team | Cristiano Politowski

Empirical Game Research

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Cristiano Politowski Assistant Professor I am an Assistant Professor at Ontario Tech University, within the Computer Science group in the...

Dilan Mian Master’s student · started September 2025

Kevin Christopher Chua Master’s student · started May 2026 · co-supervised with Ali Neshati

Mohame Al Musqi Mohamed Shifan Master’s student · started May 2026 · co-supervised with Loutfouz Zaman

Charon Takov Master’s student · starting September 2026 · co-supervised with Muhammad Usman

Caio Varalta Master’s student · co-supervised with Leonardo Tórtoro Pereira (IGCE, UNESP)

Yohan Duarte Pessanha Ph.D. student · co-supervised with Andre Takeshi Endo (Departamento de Computação, Universidade Federal de São Carlos)

Saffron Birch Master’s student · starting January 2027

Laurent Voisart Master’s student · co-supervised with Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc (CSSE, Concordia University)

Oluwateniola “Teni” S. Adegbite Undergraduate Honours Researcher

Sebastian Desaulniers Lab assistant

Danylo Hretskyi Mitacs Globalink student

Alex Lowe Undergraduate Honours Researcher · co-supervised with Ali Neshati

Saksham Tejpal Undergraduate Honours Researcher

Rabia Chattha Undergraduate Honours Researcher · co-supervised with Ken Pu

Daniel Baba Undergraduate Honours Researcher

Ryan Ahlborn Undergraduate Honours Researcher · co-supervised with Michael Miljanovic

Saahir Dhani Undergraduate Honours Researcher · co-supervised with Jeremy Bradbury

Mirisan Ravindran MITACS Global Link - Undergraduate Honours Researcher

SyDRA: An approach to understand game engine architecture

Gabriel C. Ullmann, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Fábio Petrillo, Nicolas Anquetil, Cristiano Politowski

Entertain. Comput., 2025

DOI
Unboxing Default Argument Breaking Changes in 1 + 2 data science libraries

João Eduardo Montandon, Luciana Lourdes Silva, Cristiano Politowski, Daniel Prates, Arthur Brito Bonifácio, Ghizlane El-Boussaidi

J. Syst. Softw., 2025

DOI
On the Need for Reproducibility Guidelines for Open-Source Games: A itch.io Case Study

Claudio Di Sipio, Andrea D’Angelo, Riccardo Rubei, Cristiano Politowski

IEEE Conference on Games, CoG 2025, Lisbon, Portugal, August 26-29, 2025, 2025

DOI
Towards a framework for exploratory testing in video games

Yohan Duarte, Cristiano Politowski, André Takeshi Endo

9th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS@ICSE 2025, Ottawa, ON, Canada, April 29, 2025, 2025

DOI
A Mapping Study of the Entity Component System Pattern

Laurent Voisard, Henrique De Freitas Serra, Cristiano Politowski, Fábio Petrillo, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

9th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS@ICSE 2025, Ottawa, ON, Canada, April 29, 2025, 2025

DOI
PlayMyData: a curated dataset of multi-platform video games

Andrea D’Angelo, Claudio Di Sipio, Cristiano Politowski, Riccardo Rubei

21st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Mining Software Repositories, MSR 2024, Lisbon, Portugal, April 15-16, 2024, 2024

DOI
On the Impact of Development Frameworks on Mobile Apps

Parsa Karami, Ikram Darif, Cristiano Politowski, Ghizlane El-Boussaidi, Sègla Kpodjedo, Imen Benzarti

30th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference, APSEC 2023, Seoul, Republic of Korea, December 4-7, 2023, 2023

DOI
An Exploratory Approach for Game Engine Architecture Recovery

Gabriel C. Ullmann, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Fábio Petrillo, Nicolas Anquetil, Cristiano Politowski

7th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS@ICSE 2023, Melbourne, Australia, May 15, 2023, 2023

DOI
Assessing Video Game Balance using Autonomous Agents

Cristiano Politowski, Fábio Petrillo, Ghizlane El-Boussaidi, Gabriel C. Ullmann, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

7th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS@ICSE 2023, Melbourne, Australia, May 15, 2023, 2023

DOI
Visualising Game Engine Subsystem Coupling Patterns

Gabriel C. Ullmann, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Fábio Petrillo, Nicolas Anquetil, Cristiano Politowski

Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2023 - 22nd IFIP TC 14 International Conference, ICEC 2023, Bologna, Italy, November 15-17, 2023, Proceedings, 2023

DOI
A Model-driven and Template-based Approach for Requirements Specification

Ikram Darif, Cristiano Politowski, Ghizlane El-Boussaidi, Imen Benzarti, Sègla Kpodjedo

26th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, MODELS 2023, Västerås, Sweden, October 1-6, 2023, 2023

DOI
Unboxing Default Argument Breaking Changes in Scikit Learn

João Eduardo Montandon, Luciana Lourdes Silva, Cristiano Politowski, Ghizlane El-Boussaidi, Marco Túlio Valente

23rd IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, SCAM 2023, Bogotá, Colombia, October 2-3, 2023, 2023

DOI
Event Driven Architecture: An Exploratory Study on The Gap between Academia and Industry

Nader Trabelsi, Cristiano Politowski, Ghizlane El-Boussaidi

5th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Software Engineering Research and Practices for the IoT, SERP4IoT)@ICSE 2023, Melbourne, Australia, May 20, 2023, 2023

DOI
ASE4Games 2021 Workshop Summary

Kendra M. L. Cooper, Fábio Petrillo, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Cristiano Politowski

ACM SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes, 2022

DOI
Video Game Project Management Anti-patterns

Gabriel C. Ullmann, Cristiano Politowski, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Fábio Petrillo, João Eduardo Montandon

6th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS@ICSE, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, May 20, 2022, 2022

Link
What Makes a Game High-rated? Towards Factors of Video Game Success

Gabriel C. Ullmann, Cristiano Politowski, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Fábio Petrillo

6th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS@ICSE, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, May 20, 2022, 2022

Link
Towards Automated Video Game Testing: Still a Long Way to Go

Cristiano Politowski, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Fábio Petrillo

6th IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS@ICSE, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, May 20, 2022, 2022

DOI
A Domain Specific Language for the ARINC 653 Specification

Ikram Darif, Cristiano Politowski, Ghizlane El-Boussaidi, Sègla Kpodjedo

IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops, ISSRE 2022 - Workshops, Charlotte, NC, USA, October 31 - Nov. 3, 2022, 2022

DOI
Game Engine Comparative Anatomy

Gabriel C. Ullmann, Cristiano Politowski, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Fábio Petrillo

Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2022 - 21st IFIP TC 14 International Conference, ICEC 2022, Bremen, Germany, November 1-3, 2022, Proceedings, 2022

DOI
What skills do IT companies look for in new developers? A study with Stack Overflow jobs

João Eduardo Montandon, Cristiano Politowski, Luciana Lourdes Silva, Marco Túlio Valente, Fábio Petrillo, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

Inf. Softw. Technol., 2021

DOI
Game industry problems: An extensive analysis of the gray literatureSelected

Cristiano Politowski, Fábio Petrillo, Gabriel C. Ullmann, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

Inf. Softw. Technol., 2021

DOI
Are game engines software frameworks? A three-perspective study

Cristiano Politowski, Fábio Petrillo, João Eduardo Montandon, Marco Túlio Valente, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

J. Syst. Softw., 2021

DOI
A Survey of Video Game TestingSelected

Cristiano Politowski, Fábio Petrillo, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

2nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automation of Software Test, AST@ICSE 2021, Madrid, Spain, May 20-21, 2021, 2021

DOI
A large scale empirical study of the impact of Spaghetti Code and Blob anti-patterns on program comprehension

Cristiano Politowski, Foutse Khomh, Simone Romano, Giuseppe Scanniello, Fábio Petrillo, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Abdou Maiga

Inf. Softw. Technol., 2020

DOI
Improving Engagement Assessment in Gameplay Testing Sessions using IoT Sensors

Cristiano Politowski, Fábio Petrillo, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

ICSE ’20: 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering, Workshops, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 27 June - 19 July, 2020, 2020

DOI
Dataset of Video Game Development Problems

Cristiano Politowski, Fábio Petrillo, Gabriel Cavalheiro Ullmann, Josias Andrade Werly, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

MSR ’20: 17th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 29-30 June, 2020, 2020

DOI
Learning from the past: A process recommendation system for video game projects using postmortems experiences

Cristiano Politowski, Lisandra M. Fontoura, Fábio Petrillo, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

