New product development process in the video game industry: An application with quality function deployment and fuzzy analytical hierarchy process methods

The aim of this research is to examine a new game development process in the video games industry, to learn the expectations of customers from a new game and to identify suggestions for improving the process by associating these expectations with the possibilities of the sample business. Although the subject of video games is the subject of many researches in the international literature, there is hardly any study on the new game development process. The integration of quality function deployment and fuzzy analytical hierarchy method, especially in new product development and video games, is a unique study in the international literature. In this context, it is thought that this study will fill a gap in the literature and lay the groundwork for new studies that will highlight these issues. In the research, one-to-one interviews, observation and comparison matrices were used as data collection techniques. In this context, one-on-one meetings were held with the senior management and team leaders of TaleWorlds Entertainment to get information about the game development process and the industry. In determining the expectations from the new game, information was obtained from players who we describe as experts, who have played the Mount & Blade series for four thousand hours or more. Excel program was used to evaluate the data of the research. The order of importance of the main criteria determined according to the findings obtained as a result of the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process analysis was Design, Graphics, Sounds, Customer Relations and Platform Support. Looking at the ranking of all sub-criteria, Optimization, which is a sub-criterion of the Graphics main criterion, was determined as the most important criterion. As a result of the quality function deployment, suggestions were made to the company to "approach the process more holistically" and "take into account the important criteria from the beginning of the development process". The results showed that "the expectations from a proposed new RPG game" model can be used successfully in evaluating player expectations by using the mentioned methods.