ICSME 2025
Sun 7 - Fri 12 September 2025 Auckland, New Zealand
Fri 12 Sep 2025 11:40 - 11:50 at Case Room 2 260-057 - Session 14 - Human Factors 2 Chair(s): Valeria Pontillo

The growing capabilities of generative AI (GenAI) have begun to reshape how games are designed and developed, offering new tools for content creation, gameplay simulation, and design ideation. While prior research has explored traditional uses of AI in games, such as controlling agents or generating procedural content, there is limited empirical understanding of how GenAI is adopted by developers in real-world contexts, especially within the open-source community. This study aims to explore how GenAI technologies are discussed, adopted, and integrated into open-source game development by analyzing issue discussions on GitHub. We investigate the tools, tasks, and challenges associated with GenAI by comparing GenAI-related issues to those involving traditional AI (TradAI) and NonAI topics. Our goal is to uncover how GenAI differs from other approaches in terms of usage patterns, developer concerns, and integration practices. To address this objective, we construct a dataset of open-source game repositories that discuss AI-related topics. We apply open card sorting and thematic analysis to a stratified sample of GitHub issues, labelling each by type and content. These annotations enable comparative analysis across GenAI, TradAI, and NonAI groups, and provide insight into how GenAI is shaping the workflows and pain points of open-source game developers.

Fri 12 Sep

Displayed time zone: Auckland, Wellington change

10:30 - 12:00
10:30
15m
Software Fairness Testing in Practice
Research Papers Track
10:45
15m
Refactoring Deep Learning Code: A Study of Practices and Unsatisfied Tool Needs
Research Papers Track
Siqi Wang Zhejiang University, Xing Hu Zhejiang University, Bei Wang Zhejiang University, China, Wenxin Yao Zhejiang University, Xin Xia Zhejiang University, Xinyu Wang Zhejiang University
11:00
10m
CodeWatcher: IDE Telemetry Data Extraction Tool for Understanding Coding Interactions with LLMs
Tool Demonstration Track
Manaal Ramadan Basha The University of British Columbia, Aimee M. Ribeiro Federal University of Para, Jeena Javahar The University of British Columbia, Gema Rodriguez-Perez The University of British Columbia, Cleidson de Souza Federal University of Pará, Brazil
11:10
15m
Understanding Practitioners’ Perspectives on Monitoring Machine Learning Systems
Industry Track
Hira Naveed Monash University, John Grundy Monash University, Chetan Arora Monash University, Hourieh Khalajzadeh Deakin University, Australia, Omar Haggag Monash University, Australia
Pre-print
11:25
15m
Using AI-based Coding Assistants in Practice: State of Affairs, Perceptions, and Ways Forward
Journal First Track
Agnia Sergeyuk JetBrains Research, Yaroslav Golubev JetBrains Research, Timofey Bryksin JetBrains Research, Iftekhar Ahmed University of California at Irvine
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
11:40
10m
An Empirical Study of GenAI Adoption in Open-Source Game Development: Tools, Tasks, and Developer Challenges
Registered Reports
Xiang Chen University of Waterloo, Wenhan Zhu Huawei Canada, Guoshuai Shi University of Waterloo, Michael W. Godfrey University of Waterloo, Canada
Pre-print
11:50
10m
Evaluating the Comprehension of the Stackage ecosystem: A Comparison Between VR and 2D Visualizations
Registered Reports
David Moreno-Lumbreras Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Paul Leger Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile, Sergio Montes-León Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Gregorio Robles Universidad Rey Juan Carlos