Games by End-Users: Analyzing Development Environments
Resumo
Digital games are increasingly present in people's lives, especially in younger people's lives. At times, users want to do more than just play games produced by specialized companies, but would also like to customize them or create and play their own games and share them with their friends. Enabling users with no programming knowledge to develop their games raises several challenges, that range from game design to technical aspects. In this paper, our goal was to investigate the following research question "What strategies and constructs do game engines use to allow users with no previous knowledge of programming to create games?". To do so, we used the Semiotic Inspection Method to analyze two game engines aimed mainly at this audience - GDevelop and Stencyl. As a result, we have identified the main strategies and constructs used in the tools to support game programming by end-users.
Palavras-chave:
end-user programming, games, scientific SIM
Referências
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R. O. Prates, C. S. De Souza and S. D. Barbosa, "Methods and tools: a method for evaluating the communicability of user interfaces", Interactions, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 31-38, Jan. 2000.
A. Ioannidou, A. Repenning and D. C. Webb, "AgentCubes: Incremental 3D end-user development", Journal of Visual Languages & Computing, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 236-251, Aug. 2009.
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I. Sommerville, "Software engineering", 9th ed. Pearson, 2011.
C. Kelleher, and R. Pausch, "Lowering the barriers to programming: A taxonomy of programming environments and languages for novice programmers", ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 83-137, Jun. 2005.
V. J. Rideout, U. G. Foehr, and D. F. Roberts, "Generation M2: Media in the lives of 8-to 18-year-olds'', Kaiser Family Foundation, Menlo Park, California, USA, Jan. 20, 2010. Available: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED527859.pdf
H. Mouaheb, A. Fahli, M. Moussetad, and S. Eljamali, "The serious game: what educational benefits?'', Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 46, Feb. 2012, pp. 5502-5508.
J. Alvarez, and D. Djaouti, "An introduction to Serious game Definitions and concepts'', Serious Games & Simulation for Risks Management, vol. 11, no. 1, 2011, pp. 11-15.
J. M. Rouly, J. D. Orbeck, and E. Syriani, "Usability and suitability survey of features in visual ides for non-programmers'', In Proc. 5th Workshop on Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools, Oct. 2014, pp. 31-42.
C. M. Kanode,H. M. Haddad, "Software engineering challenges in game development", In 2009 6th International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations, 2009, pp. 260--265.
P. Mishra, and U. Shrawankar, "Comparison between Famous Game Engines and Eminent Games", International Journal of Interactive Multimedia & Artificial Intelligence, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 69-77, 2016.
F. Messaoudi, A. Ksentini, G. Simon, and P. Bertin, "Performance analysis of game engines on mobile and fixed devices", ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 1-28, Oct. 2017.
B. Cowan and B Kapralos, "An overview of serious game engines and frameworks", Recent Advances in Technologies for Inclusive Well-Being, pp. 15-38, 2017.
C. S. de Souza, C. F. Leitão, R. O. Prates, S. A. Bim and E. J. da Silva, "Can inspection methods generate valid new knowledge in HCI? The case of semiotic inspection", International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, vol. 68, no. 1-2, pp. 22-40, Feb. 2010.
B. Cowan, and B. Kapralos, "A survey of frameworks and game engines for serious game development", In 2014 IEEE 14th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, pp. 662-664. Jul. 2014.
P. Petridis, I. Dunwell, D. Panzoli,S. Arnab, A. Protopsaltis, M. Hendrix and S. de Freitas, "Game engines selection framework for high-fidelity serious applications", International Journal of Interactive Worlds, pp. 1–19, Jun. 2012.
E. Christopoulou and S. Xinogalos, "Overview and Comparative Analysis of Game Engines for Desktop and Mobile Devices", International Journal of Serious Games. vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 21-36, Dec. 2017.
T. Koehler, A. Dieckmann, and P. Russell, "An evaluation of contemporary game engines", In Proc. 26th eCAADe Conferences, Sep. 2008, pp. 743-750.
Ş. Mercan, and P. O. Durdu, "Evaluating the Usability of Unity Game Engine from Developers' Perspective", In 2017 IEEE 11th International Conference on Application of Information and Communication Technologies, 2017, pp. 1-5.
A. G. Peker and T. Can, "A design goal and design pattern based approach for development of game engines for mobile platforms", In 2011 16th International Conference on Computer Games, 2011, pp. 114-120.
P. Gross, and C. Kelleher, "Non-programmers identifying functionality in unfamiliar code: strategies and barriers", Journal of Visual Languages & Computing, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 263-276, Dec. 2010.
A. Repenning, and A. Ioannidou, "What makes end-user development tick? 13 design guidelines", In End user development. vol. 9, pp. 51-85, 2006.
M. Hirakawa, M. Yoshimi, M. Tanaka, and T. Ichikawa, "A generic model for constructing visual programming systems", In 1989 IEEE Workshop on Visual Languages, 1989, pp. 124-125.
E. Hudlicka, "Affective game engines: motivation and requirements", In Proc. 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games, Apr. 2009, pp. 299-306.
C. S. de Souza, C. F. Leitão, R. O. Prates and E. J. da Silva, "The semiotic inspection method", In Proc. VII Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Nov. 2006, pp. 148-157.
C. S. de Souza, "The semiotic engineering of human-computer interaction", MIT Press, 2005.
R. O. Prates, C. S. De Souza and S. D. Barbosa, "Methods and tools: a method for evaluating the communicability of user interfaces", Interactions, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 31-38, Jan. 2000.
A. Ioannidou, A. Repenning and D. C. Webb, "AgentCubes: Incremental 3D end-user development", Journal of Visual Languages & Computing, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 236-251, Aug. 2009.
A. Y. Irmak, and S. Erdogan, "Digital game addiction among adolescents and young adults: A current overview", Turkish Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 27, no. 2, 2015.
B. R. Barricelli, F. Cassano, D. Fogli, and A. Piccinno, "End-user development, end-user programming and end-user software engineering: A systematic mapping study", Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 149, pp.101-137, 2019.
I. Sommerville, "Software engineering", 9th ed. Pearson, 2011.
C. Kelleher, and R. Pausch, "Lowering the barriers to programming: A taxonomy of programming environments and languages for novice programmers", ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 83-137, Jun. 2005.
Publicado
18/10/2021
Como Citar
SOUZA, Joana Gabriela Ribeiro de; PRATES, Raquel Oliveira.
Games by End-Users: Analyzing Development Environments. In: SIMPÓSIO BRASILEIRO DE JOGOS E ENTRETENIMENTO DIGITAL (SBGAMES), 20. , 2021, Online.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2021
.
p. 69-78.
