探討敏捷開發方式與回饋特性對遊戲專案品質之影響

Abstract

遊戲開發專案採用敏捷開發方式，以保持足夠的彈性來面對遊戲設計和玩家喜好的不確定性。然而，敏捷開發方式強調使用者參與，遊戲團隊卻很難讓使用者參與開發過程。因此，開發團隊必須透過遊戲測試員的回饋來了解遊戲是否滿足玩家喜好。測試員需針對科技和美感給予回饋，這些面向將決定遊戲專案品質，包括穩定性、操作性和可玩性。本研究提出明確且及時的回饋，可以讓敏捷開發團隊所面對的不確定性降低，並且更能捕捉市場上不斷變化的玩家喜好，進而提昇遊戲專案品質。本研究採用實證方法驗證研究模式，透過成對樣本收集，由47組同一專案內的遊戲製作人與遊戲開發人員共同填寫問卷。結果顯示回饋及時性和回饋準確性皆對敏捷開發方式產生交互效果，其中，回饋及時性為正向效果，回饋準確性為負向效果。

Game development projects adopt agile methodology to leverage its flexibility when final design and consumer’s tastes are highly uncertain and unpredictable. Although close customer collaboration is an important success factor for agile methodology, agile development teams in game industry have difficulties in working closely with their end-users. As a result, team members tend to take advantage of game testers’ feedback to see whether the features meet the player’s tastes. Feedback from testers contains technical and aesthetic aspects that contribute to the quality of a game, that is, stability, functionality and playability. This study argues that specific and immediate feedback from testers can best facilitate the agile methodology use to achieve the game project quality. We conducted a field study with a paired-match questionnaire. 47 pairs of game producers and developers in different game development projects participated in the study. The results indicated that both feedback specificity and feedback timing strongly moderate the agile methodology use on the game project quality. More specifically, feedback specificity has negative moderating effect whereas feedback timing has positive moderating effect. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.