Model-driven Game Development: A Literature Review

Model-driven game development (MDGD) introduces model-driven methodology to the computer game domain, shifting the focus of game development from coding to modeling to make game development faster and easier. The research on MDGD is concerned with both the general model-driven software development methodology and the particular characteristics of game development. People in the MDGD community have proposed several approaches in the past decades, addressing both the technology and the development process in the context of MDGD. This article presents the state-of-art of MDGD research based on a literature review of 26 approaches in the field. The review is structured around five perspectives: target game domains, domain frameworks, modelling languages, tooling, and evaluation methods. The article also includes reflections and a discussion of the challenges within MDGD.