7th International ICSE Workshop on Games and Software Engineering

(GAS 2023)

Co-located with the 45th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2023)

Eastern Time (ET): May 19th 8am - May 19th 3:40pm / Australia Eastern Time (AET): May 19th 10pm – May 20th 6:40am.

icse.gas.workshop.2023@gmail.com

Programme

Schedule -Eastern Time (ET): May 19th 8am - May 19th 3:40pm / Australia Eastern Time (AET): May 19th 10pm – May 20th 6:40am.

8h-8:15am (ET) - Welcome

8:15h - 9:30am (ET) - Keynote (Maria Rauschenberger)

9:30am-9:45am (ET) - Morning Break

9:45-11h (ET) - Paper session 1: Testing, QA

11-12h (ET) - LUNCH

12h-13:15h (ET) - Keynote (Lei Ma)

13:15h-14:05h (ET) - Paper session 2: Balance and progression: specifics of game mechanics

14:05h-14:20h (ET) - Afternoon Break

14:20h-15:30h (ET) - Closing panel with Q&A

15:30h-15:40h (ET) - Closing remarks

Paper sessions and accepted papers

Welcome
Chair: Antonio Bucchiarone

Keynote 1 - Maria Rauschenberger
Chair: Antonio Bucchiarone

Paper session 1: Testing, QA
Chair: Kendra M. L. Cooper

Survival of the Tested: Gamified Unit Testing Inspired by Battle Royale
Antonio Materazzo, Tommaso Fulcini, Riccardo Coppola and Marco Torchiano

While testing takes on a fundamental role to verify software quality and correctness, it often results to be overlooked in the educational field and students often approach it unwillingly, due to its repetitiveness.Our aim is to exploit gamification to engage students by providing them with dynamics like competition, self-expression, and personal improvement.We designed and developed Unit Brawl, a gamified application meant to manage multiple rounds, each one consisting of students developing Java programs and unit tests to be executed on each other. The players collect points by writing correct code that does not make the other players’ test cases fail, or by writing test cases capable of detecting defects in the other players’ code.The results of a preliminary evaluation to assess the functionality and performance of Unit Brawl. look promising. They make us confident about its stability, so we plan an evaluation with students in order to verify the effectiveness of the applied game elements in enhancing the students’ interest towards testing topics and their learning

An Exploratory Approach for Game Engine Architecture Recovery

Gabriel Ullmann, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Fabio Petrillo, Nicolas Anquetil and Cristiano Politwski

Game engines provide video game developers with a wide range of fundamental subsystems for creating games, such as 2D/3D graphics rendering, input device management, and audio playback. Developers often integrate these subsystems with other applications or extend them via plugins. To integrate or extend correctly, developers need a broad system architectural understanding. However, architectural information is not always readily available and is often overlooked in this kind of system. In this work, we propose an approach for game engine architecture recovery and explore the architecture of three popular open-source game engines (Cocos2d-x, Godot, and Urho3D). We perform manual subsystem detection and use Moose, a platform for software analysis, to generate architectural models. With these models, we answer the following questions: Which subsystems are present in game engines? Which subsystems are more often coupled with one another? Why are these subsystems coupled with each other? Results show that the platform independence, resource management, world editor, and core subsystems are frequently included by others and therefore act as foundations for the game engines. Furthermore, we show that, by applying our approach, game engine developers can understand whether subsystems are related and divide responsibilities. They can also assess whether relationships among subsystems are appropriate for the game engine.

Exploring Quality Assurance Practices and Tools for Indie Games
Jeff Cho and Karim Ali

The games industry is growing worldwide, eclipsing the global film industry as a premier entertainment solution. Developing a commercial game is a complex, lengthy, and costly process. Therefore, quality assurance (QA) is critical for producing high-quality games that are fun and reasonably defect-free. Prior studies have explored game development methodologies and testing approaches, goals, and automation. However, they have not addressed the disparate contexts of independent (indie) and non-indie game development with respect to available funding and resources. Since indie games make up the lion's share of newly released games each year, we want to empower their developers by maximizing their QA opportunities within their resource constraints. To achieve that, we surveyed 19~game developers who have experience with commercially released games to learn about their QA experiences and perspectives based on 22~of their released game projects. Our survey results show that indies have less clear goals and plans for testing, perform tests on a conditional basis over a regular testing schedule, and have subjective test results.

