Requirements Engineering and the Creative Process in the Video Game Industry

The software engineering process in video game development is not clearly understood, hindering the development of reliable practices and processes for this field. An investigation of factors leading to success or failure in video game development suggests that many failures can be traced to problems with the transition from preproduction to production. Three examples, drawn from real video games, illustrate specific problems: 1) how to transform documentation from its preproduction form to a form that can be used as a basis for production, 2) how to identify implied information in preproduction documents, and 3) how to apply domain knowledge without hindering the creative process. We identify 3 levels of implication and show that there is a strong correlation between experience and the ability to identify issues at each level. The accumulated evidence clearly identifies the need to extend traditional requirements engineering techniques to support the creative process in video game development.