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Acquiring practical competences in computer programming and software engineering is challenging. Software refactoring, in particular, is considered an important and useful quality-assurance technique, but due to the perceived difficulties and risks of performing it, often neglected in practice. Still, it received little attention by software engineering education and training so far. Games are a popular means for fostering motivation as well as mediating and improving practical competences by providing an enjoyable and playful environment. However, for instructors it is challenging to develop and apply game designs that address certain learning objectives, which is important for integrating the game into existing or planned learning and training paths, e.g., in the framework of university courses or training units for (experienced) software developers. In this paper, we propose an ontology that aims to support the analysis and design of games in the field of software refactoring. We apply a structured process for creating a unifying domain ontology bridging core concepts from three related fields, i.e. game design (a), software refactoring (b), and competence management (c). The resulting ontology is then represented as a meta-model in terms of a UML class diagram and reflects concepts important for refactoring-game designs. We describe ontology-based options for game design and illustrate the use of the ontology by analyzing existing refactoring-gaming approaches. In addition, we reflect applying the ontology for reasoning about novel game designs and discuss further potential of the approach.

Ontology-based Analysis of Game Designs for Software Refactoring