Streamlining domain analysis for digital games product lines

Abstract

Digital games and their development process are quite peculiar when compared to other software in general. However, current domain engineering processes do not addresses such peculiarities and, not surprisingly, successful cases of software product lines (SPLs) for digital games cannot be found in the literature nor the industry. With such a motivation, this paper focuses on streamlining and enriching the Domain Analysis process for SPLs targeted at digital games. Guidelines are provided for making Domain Analysis tasks aware of digital games peculiarities, in order to tackle the challenges of and benefit from the unique characteristics of such a macro-domain. A case study for an SPL aimed at arcade-based games is also presented to illustrate and evaluate the proposed guidelines. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.