Article

Applying lehman's laws to game evolution

Authors:

Timo Nummenmaa,

Annakaisa Kultima,

Kati Alha,

Tommi MikkonenAuthors Info & Claims

IWPSE 2013: Proceedings of the 2013 International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution

Pages 11 - 17

https://doi.org/10.1145/2501543.2501546

Published: 19 August 2013 Publication History

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Abstract

Computer games are a genre of software systems that in many ways differs from more traditional applications. In particular, when designing games, the end result of game development resembles work of art rather than that of engineering, emphasizing the need for creativity and artistic abilities. However, as technology, tools, methods, and artifacts that are used in the development of games are to a large extent similar to those used in the development of more traditional system, games should conform to the basic laws of software, including software evolution. In this paper, we reflect the principles of software evolution distilled by Manny Lehman in the form of laws of software evolution to the game domain. We present how the laws can be interpreted and applied in games projects, and argue that many of the laws apply to many games, but not all laws apply to all games. The way the game is evolved especially has an effect on the applicable laws as changes in games can be emerging, reactive or pre-planned.

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Cited By

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De Sousa ANeto IFerreira F(2024)An Exploratory Study on the Validation of Lehman’s LawsProceedings of the 20th Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems10.1145/3658321.3658366(1-10)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3658321.3658366
Chueca JVerón JFont JPérez FCetina C(2024)The consolidation of game software engineering: A systematic literature review of software engineering for industry-scale computer gamesInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107330165(107330)Online publication date: Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107330
Kultima AKarvinen J(2016)Idea practices and attitudes towards innovation in game developmentProceedings of the 20th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/2994310.2994359(331-340)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2994310.2994359

Index Terms

Applying lehman's laws to game evolution
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Software management

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Information

Published In

IWPSE 2013: Proceedings of the 2013 International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution

August 2013

67 pages

ISBN:9781450323116

DOI:10.1145/2501543

Program Chairs:
Romain Robbes
University of Chile, Chile
,
Gregorio Robles
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 19 August 2013

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ESEC/FSE'13

Sponsor:

SIGSOFT

ESEC/FSE'13: Joint Meeting of the European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering

August 19 - 20, 2013

Saint Petersburg, Russia

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Cited By

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De Sousa ANeto IFerreira F(2024)An Exploratory Study on the Validation of Lehman’s LawsProceedings of the 20th Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems10.1145/3658321.3658366(1-10)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3658321.3658366
Chueca JVerón JFont JPérez FCetina C(2024)The consolidation of game software engineering: A systematic literature review of software engineering for industry-scale computer gamesInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107330165(107330)Online publication date: Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107330
Kultima AKarvinen J(2016)Idea practices and attitudes towards innovation in game developmentProceedings of the 20th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/2994310.2994359(331-340)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2994310.2994359

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