FaVE (Facets of Virtual Environments) 2009 is a refereed international
academic conference devoted to persistent, multi-user virtual environments.
The recent rise of World of Warcraft®, Second Life® and similar applications
has caught the imagination of the public and scholars alike, yet until now
the study of virtual environments has been subordinated to a collection of
subtopics of established academic disciplines.

FaVE 2009 seeks to establish virtual environments as a research field in its
own right. The conference brings together under one academic umbrella
current research and emerging developments in the social, technical, legal,
economic, design and cultural aspects of virtual environments. To this end,
FaVE 2009 invites researchers and practitioners to participate in its
interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and experience. It should be fun!

FaVE 2009 welcomes contributions relating to virtual environments, from all
fields. Topics include, but are not limited to:

Topics
======
Space & Place: theory of virtuality & space; virtual geography; geospatial
web; Web3D & location-based media; mixed & augmented reality; non-euclidean
geometries

Virtual Societies: communities & networks; interaction patterns & social
dynamics; reputation, prestige & peer pressure; produsage; governance &
politics

Law & Ethics:  virtual government; application of real-world laws &
regulations; EULA & ToS; intellectual & virtual property; virtual crime &
ethics of virtual behavior

History & Culture: history & historiography of VEs; archiving & preserving
VEs; cultural heritage; VEs as art; culture and acceptance

Technology: scalability & distributed peer-to-peer architectures;
interoperability; open standards & the metaverse; security; availability,
logging & recovery

Human-Computer Interaction: interfaces & interaction devices; usability &
user experience; accessibility; art direction & design; enabling
user-generated content

Productive Uses: serious games; education; collaborative virtual
environments; virtual laboratories & experiments

Economy: business models; virtual economy & currency; taxation & financial
regulation; branding, in-game advertising & franchising

Play & Games: game mechanics; storytelling; virtual agents; balancing, realm
and quest design

Uses & Effects: presence; avatars & identity; cybersickness & the uncanny
valley; effects on real-life behavior

Users & Players: user demographics; diversity & gender

Paper Submissions
=================
Papers presenting original, previously unpublished research or design work,
not currently under review by another conference or journal are solicited.

Please visit the Submission page for detailed submission requirements and
procedures: http://fave-conference.org/submission.shtml

Publication
===========
All submitted papers will be subjected to double-blind peer review by the
international technical program committee on the basis of technical quality,
relevance, significance, and clarity. All accepted papers will be included
in the printed and electronic FaVE 2009 Conference Proceedings to be
published in the ICST Lecture Notes Series by Springer (LNICST).

Important Dates
===============
Full Papers due: February 13th, 2009
Notification of Acceptance: April 10th, 2009
Camera-ready Manuscripts due: April 30th, 2009
Conference Date: July 27th ­ July 29th, 2009

Important Links
===============
Conference HP (new page underway): http://fave-conference.org
CFP: http://fave-conference.org/cfp.shtml
Submission Guidelines: http://fave-conference.org/submission.shtml