Game development from a software and creative product perspective: A quantitative literature review approach

This article presents the methodology and initial analysis of a systematic literature review that aims to explore how the craft and processes of game development have been studied in previous research. In particular, the review focuses on how previous research treats the inherent duality of video game development, since it both involves computer software development and creative production. Researchers are often in a position where they need to emphasize game development's relation to one of these disciplines, and it is not unusual for game development to be treated as a direct offspring of one field with some mild influences from another. Employing a more all-encompassing review approach, that includes research conducted from the perspectives of both computer science and the arts and humanities equally, makes the presented study different from previous literature reviews. The results show that there is a tendency that the management of software development has a negative correlation with the management of creativity in the studied material. The heterogenity of the fields and the limited amount of studies that focus on the duality of game development suggest that there is a need for a deeper analysis of the individual components and to synthesize results from disparate fields.