Scope

The first International Conference in Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications 2009 (technical co-sponsorship with the IEEE Computer Society pending) aims to meet the significant challenges of the cross-disciplinary community that work around these serious application areas by bringing the community together to share case studies of practice, to present new frameworks, methodologies and theories and to begin the process of developing shared cross-disciplinary outputs. In order to achieve this main aim the conference will pioneer new methods for bringing together and supporting communities of practice emerging in themed areas beyond the duration of the conference. Using the conference as an ignition to support a wider aspiration to form and sustain a community of practice around the field. To achieve this, the team at the SGI will use innovative software called Intronetworks, which allows conference participants to create their own profile allowing them to identify like-minded and complementary skilled colleagues.

The term 'Serious Games' covers a broad range of applications from flash-based animations to totally immersive and code driven 3D environments where users interface with large volumes of data through sophisticated and interactive digital interfaces. This shift towards immersive world applications being used to support education, health and training activities mark the beginning of new challenges that offer real scope for collaborative and multi-disciplinary research solutions, and real opportunities for innovative development. We invite researchers, developers, practitioners and decision-makers working with or applying serious games in their communities to present papers in the following two main streams of the conference: games and virtual world applications for serious applications. The conference will explore games and virtual worlds in relation to:

• Applications (e.g. case studies, exemplars,practice examples)
• Methodologies, theories and frameworks (e.g.participatory design methods, mixed methodologies for data collectionand analysis, cross-disciplinary methods)
• Evaluation approaches and studies

Aims

The conference aims to ask:

• In what ways are games and virtual worldapplications effective tools?
• What cross-disciplinary approaches areemerging to support design, development and implementation of thetechnologies?
• What role does convergence with relatedtechnologies mean for the field?
• What founding theories and approaches areemerging to support the field?
• How and in what ways is the participantbecoming the producer of content?
• What are the technologies (e.g. applications,platforms, engines) that are most effective in which areas of practice?

Topics of Interest

We are seeking contributions that advance the state of the art in the technologies available to support sustainability of serious games. The following topics in the areas of environment, cultural heritage, health, smart buildings, v-commerce and education are particularly encouraged:

• Game design
• Serious games methodologies
• User-modelling in serious games
• Pervasive gaming
• Interactivity issues
• Game modelling
• Alternate reality games
• Virtual environments
• Augmented reality
• Visualisation techniques
• Human-computer interaction
• Mobile games
• Education and learning
• Case studies in serious

Program Chairs

Sara de Freitas (Serious Games Institute)

Kurt Squire (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Edward Castronova (Indiana University)

Publication Chairs

Genaro Rebolledo-Mendez (Serious Games Institute)

Fotis Liarokapis (Coventry University)

Publicity and Public Relations Chair

Tim Blanchard (Communications Management)

Local Arrangements Chair

Kate Pallister (Coventry University)

Finance Chair

Jacqueline Cawston (Coventry University Enterprises)

For any enquiries, please forward to the Program Committee: vs-games09@cad.coventry.ac.uk

Paper Submission

The participants of the conference will be invited to submit papers into the Proceedings using the Easy Chair system. Authors should register to the Easy Chair system before submitting their papers. Authors must follow IEEE standards to format the papers accordingly (http://www.ieee.org/portal/pages/pubs/confstandards/pdfs.html). With the camera ready paper submission for publication, you agree to pay registration fee (or reduced registration fee if your registration form is received on or before the early registration date) and published papers must be presented by at least one of the authors. All accepted paper will appear in the IEEE digital library. In addition the best papers will be selected for a planned special issue of the ‘British Journal of Educational Technology’.

Important Dates

Paper submission for full papers 1st November 2008

Paper submission for short papers and posters 15th November 2008

Notification for refereeing feedback 1st December 2008

Camera-ready full papers and tutorials to printer 20th January 2008

Early registration January 2009