An Investigation on Maintainability of Update Methods in Game Loops

Abstract

Previous researches revealed that games software has different contexts such as demand for early implementation of play-test feedback and a high runtime performance. The demand may disturb the maintainability of source code, while the increased size of games software requires maintainability. This paper investigates the extent that the maintainability is considered in games software. We focus on the maintainability of update methods in game loops because update methods are a common architecture and can be implemented with either low or high maintainability. Following an explanatory sequential design, we investigate the implementation of update methods in popular repositories in GitHub and conduct semi-structured interviews with commercial games software developers to inquire about whether the results of the investigation are realistic in commercial games software. The investigation shows that update methods are implemented with conditional branches with state variables (lower maintainability) in 39 repositories and the State design pattern (higher maintainability) in 1 repository. In the interviews, 8 out of 11 commercial games software developers indicated that the results of the investigation are common in commercial games software.