Is Test Driven Development viable in game development?

Posted by Will Marcouiller on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Will Marcouiller
Published on 2011-01-25T22:50:43Z Indexed on 2011/02/03 15:34 UTC
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As being Scrum certified, I tend to prone for Agile methodologies while developping a system, and even use some canvas from the Scrum framework to manage my day-to-day work.

Besides, I am wondering whether TDD is an option in game development, if it is viable?

If I believe this GD question, TDD is not much of a use in game development.
Why are MVC & TDD not employed more in game architecture?

I come from industrial programming where big projects with big budgets need to work flawlessly, as it could result to catastrophic scenarios if the code wasn't throroughly tested inside and out.

Plus, following Scrum rules encourages meeting the due dates of your work while every single action in Scrum is time-boxed! So, I agree when in the question linked above they say to stop trying to build a system, and start writing the game. It is quite what Scrum says, try not to build the perfect system, first: make it work by the Sprint end. Then, refactor the code while working in the second Sprint if needed!

I understand that if not all departments responsible for the game development use Scrum, Scrum becomes useless. But let's consider for a moment that all the departments do use Scrum... I think that TDD would be good to write bug-free code, though you do not want to write the "perfect" system/game.

So my question is the following:

Is TDD viable in game development anyhow?

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