Inf. Softw. Technol., 2018

DOI
Are the old days gone?: a survey on actual software engineering processes in video game industry

Cristiano Politowski, Lisandra M. Fontoura, Fábio Petrillo, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS@ICSE 2016, Austin, Texas, USA, May 16, 2016, 2016

DOI
Controlled Natural Language for Requirements Specification: A Systematic Literature Review

Ikram Darif, Ghizlane El-Boussaidi, Segla Kpodjedo, Cristiano Politowski

ACM Comput. Surv., 2026

DOI
Report on ReAnimate’25

Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Fábio Petrillo, Jessie Galasso-Carbonnel, Henrique De Freitas Serra, Cristiano Politowski, Nicolas Rousse, Gabriel C. Ullmann, Laurent Voisard, Diego Elias Costa

ACM SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes, 2026

DOI
Characterizing Open-Source Video Games from a Software Engineering Perspective

Henrique Mandelli Canella, Yohan Duarte, Cristiano Politowski, Vinicius H. S. Durelli, André Takeshi Endo

Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS 2026, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 12-18, 2026, 2026

DOI
CG-WFC: A Hybrid Cyclic-Graph & WFC Method for Designer-Guided and Replayable Procedural Content Generation

Laurent Voisard, Cristiano Politowski, Fabio Petrillo, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc

Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS 2026, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 12-18, 2026, 2026

DOI
Creativity Beyond Functionality: An Observational Study of Easter Eggs in Video Games

Cristiano Politowski, Claudio Di Sipio, Benoit Baudry, Michalis Famelis, Houari A. Sahraoui

Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS 2026, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 12-18, 2026, 2026

DOI
Multilingual Game Dialogue Translation using Large Language Models: A Performance Survey

Quang Phuoc Nguyen, Cristiano Politowski, Labib Rahman, En-Shiun Annie Lee

Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 10th International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering, GAS 2026, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, April 12-18, 2026, 2026

DOI
Report on ReAnimate’24: 2024 Summer School on Retro Gaming History, Critic, and Development

Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc, Gabriel C. Ullmann, Cristiano Politowski, Fábio Petrillo, Carl Therrien

ACM SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes, 2025

DOI

The Party

SyDRA: An approach to understand game engine architecture

Unboxing Default Argument Breaking Changes in 1 + 2 data science libraries

On the Need for Reproducibility Guidelines for Open-Source Games: A itch.io Case Study

Towards a framework for exploratory testing in video games

A Mapping Study of the Entity Component System Pattern

PlayMyData: a curated dataset of multi-platform video games

On the Impact of Development Frameworks on Mobile Apps

An Exploratory Approach for Game Engine Architecture Recovery

Assessing Video Game Balance using Autonomous Agents

Visualising Game Engine Subsystem Coupling Patterns

A Model-driven and Template-based Approach for Requirements Specification

Unboxing Default Argument Breaking Changes in Scikit Learn

Event Driven Architecture: An Exploratory Study on The Gap between Academia and Industry

ASE4Games 2021 Workshop Summary

Video Game Project Management Anti-patterns

What Makes a Game High-rated? Towards Factors of Video Game Success

Towards Automated Video Game Testing: Still a Long Way to Go

A Domain Specific Language for the ARINC 653 Specification

Game Engine Comparative Anatomy

What skills do IT companies look for in new developers? A study with Stack Overflow jobs

Game industry problems: An extensive analysis of the gray literatureSelected

Are game engines software frameworks? A three-perspective study

A Survey of Video Game TestingSelected

A large scale empirical study of the impact of Spaghetti Code and Blob anti-patterns on program comprehension

Improving Engagement Assessment in Gameplay Testing Sessions using IoT Sensors

Dataset of Video Game Development Problems

Learning from the past: A process recommendation system for video game projects using postmortems experiences

Are the old days gone?: a survey on actual software engineering processes in video game industry

Controlled Natural Language for Requirements Specification: A Systematic Literature Review

Report on ReAnimate’25

Characterizing Open-Source Video Games from a Software Engineering Perspective

CG-WFC: A Hybrid Cyclic-Graph & WFC Method for Designer-Guided and Replayable Procedural Content Generation

Creativity Beyond Functionality: An Observational Study of Easter Eggs in Video Games

Multilingual Game Dialogue Translation using Large Language Models: A Performance Survey

Report on ReAnimate’24: 2024 Summer School on Retro Gaming History, Critic, and Development