Adaptation of Game Elements: Evolutionary algorithms are well-suited to the generation and adaptation of game content, by evolving digital representations of the game elements and applying fitness functions to choose among the potential offspring elements. For a thesis in this area, the student can choose a specific game element and then use evolutionary algorithms for adaptation towards a specific goal (e.g. high player satisfaction or immersion). Contact:    Katja Rogers

[BT/MT, several theses possible] Specific (Serious) Games: Many games (both serious and not-so-serious) use adaptive mechanisms, for example to provide a high degree of customisation to the player. We offer several thesis topics involving the design and implementation of (serious) games, such as an extension of the UniRallye scavenger hunt game, a game to teach MIPS assembler programming, or a game to investigate the effects of cutscenes on immersion. If you have a game concept in mind, feel free to come by and discuss it. Contact:    Katja Rogers

Available thesis topics:

[BT/MT] Event Logging and Analysis in Serious Games: Serious games are designed to train and educate players, rather than focusing only on entertainment. While there are many ways to explicitly detect a learner‘s affective state and learning progress, serious games also offer the possibility of gaining implicit information about the state of the player, via the real-time logging and analysis of game events. This thesis begins with an investigation of implicit interactions and game events relevant to serious games. Based on the analysis of real-time game events, it should then provide a classification of possible predictions regarding the player‘s affective state (e.g. „satisfied“, or „frustrated“). This is to be implemented with a simple puzzle game. Finally, a user study will be conducted to evaluate the efficacy of implicit game event logging for serious games. Poster:       Download PDF Contact:    Julian Frommel

Currently available thesis topics in psychology:

The individual topics may be adopted by multiple students (upon consultation), whereby the scope of the individual dissertations will decrease correspondingly. Some of the advertised topics may also be combined, allowing for joint development and collaboration in order to keep the the complexity and number of required study participants at a reasonable scale.

Topic Area 1: Modern technologies offer users diverse possibilities of communication with their devices, via both classical methods of input such as mouse and keyboard, but also through touch, gestures, or speech input. Combinations of these input modalities further increase the variety of choices. The goal of this topic area is to find and offer the ideal and currently-prefered method of human-computer interaction (HCI) in any situation. Our research focuses on the user: how does the interaction behaviour and user preferences change under varying affective states? For this purpose, a gamification approach is to be implemented to examine the effects of stress and competition through variations of sound, experience points, rewards, and rankings. Contact: Topic Area 1 is a cooperation between the Media Informatics (Prof. M. Weber), Serious Games (Jun-Prof. C. Schrader) and General Psychology (Prof. A. Huckauf).

Topic Area 2: Serious games offer the potential to promote the advancement of procedural skills, in particular through their interactive character. Procedural skills consist of factual knowledge, the rehearsal of practical routines, and the construction  of conceptual mental models. Mental models are representations of objects or events within systems, as well as the structural relationships between these objects and events. The latter, in particular, are considered essential for knowledge transfer in education. Multiple thesis projects are available to examine knowledge transfer within serious games learning of procedural skills. The following topics are of particular relevance: Knowledge Transfer While Learning With Serious Games The transfer of newly-gained knowledge to new situations is a considerable aspect of procedural skills, and has not yet been extensively researched in combination with serious games. Mental models are seen as a central requirement for the successful transfer of factual knowledge. Part of this thesis project consists of the explicit recording of the mental models of study participants, and their subsequent visualisation and quantification with analytic procedures such as Pathfinder. Knowledge transfer will be detected subject to the development of mental models and factual knowledge.
 Optional: The additional aspect of comparisons between individual and group settings while learning with serious games may be included. 
 Effect of Individual Differences on the Development of Mental Models While Learning With Serious Games
 In order to design serious games capable of adapting to the development of mental models - with the goal of knowledge transfer - psychologists must consider correlations with individual differences between learners. Current reseach indicates that mental models develop in levels, depending on previous experience. Cognitive styles - e.g. the dimension adaption vs. innovation in decision-making and problem-solving styles - may also influence the learning process. Mental models of study participants will be captured with analytical procedures (e.g. Pathfinder), and associated with individual properties of the learners (e.g. experience, cognitive style) and the resulting knowledge transfer. Optional: These topics may also include the additional aspect of comparisons between individual and group settings. Contact: Valentin Riemer

Topic Area 3: Emotions in the Context of Digital Learning Environments The instructional design of virtual learning environments has a decisive role regarding learning success. In how far virtually displayed learning content is experienced emotionally and continually received should be considered in particular in the design of a learning environment. Current theoretical approaches indicate that learning environments that cause negative emotions such as anger, frustration, or boredom, may induce learners to avoid confrontation with the learning content. This thesis focuses on the influence of emotions, in particular, boredom and frustration, on the design and preparation of virtually presented learning content. Long-term recommendations for instruction design should be developed, based on theoretical approaches from instruction and emotion research, in order to allow virtual learning environments to counteract negative emotions. Furthermore, different methods of feedback should be designed, and examined regarding the reduction of negative emotions and an increase in time spent in a virtual learning environment. Currently, there are two thesis topics available for this topic area. One will focus on the measurement of emotions during a learning process in different modalities. The other will examine the effect of the degree of difficulty on the emotional experience of the learning process. Contact: The above thesis topics are a collaborative offer of Claudia Schrader (Jun.-Prof. Serious Games) andUlrike Nett (Jun.-Prof. Instructional and Learning Reseach in STEM fields and medicine).

