CodeArena: Inspecting and Improving Code Quality Metrics using Minecraft

Abstract

To minimize technical debt and increase the maintainability of software, it is essential to make developers aware of what factors influence the maintainability of a codebase. To make the field of code quality and maintenance intuitive to developers, we propose CodeArena, which is an extension to the popular 3D sandbox game called Minecraft. CodeArena converts patterns in a codebase that are considered harmful to monsters in Minecraft, which can then be fought to improve the codebase. This way, the developer can gradually improve the quality of the code, while learning about code quality in an engaging way.