Developing Games with Data-Oriented Design

Data-Oriented Design (DOD) is a software design process used in the commercial game industry for medium to large scale (AAA) games that revolves around data as the central design focus. Since DOD grew organically from industry practices, it has been viewed primarily as a set of tools and design patterns without a cohesive core. After studying data-oriented design, it has become clear that there is one core motivating concept behind DOD and that is that software exists to input, transform, and output data. In order to demonstrate the core concept and tools of DOD, examples are shown. The history and focus of DOD are discussed as well as how DOD is used in current commercial software.