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N2 - Writing a dissertation in the final year at university can be a highly daunting task for any student, but particularly if the degree is practically oriented and implementation-based. This book provides an accessible, concise guide to producing a dissertation in Computer Science, Software Engineering or Games Development degrees with research projects typically involving design, implementation, testing and evaluation.Drawing on the authors’ extensive knowledge and experience of supervising dissertation students, the book offers a step-by-step guide to the key areas of writing a dissertation alongside real-life examples. Chapters cover:Producing literature reviews,Formulating research questions,Understanding epistemologies,Selecting methodologies and research methods,Software development lifecycle methodologies,Evaluation, statistical analysis and formulating conclusions.Working methodically through the different stages of writing a dissertation, this is an essential comprehensive guide for all students producing any form of dissertation in Computer Science, Software Engineering or Games Development.

AB - Writing a dissertation in the final year at university can be a highly daunting task for any student, but particularly if the degree is practically oriented and implementation-based. This book provides an accessible, concise guide to producing a dissertation in Computer Science, Software Engineering or Games Development degrees with research projects typically involving design, implementation, testing and evaluation.Drawing on the authors’ extensive knowledge and experience of supervising dissertation students, the book offers a step-by-step guide to the key areas of writing a dissertation alongside real-life examples. Chapters cover:Producing literature reviews,Formulating research questions,Understanding epistemologies,Selecting methodologies and research methods,Software development lifecycle methodologies,Evaluation, statistical analysis and formulating conclusions.Working methodically through the different stages of writing a dissertation, this is an essential comprehensive guide for all students producing any form of dissertation in Computer Science, Software Engineering or Games Development.

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SN - 9780367517076

BT - Writing Successful Undergraduate Dissertations in Games Development and Computer Science

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110 Video Game Topic Ideas for Essays & Examples

🔝 top 10 video game topics for 2024, 🏆 best video game topic ideas & essay examples, 🎮 good video game research topics, 🕹️ interesting gaming topics to write about, ❓ video game research questions, ✅ simple & easy video game essay topics.

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• History of Video Game Consoles
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• Video Game Industry Analysis In 1950, Yamauchi assumed the position of the president in the firm and got on a variety of strategies with the purpose of rationalizing and modernizing the way the firm was controlled.
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• The Video Game Industry Evolution The first mention of the creation of such games dates back to the 1940s, but it was in 1952 that Alexander Shafto “Sandy” Douglas officially presented his dissertation at the University of Cambridge. One of […]
• The NASCAR Video Game Project Management Plan The plan attempts to draw the features and gameplay mechanics by replicating the thought process of a potential player. At this stage, the game should be well-advertised and ready for release.
• The Motivation of the Video Game Player For instance, the project gave its players the dynamic and fast pace of the game, a vast and detailed map, various locations, several different weapons, and character skins, and this is not all the possibilities.
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• Video Game History: Overview From the 1990s to Nowadays In addition to arcade car behavior, the game was also famous for its beautiful graphics at the time, with each game in the series being a launch title showing the capabilities of the console.
• Video Game Delivery Project: Strategic Marketing To initiate strategies in marketing of Video Game, the company will decide to develop a web based application by ABC CORP and this application is customized to meet the requirements of the project. The purpose […]
• The U.S. Video Game Industry This was also based on the views of the company’s developers who assumed that the technological advantages of the the16-bit system were extremely less than that of the 8-bit system.
• Video Game Company Against Online Piracy The purpose of the said DRM software is to protect the intellectual rights of the company. The fourth major issue is the encompassing goal of the VGC to end all types of piracy.
• Video Game Addiction and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs As to me, I was interested in video games when I was a child because this industry was at its beginning and almost every pupil was involved in it.
• Nintendo in the Video Game Industry Previously, Atari was a major power to reckon with in the industry but was later toppled by Nintendo. Part of Yamauchi’s vision was to introduce new and cheaper video games in the market than the […]
• Game designers have the responsibility to design less video game Secondly, the outcome of the video game is unpredictable as compared to movie in which the audience can predict the point at which the story would end thus making the video games more interesting to […]
• Striving for the Ultimate Knowledge: Eli’s Mission. Video Game Owing to the peculiarities of the movie plot, the game can be shaped in a most intriguing way, with a lot of turns of the plot which lead to the most effective denouement.
• Analysis of the Counter-Strike Video Game Phenomenon in Computer Gaming
• Comparison of Three Companies in Video Game Industry; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft
• Analysis of Free Will in The Stanley Parable Video Game
• Analysis of the Effects of Playing a Video Game Used in Computer Science
• Analysis of the Characteristics and Player Statistics of Bungie’s Video Game Destiny
• Are Video Games Truly a Game or a Reality?
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Any interesting thesis topic? [closed]

I study Computer Science at Technical University of Lodz (in Poland) with Computer Game and Simulation Technology specialization. I'm going to defend BSc thesis next year and I was wondering what topic I could choose but nothing really interesting is coming to my mind.

