Analyzing maintainability factors in open-source game engines: implications for game developers

Abstract Game engines have become an important type of software that is widely used not only in the game industry but also in engineering and design. Selecting an appropriate engine is an important research topic for developers. This study investigates the effects of software quality of game engines on engine performance and engine selection. Static code analysis can objectively evaluate the reliability and maintainability of software. In this study, the maintainability of open-source game engines is analyzed by static code analysis, the source code of game engines was analyzed with a fuzzy logic-based model that assesses maintainability using software metrics measurements, revealing that most scored poorly, with Godot Engine classified as “poorly maintainable”. The findings of the analysis show that game engines have serious quality issues. The relationship between code quality and popularity of game engines was also analyzed and it was found that the number of games developed and the popularity of these games are inversely proportional to the quality of the game engine. Therefore, refactoring and regular analysis of code quality has been proposed to maintain the popularity of ambitious game engines like Godot and O3DE. In the current era of increasing code-free and model-based game development, this study concludes that traditional code quality assessment methods alone are not a suitable solution for evaluating the quality of game software.