Game engines help developers create video games and avoid duplication of code and effort, like frameworks for traditional software systems. In this paper, we explore game engines along three perspectives: literature, code, and human. First, we explore and summarise the academic literature on game engines. Second, we compare the characteristics of the 282 most popular engines and the 282 most popular frameworks in GitHub. Finally, we survey 124 engine developers about their experience with the development of their engines. We report that: (1) Game engines are not well-studied in software-engineering research with few studies having engines as object of research. (2) Game engines are slightly larger in terms of size and complexity and less popular and engaging than traditional frameworks. Their programming languages differ greatly from frameworks. Engine projects have shorter histories with less releases. (3) Developers perceive game engines as different from traditional frameworks and claim that engines need special treatments. Generally, they build game engines to (a) better control the environment and source code, (b) learn about game engines, and (c) develop specific games. We conclude that game engines are different from traditional frameworks although this difference is too small to force special treatments.

中文翻译：

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游戏引擎是软件框架吗？三视角研究

游戏引擎可帮助开发人员创建视频游戏并避免重复代码和工作，就像传统软件系统的框架一样。在本文中，我们从三个角度探索游戏引擎：文学、代码和人类。首先，我们探索和总结关于游戏引擎的学术文献。其次，我们比较了 GitHub 中 282 个最流行的引擎和 282 个最流行的框架的特性。最后，我们调查了 124 名引擎开发人员关于他们开发引擎的经验。我们报告说：（1）游戏引擎在软件工程研究中没有得到很好的研究，很少有研究将引擎作为研究对象。(2) 与传统框架相比，游戏引擎在规模和复杂性方面略大，但受欢迎程度和参与度较低。他们的编程语言与框架有很大不同。引擎项目的历史较短，版本较少。(3) 开发者认为游戏引擎与传统框架不同，并声称引擎需要特殊处理。通常，他们构建游戏引擎是为了 (a) 更好地控制环境和源代码，(b) 了解游戏引擎，以及 (c) 开发特定游戏。我们得出结论，游戏引擎与传统框架不同，尽管这种差异太小，无法强制进行特殊处理。