Maybe You could help me and suggest some subjects related to programming graphics, games or simulations? (or maybe something else that is interesting enough :) ). I would be very grateful for any suggestion!

• \$\begingroup\$ I voted up. So somebody voted down for this. Why? I think that this very good question/wiki \$\endgroup\$ –  Notabene Commented Jan 12, 2011 at 22:46
• 3 \$\begingroup\$ I'm not the voter, but my guess would be that it's subjective, and not a particularly good subjective question either: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective \$\endgroup\$ –  Tetrad Commented Jan 12, 2011 at 23:17
• \$\begingroup\$ Well, just read the question and ignore the subjective (what is interesting) part of it. He is clearly looking for a list like the answer I see below, a list of game technologies that are being pushed further and further now that near photo-realistic rendering has been around. \$\endgroup\$ –  James Commented Jan 13, 2011 at 1:06
• \$\begingroup\$ He's asking for topics, not a discussion. I think it's a decent question. \$\endgroup\$ –  Michael Coleman Commented Jan 13, 2011 at 1:15
• 1 \$\begingroup\$ Voted up, because I find it useful. \$\endgroup\$ –  topright Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 22:33

3 Answers 3

Few topics come to my mind

• Fluids simulation: Navier-strokes equations. And gpgpu acceleration ( video )
• Fluids rendering - volumetric raycasting ( video )
• Volumetric rendering - marching cubes ( video )
• Realtime bokeh rendering ( paper )
• Point based rendering ( video )
• Realtime rain rendering ( paper )
• Simple raytracer with global ilumination - propably without accelaration structs.

And the best is contact some computer games/graphics/movie company and offer them to create something they need for free. That have only pluses. You will have hard and interesting thesis ( and prototype ) and some experienced advisor from company who will help you. Don't be afraid to do it. Enthusiasm helps very much in this case. (I know it)

• \$\begingroup\$ Some of links leads to my projects. I don't want to promote them this silly. Actually there is no reason, I just like them, so I suggested them. :) \$\endgroup\$ –  Notabene Commented Jan 12, 2011 at 21:59
• 2 \$\begingroup\$ +1 for the contact a company. There is all sorts of stuff out there that have R&D time frames too long for game development schedules to consider spending resources on. Given that you are in Poland I'd think about contacting Crytek. They have a very active R&D department and are fairly local. \$\endgroup\$ –  wkerslake Commented Jan 13, 2011 at 2:50
• \$\begingroup\$ Great answer, notebene! This is exactly what I wanted to hear - the list of possible subjects. First I will send emails with proposition of doing free project to some game/graphics companies and in case of negative replies I will choose between: 1. "Simple raytracer with global ilumination - propably without accelaration structs." 2. "Volumetric rendering - marching cubes" 3. "Fluids rendering - volumetric raycasting" because these topics seem to be interesting to me. wkerslake, thanks for suggesting me Crytek! This will be one of my target companies for sure. \$\endgroup\$ –  revers Commented Jan 13, 2011 at 14:45
• \$\begingroup\$ @revers I'm happy you like it. Feel free to contact me via e-mail (my profile) for more info/papers/source codes about raytracers and especially about volume raycasting. I'm working on raycasting now for movie renderer - so i can share materials and also some nice volume data - clouds, fires, nebulas etc. \$\endgroup\$ –  Notabene Commented Jan 13, 2011 at 16:16

I did pathfinding on arbitrary 3D environments. Admittedly not totally interesting nor innovative, but it was the closest thing to a game-related thesis I managed to negotiate :S

It was a few years ago, though. Now they're talking about having game development as an elective. How times change :(

Inverse kinematics and behaviors ala NaturalMotion.

• \$\begingroup\$ Propably too hard for Bsc thesis. Especially behaviors ala naturalmotion.(now i get why mods says that this is argumentative:)) \$\endgroup\$ –  Notabene Commented Jan 13, 2011 at 21:20
• \$\begingroup\$ Well, one brilliant thing about thesis is that they get to define their scope. You don't need to solve a whole problem, but a finite aspect of it. \$\endgroup\$ –  Leonardo Herrera Commented Jan 15, 2011 at 4:20

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged graphics education .

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