This paper is a call for research in the field of game engine architecture and design, a more comprehensive and thorough understanding of which we consider to be essential for its development. We present a number of key aspects that may help to define the problem space and provide a catalogue of
questions that we believe identify areas of interest for future investigation.
Starting with Spacewar in 1961 [Fleming 2007], computer games have been around for just over four and a half decades. Until about two decades ago, most games were developed by a small team of programmers, if not by individuals, usually written from scratch with very few reusable components. In a young industry that is very much project-based, this does not come as a great surprise; however, as the industry has grown, so has the size of individual projects. This change has necessitated a number
of advancements in production techniques, and Garlan and Shaw [Garlan and Shaw 1994] recognised that ?one characterization of progress in programming languages and tools has been regular increases in abstraction level ? or the conceptual size of software designers building blocks?. A similar increase in abstraction level occurred within computer game development towards the end of the 1980s, when the first systems with reusable components appeared. These components are what we would now call game engines.
There appears to be general agreement that game engines are not only useful, but due to the complexity of modern computer games, are actually required for game development. Given this, there exists a surprisingly small body of literature on game engine design. The available research has mainly focussed on game engine subsystems, such as rendering, AI (artificial intelligence) or networking. However, issues regarding the overall architecture of engines, which connects these subsystems, have merely been brushed over.
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