Debugging Video Games: A Systematic Mapping

International audience; The video game industry is a vast and lucrative sector that generates significant revenue. However, a recurring issue within this industry is the release of games with numerous bugs. The process of debugging, a challenging and expensive undertaking in software development, becomes crucial in rectifying these issues. It is worth noting that such bugs can significantly impact the commercial performance of games in the market. Therefore, an imperative arises to foster further academic research that presents dedicated debugging techniques aimed at enhancing the process specifically within the realm of video game development. In this paper, we employ a systematic mapping study methodology to discern the existing body of knowledge concerning debugging practices for video games. Through a systematic selection process, we selected 21 relevant studies for analysis, enabling the synthesis of data and facilitating the creation of a overview that encapsulates the state of the art on debugging video games. We identified work analyzing challenges of debugging games, proposing bug detection techniques or dedicated debugging tools. However, these work are always bound to specific contexts or kinds of games. Our analysis shows that there is no academic body of knowledge about debugging video games. Thus, this initial exploration not only raises pertinent questions but also presents prospects for conducting empirical and controlled experiments to enhance our understanding of effective debugging strategies within the context of video game development. We complete our analysis with a discussion of testing and debugging techniques, and how they could help and open new research opportunities for the debugging of video games. CCS Concepts: • Software and its engineering → Maintaining software; Development frameworks and environments; Software maintenance tools; Software notations and tools.