BDD-I: especificações de uso de Behavior-Driven Development no desenvolvimento de jogos independentes

Abstract

The gaming industry in 2018 generated about 137.9 billion dollars around the world. Everyday, new games are launched, which makes this market quite competitive. The games can be created by the great AAA industry or can be developed by teams with few resources and that aim at innovation and originality, commonly known as independent games. Regardless of the size of the organization and/or team, the complexity of development inherent in the production of this type of software specific is similar. To deliver quality games, developers need to conduct tests during the independent games production. The tests aims to analyze specific characteristics of this type of software, such as degree of fun and aspects of gameplay. Over the years, development practices have emerged with the aim of improving the quality of software development, such as Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). Until now, few studies have reported on the benefits and limitations during the use of BDD in the game development cycle. In this context, this research aims to analyze how the BDD can be used as a practice in game development. To do so, it was investigated how test activities are performed and what aspects of game testing are explored during the development of independent games. Next, a case study on the use of BDD was conducted during the development of games. The collected data provided a basis for the construction of the Behavior-Driven Development for Indies (BDD-I) specification, presented on this work and consisted of a mapping of both game and bdd development cycles, the identification of test objectives that can be worked out using the practice, and a guide to help the independent game developers specify functionalities and scenarios using the BDD Ubiquitous Language.