Measuring the Impact of Factors Affecting Game Development in Distributed Software Development

Abstract

A software game is an application that is not only applicable for entertainment purposes but also used in domains like business, education and health care. Software game development is a multidisciplinary process that involves art, sound, artificial intelligence (AI), control systems and human factors which makes it different from traditional software development practice.  Distributed software development (DSD) facilitates decentralized zones for the availability of multidisciplinary human resources at less cost. Past studies explored many influencing factors for game development, however, how these factors majorly affect the game development in Distributed Software Development (DSD) environment yet not been studied as per our knowledge. In this research, we not only identified the most influencing factors for game development in DSD but also gauge a relationship matrix between these factors with games’ technical requirements. In our evaluation, we took twenty-nine top-rated animated games to establish a mapping of these factors present in these games. To calculate the variation in a given project budget, we execute Monte-Carlo simulations between the independent variable (influencing factors) and dependent variable (overall cost) that forecast the valuation of each variable impact on the overall nominal cost of the project. Empirical results of our research conclude that among all identified factors, ‘Physical Resources’ and ‘Freelancers’ have a significant impact on the overall project cost. Our research findings quantitatively assist the software project managers to estimate the cost deviations due to influencing factors in Distributed Software Development (DSD) environment.