Trust in Play Mentoring Program

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“Trust in Play / the European School of Urban Game Design” invites applications until May 31. Information and application forms at http://trustinplay.eu

Trust in Play supports emerging practitioners in forming a career out of making urban games and playful urban experiences. Benefits include enhancing professional capacities (artistic and business skills) and acquiring the tools to kickstart a career in urban game design.

Trust in Play invites all kinds of designers, artists, architects, urban planners and social innovators. Recent graduates or young professionals will have the chance to develop their skills in interdisciplinary design teams working on urban game projects.

Trust in Play is a 1-year mentoring program, leading up to the creation and production of urban game prototypes. Selected trainees will receive:
- a grant to support travel and daily allowance for the International Training Week in Athens in October 2019;
- ongoing training and support from local and international mentors;
- the opportunity to be part of an active community of creative practitioners;
- production budget for projects realized in teams during the second half of the traineeship in 2020 (about 3500€ per project).

Trust in Play is organized in three branches:
1) a “nomadic” branch, where trainees interact online;
2) a Dutch branch, based in Amsterdam;
3) a Greek branch, based in Athens

Trainees from all three branches will meet in Athens in October 2019 (travel & lodging costs paid).

Trust in Play is funded through a Creative Europe grant, and co-organized by:
- Goethe-Institut,
- Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences,
- EdgeRyders,
- Innovathens / Technopolis City of Athens,
- Resilient Athens

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CfP: Special Issue – Intergenerational Gaming, Accessibility, Motivation, and Engagement (iGAME)

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Overview:
The CGJ is pleased to announce a CFP for the forthcoming special issue: iGAME (intergenerational: Gaming, Accessibility, Motivation, and Engagement).

The field of Games Studies has received a vast amount of interest and investigation over the last 50 years, ranging from game addiction, gender, engagement/interaction, to health rehabilitation and cohorts (i.e. baby boomers). However, intergenerational gaming has received less attention, with the exception of works by Voida and Greenberg (2009;2010), de Schutter et al. (2017), and Wang et al. (2018).

Given the nature of play and the developments of game technologies over the last couple of decades, intergenerational gaming offers a myriad of experiences for both gamers and nongamers, novice and expert gamers alike. Intergenerational gaming can facilitate several motivations in a milieu of domains from health and rehabilitation, to co-op and online gaming.

They invite submissions for this special issue of TCGJ, which focus on cutting edge research and perspectives in relation to intergenerational gaming. They welcome contributions from academics, industry professionals, students, and those with direct experience of intergenerational gaming. They will also consider papers concerning non-computing related intergenerational gaming, which reflect the intersectional and interlinked nature of intergenerational gaming.

Deadline:

Please see below for all important submission dates:

  • Title and abstract of proposed paper 30th June 2019
  • Draft paper for peer review 30th September 2019
  • Revised paper 10th December 2019

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Flow/immersion
  • Design
  • Usability, accessibility
  • Player experiences
  • Multi-methods
  • Health and rehabilitation
  • Culture and/or Environment
  • Multi-disciplinary
  • Player modelling
  • Predictive analysis

For queries regarding scope and applicability, please contact the guest editor, Dr Hannah R. Marston, by sending an email to: Hannah.Marston@open.ac.uk

For submission enquiries, please contact Drs John Sutherland (Editor-in-chief) or Malcolm Sutherland (Assistant Editor-in-chief) at: thecomputergamesjournal@gmail.com

Abstract & Proposed Title – Submission Instructions
Please submit your abstract & proposed title to: Hannah.Marston@open.ac.uk

Paper Submission Instructions
1. All submissions should be emailed to: Hannah.Marston@open.ac.uk.
2. All submissions should follow the Journal formatting and guidelines https://www.springer.com/computer/journal/40869
3. In your email, please add <Paper Submission – Title for Intergen Special Issue> in the subject box

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CfP: 7th Games and Literary Theory Conference, Kolkata

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Announcing the 7th Games and Literary Theory Conference (GamesLit 2019) to be held in Kolkata, India  on November 18th to 20th. The venue is Presidency University, Kolkata (formerly Hindoo College and Presidency College), which has just celebrated its bicentenary. It is an honour to be able to host the first large games conference in this part of Asia and indeed, the so-named Global South.

Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), also known as the ‘second city of the British Empire, used to be the capital of the British Raj and is now a vibrant and diverse city with a rich mix of cultures. It is also an appropriate location for a conference themed ‘Games at the Margin’. The full call for papers is available on the conference website: https://gameslit2019.wordpress.com and also below.

They are looking for abstracts of at least 300 and no more than. 700 words; more information is available on the conference website.  Please submit your abstracts via EasyChair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=gameslit2019 on or before June 30th.

