First European Symposium on Computer Games and Emotions Monday November 27th 2006 IT University of Copenhagen, Center for Computer Games Research

The emotional dimension of computer games has has in the recent years became a popular focus for game research and development. While new games appear dubbed as "emotional rollercoaster rides", academic research projects attempting to understand games and emotions pop up on the fields of game studies, psychology and HCI, to name a few. Even if one does not subscribe to David Freeman's statement that the next revolution in games is emotional, the topicality of emotions as both a subject and an approach for computer games research seems evident.

Often used as buzzwords, the concepts of an emotion and an emotional game may refer to very different things depending on one's viewpoint. Emotions may be states into which players indulge without consideration or they may have a functional role in carefully calculated processes. Some are interested in certain particularly emotional moments that stand out from the playing experiences while some see emotions as means of making sense of the experience. It is not either impossible to imagine someone to whom emotions, regardless of why they emerge, are stepping stones in making more compelling games or selling more games to a wider audience.

Fortunately, the differences in the viewpoints do not necessarily contribute to any kind of disagreement about the nature of the topic. Regardless of our academic or professional backgrounds and the purposes of our projects, as humans we all know what an emotion is and how it feels like. This constitutes a rather solid ground for multidisciplinary discussion on computer games and emotions. The First European Symposium on Computer Games and Emotions, organised by the Center for Computer Games Research at ITU, attempts to provide a forum for such discussion. We invite everyone interested in games and emotions to participate.

Invited speakers

Ruth Aylett School of Maths and Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University, UK

Marc Hassenzahl University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany

Martin Pichlmair: "Games as the Art of Designing the Elusive Character of Emotions" Institute for Design and Assessment of Technology, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

Ben Salem School of Science and Technology, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan

The symposium will consist of invited talks followed by adequate time for conversation and a plenary discussion. The admission to the symposium is free of charge. To ensure smooth operations we ask the participants to pre-register via email, the address is emotions_2006@itu.dk. Pre-registered participants will receive the symposium program by email as soon as it is published. If you have questions regarding the symposium, please contact the organisers using the email address emotions_2006@itu.dk.

Program, abstracts of the invited talks and biographies of the speakers will be available on the website http://game.itu.dk/ in early November.