Photo of Timothy (Tim) McKenzie

Timothy (Tim) McKenzie

Did you know that a third of humanity are gamers and that video games are worth more than music and movies combined?

Tim is studying towards a PhD degree in the field of Agile Video Game Development under the supervision of Dr. Miguel Morales. His thesis is titled "Addressing Video Game Development Challenges Using Industry Best Practices".

Research Interests

Video games are increasingly becoming a primary means in which human beings invest significant amounts of time and money to entertain themselves and relieve stress, to socialize and find community, to find creative or intellectual expression, and to explore moral issues and educate themselves about the world. Both the multidisciplinary nature and application of video games characterizes it as a unique and special industry whose impressive economic output, widespread use, diverse application, and wide social and cultural influence on the world in general cannot be understated.

However, the video game development (VGD) industry is not without significant development challenges in multidisciplinary team dynamics and communication, work culture, and project management. These issues often stem from video games being a complex and often confusing 'marriage' of software engineering and creative production. 
 
There is a lack of agreement in academia and even within the industry itself on 'good' or 'best' VGD practices or processes which unify competing creative, technical, design, and business aspects. So, each game studio has its own highly contextualized ad-hoc (and often closely guarded) way of working, which can often be misunderstood to be 'agile'. Consequently, the absence of commonly accepted 'good' development practices and the misapplication of agile means both independent studios (especially start-ups) and even AAA studios often struggle to create successful games.
 
Hence, through interviews, surveys, and case studies with industry studios, this research project will capture the commonly used agile software engineering and creative production practices in VGD, and, investigate the relationships between these practices and the multidisciplinary collaboration challenges studios face. The aim is to understand the factors behind successful and unsuccessful video game projects and teams.
 
In informal collaboration with the New Zealand Game Developers Association and participating New Zealand game studios, this interdepartmental UC project is hosted by the Computer Science and Software Engineering Department with support from the School of Product Design and the Applied Immersive Gaming Initiative at the Human Interface Technology Lab New Zealand (HITLab). Dr Simon Hoermann, and Dr Stephan Lukosch at the University of Canterbury, are co-supervising this project.

Personal Interests

Tim is also concurrently studying Training in Ministry with the Gospel Training Trust. His academic and personal research interests include agile game development, team dynamics, professional and personal mentorship, pastoral care, ancient civilisations, philosophy, and theology.

Academic History

Related Poster

 Agile Game Development Practices in NZ

Related Talks

Related Publications

 

Professional History

Software Engineering Intern, Mediasuite, 2018-2019

Agile Video Game Development Tutor, School of Product Design, 2019-Present

Christchurch Game Developers Industry Meetup Speaker, 2019

Research Assistant, HitLab, 2019-2020

Applied Immersive Gaming Initiative Member, 2020-Present

Contact Details

Email: timothy.mckenzie@pg.canterbury.ac.nz