Keynote 2 - Lei Ma
Chair: Dayi Lin

Paper session 2: Balance and progression: specifics of game mechanics
Chair: Vanissa Wanick

Domain-Specific Languages for Describing Game Progression Logics
Ross Mawhorter
Developing large-scale worlds for videogames quickly becomes extremely complicated, especially in games with an intended progression of player abilities. Even small changes to the level design can lead to game-breaking bugs that are difficult to identify. To help solve this problem, we introduce the concept of \emph{game progression logics}, which enable automatic verification of level designs. These logics can be encoded using domain-specific languages in lightweight text files. We highlight the commonalities between existing progression logics created by the randomizer community, and introduce a progression logic created by the authors used to verify properties about \emph{Super Metroid}. Finally, we discuss the many uses of progression logics for automatically understanding and modifying games.

Assessing Video Game Balance using Autonomous Agents
Cristiano Politowski, Fabio Petrillo, Ghizlane El Boussaidi, Gabriel Cavalheiro Ullmann and Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

As the complexity and scope of games increase, game testing, also called playtesting, becomes an essential activity to ensure the quality of video games. Yet, the manual, ad-hoc nature of game testing leaves space for automation. In this paper, we research, design, and implement an approach to supplement game testing to balance video games with autonomous agents. We evaluate our approach with two platform games. We bring a systematic way to assess if a game is balanced by (1) comparing the difficulty levels between game versions and issues with the game design, and (2) the game demands for skill or luck.

Panel topic Pedagogical Issues in Games and Software Engineering

Host: Adam Smith, UC Santa Cruz

Panelists:

Thorsten Händler, Ferdinand Porsche FERNFH - Distance-Learning University of Applied Sciences

Beatriz Marin, Universitat Politècnica de València

Joseph Osborne, Pomona College

Final remarks

Chair: Adam Smith, UC Santa Cruz

Keynotes

Lei Ma (University of Alberta)

Title: Automated Game Testing in the Era of Data-Driven Intelligence: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract: Game testing has been long recognized as a notoriously challenging task, which mainly relies on manual playing and scripting-based testing in the game industry. Until recently, manually crafting test scripts still plays a dominant role in many game companies, which however could not satisfy the increasing quality demands of requirements as a software system in this speed era. The recent fast progress in data-driven AI (e.g., deep reinforcement learning, LLM) opens new opportunities to empower the various stages of game testing process with intelligence. In this talk, I provide a high-level introduction to our ongoing activities in automated video game testing empowered by data-driven AI. I will also highlight the challenges, opportunities, and possible future directions.

Bio:

Lei Ma is currently an Associate Professor with The University of Tokyo, as well as University of Alberta. He is also a Canada CIFAR AI Chair and Fellow at Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii). His research centers around the interdisciplinary fields of human-centered trustworthy software engineering (SE) and artificial intelligence (AI) with a special focus on the quality, reliability, safety and security assurance, as well as the interpretation and human interactivity of machine learning and AI Systems. Many of his works were published in top-tier software engineering, AI, and security venues (e.g., TSE, TOSEM, EMSE, ICSE, FSE, ASE, ISSTA, CAV, TNNLS, ICML, NeurIPS, ACM MM, AAAI, IJCAI, TDSC). He has received over 10 prestigious academic awards, including three ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards. For more detailed information, please visit the website, https://www.malei.org

Maria Rauschenberger (University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer)

Title: Breaking Boundaries: Navigating the Challenges of Game Development in a Diverse and Technologically Advanced World

Abstract: Games are rapidly evolving, becoming more immersive and interactive, and are blurring the lines between reality and virtual worlds. As technology continues to advance and user groups grow in number and diversity, the challenges faced by game developers continue to expand. How can we build games that are engaging and accessible to diverse user groups, such as students or people with special needs? How can we leverage new technologies such as ChatGPT or Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) to create even more immersive and personalized gaming experiences? In this keynote, we will look at the opportunities and challenges of game development in the age of advanced technology and diverse user groups, and discuss strategies for creating games that are both engaging and accessible to all.

Bio:

Maria Rauschenberger is a full professor for Digital Media at the University of Applied Sciences in Emden/Leer. She holds a Ph.D. in Information and Communication Technologies from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and is an expert in designing user-centric digital systems with a focus on human-computer interaction, machine learning, accessibility, and gamification. Maria's research interest lies in using computer science techniques to solve social issues. Her exceptional talent has been recognized with multiple awards, including the prestigious German Reading 2017 award and the fem:talent scholarship.

After the workshop, a special section in IEEE Transactions on Games is planned.

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