A framework for game engine selection for gamification and serious games

In the last decade, the gaming industry has grown greatly in scale, and many companies around the globe are now developing games. The development of these games uses some common functionality, including the implementation of graphics rendering, artificial intelligence, sound, video, physics and network capability. Implementation of these functionalities requires high levels of skill, resources and time. To overcome these issues, such core functions are built and bundled together in the form of a game engine. A game engine provides the basic framework for developing games. All engines include the aforementioned common functions, but each engine has pros and cons. So, to choose a suitable engine, a thorough study of the attributes of the various engines is required. Choosing the appropriate engine for a specific gaming application is not straightforward. The games being developed today have big budgets, and the selection of the wrong gaming engine can lead to big financial loses, as the product developed may not be up to standards due to lack of features in the selected engine. It is therefore necessary to have a framework to help pick the right engine. In recent years, a number of game engine selection methodology paradigms have been proposed, but these have certain limitations and weaknesses. The purpose of this paper is to propose a more robust framework to help game analysts and developers identify the best available game engine for serious games and gamified applications.