Project Risk Management in Game Development

Risk management of a software development project is one of the most challenging areas of business. Risk management deals with uncertain events in an IT project and their causes. Predicting the level of uncertainty and risk for software is not easy. Many researchers have tried to succeed in this area of ​​expertise by offering a typed list of the main risks of a software development project. IT project managers can use them as checklists to identify the risks that may be associated with their projects. The relevance of this work lies in the fact that often game studios, especially those that are just starting their journey in game development, themselves do not fully understand what the final product will be and what they will sell to the target audience, which, by the way, is also not is always clear to the end. Developers take exorbitant risks, creating a product unknown to them for an audience unknown to the end, exchanging talent, time and effort for a project that in the end will remain either not accepted by the audience, or not at all perceived and forgotten. Underestimating the risks of depletion of the resource of developers, loss of motivation and, as a result, high turnover of personnel, which also cannot in any useful way affect the quality of writing code, drawing artistic elements or optimizing the project as a whole, on which the quality of the final product depends. The importance of a sober risk assessment lies in the fact that this market is one of the most rapidly developing in Russia, a large number of independent development teams are emerging, competition is increasing and the supply on the market is developing. For this reason, it is necessary to develop competencies in risk management using modern approaches, taking into account all the specifics of the industry. The main goal of this scientific work is to develop a risk management concept for a project to develop an IT product in the gaming area and apply it in project implementation. To achieve this goal, the following tasks will be performed: 1. Analysis of scientific and professional literature in the field of risk management in the gaming industry; 2. Review of existing models of risk management in the gaming industry; 3. Collection and preparation of data on the development of the concept of risk management; 4. Development of the project risk management concept; 5. Approbation of risk management approaches for a project to develop an IT product in the gaming sector; 6. Development of recommendations for risk management; Analysis of errors and development of recommendations for their elimination from the point of view of risk management in subsequent projects on game development will be carried out in accordance with the actual results of the project, which will be measured in accordance with the metrics that will be indicated later in the work. The object of research in this scientific work is an IT project development project in an independent development team. The subject of the research is the methodology and tools of risk management in the development of an IT project by an independent development team. The research methodology consists of the following stages: In the first part, the analysis of already collected data from available scientific research and professional literature aimed at this topic will be carried out, which will be used in this scientific work as fundamental sources of information. The second part will be devoted to the description of the present project, to which the concept will be applied, as well as the development of a methodology, the requirements for which will be based on the data obtained as a result of the work on the previous section of this scientific work; The third part of the work is devoted to the study of the actual processes and risk management tools, the actual results of the project will be studied, further planned actions will be formulated. All data obtained during the study will be collected and analyzed in order to identify the main factors contributing to the development of the developed concept of risk management. The practical novelty of this scientific work lies in an attempt to create a risk management concept that can neutralize the low level of experience of the development team with a high level of detail, but at the same time meet modern challenges from the market, while maintaining flexibility and adaptability.