A Preliminary Field Study of Game Programming on Mobile Devices
This incremental work addresses the problem of understanding and enhancing game development for end-users on mobile devices.
The study analyzed 31,699 applications created with TouchDevelop, comparing 539 game scripts to non-game applications to identify characteristics and factors influencing popularity, providing findings and implications for improving end-user game programming.
TouchDevelop is a new programming environment that allows users to create applications on mobile devices. Applications created with TouchDevelop have continued to grow in popularity since TouchDevelop was first released to public in 2011. This paper presents a field study of 31,699 applications, focusing on different characteristics between 539 game scripts and all other non-game applications, as well as what make some game applications more popular than others to users. The study provides a list of findings on characteristics of game scripts and also implications for improving end-user programming of game applications.