An empirical investigation on the impact of design pattern application on computer game defects

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the correlation between design pattern application and software defects. In order to achieve this goal we conducted an empirical study on java open source games. More specifically, we examined several successful open source games, identified the number of defects, the debugging rate and performed design pattern related measurements. The results of the study suggest that the overall number of design pattern instances is not correlated to defect frequency and debugging effectiveness. However, specific design patterns appear to have a significant impact on the number of reported bugs and debugging rate.