More information on the travel, accommodation and other logistical issues will be provided on the website shortly. If you have any queries, please email me at souvik.eng@presiuniv.ac.in or my coorganiser at debanjana.eng@presiuniv.ac.in.

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CfP: Virtual Workshop ‘ASIA.LIVE: Locating Livestreaming in Asia’

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Hosts: Leiden University, the Leiden Asia Centre, and Asiascape: Digital Asia
Organisers: Florian Schneider, Dino Ge Zhang, Gabriele de Seta
Date: 13 September 2019
Abstract Deadline: 20 June 2019

The practice of broadcasting live video through the internet has recently seen a resurgence, as livestreaming platforms recuperated the format pioneered by cam sites from around the early 2000s (Senft, 2008). From Periscope and Twitch to YouTube and Facebook Live, livestreaming video is today a popular media format, especially among gaming communities, Esports audiences, and popular media commentators (Taylor, 2018).

The uptake of livestreaming in Asia around 2013 is, as of yet, a largely untold story. In the distinct digital ecosystems of the Asia region (Steinberg & Li, 2017), this format has been embraced not only by gamers and their audiences but by a diverse range of communities and performers, fuelling the rise of livestreaming genres like the South Korean mukbang (social eating) or the Chinese huwai zhibo (outdoor livestreams). This local uptake and regional diversification is accompanied by the rise of Asian livestreaming platforms. These are either revamped from established video streaming sites, such as afreecaTV in Korea, Niconico Namahosho in Japan, or Bilibili Live in China, or they come in the new forms of mobile-exclusive apps such as Bigo Live in South East Asia or Inke in China. There are also local scenes of livestreaming cultures on international platforms such as Facebook Live, Twitch, and YouTube. The local ecologies of Western and Asian platforms in Asian national contexts are home to intricate networks of regional livestreaming cultures, and these cultures interact in complicated ways with geopolitical flows and borders (Steinberg & Li, 2017). Livestreaming in Asia has become a veritable ‘live’ laboratory of screen cultures in which new genres, performativities, personalities, audiences, and commenting practices emerge.

Workshop topics:

ASIA.LIVE aims to bring together researchers interested in Asian livestreaming cultures and practices. Through our ‘virtual workshop’ format, we support and encourage a live dialogue around this emergent, ephemeral, and often undocumented domain of contemporary digital culture. The workshop invites submissions of audio-visual presentations discussing the following issues and beyond:

  • Emerging theories of liveness and real-timeness.
  • Microhistories of live video in Asia.
  • Situated genres of livestream performance.
  • Live comment cultures.
  • The platformisation of Asian livestreaming.
  • Livestreaming apps and mobility.
  • Representation and intersectionality in livestreaming cultures.
  • Livestreamed localism, nationalism, and regionalism.

Workshop format:

As a ‘virtual workshop’, ASIA.LIVE is structured around pre-recorded audio-visual presentations that will be broadcasted online, along with livestreamed Q&A sessions, on the date of the event. Submissions must be 15-minute-long videos. However, the format can range from traditional slides with voiceover or webcam talk to video essays or even more experimental genres (archival footage remixes, mini documentaries, performance pieces, livestreamer interviews, etc.). Although it will be possible and encouraged to join us at Leiden University during the livestream event, participation will be largely remote via a livestream.

Submissions:

Interested contributors should submit a 250-word abstract with a short bio detailing their idea for the video presentation in order to be considered for the workshop. Please submit abstracts to live.asia.workshop@gmail.com by 20 June 2019 and we will respond to your expression of interests on 1 July 2019. If your abstracts are selected, you will be invited to submit your video file before/on 1 September 2019.

Journal special issue:

Particularly promising contributions to the conference may later be included in the form of research articles in a special issue of the peer-reviewed academic journal Asiascape: Digital Asia (Brill), to be published in the spring of 2021. The deadline for these articles will be 1 April 2020.

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Invitation to NSF Game-based Assessment Conference

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A US National Science Foundation-sponsored workshop entitled, “Game-based Assessment: An Interdisciplinary Workshop Integrating Organizations, Education, and Assessment.”  The event will be held on August 22 and 23, 2019, in Minneapolis, MN, USA.  Breakfast, plated lunches, and two snack breaks will be provided.  The general goal of this conference is to share and discuss research on how games can be used to generate scores that meaningfully represent something about a person, with a particular eye toward psychometric rigor.  They have selected presenters and events to connect researchers across disciplines and establish collaborations between academia and industry.  You can find much more detail on our website: http://gbaworkshop.tntlab.org

Ignoring the grand tradition of calling games something else for the sake of funding, they boldly stated “this is a conference about video games” and how they can be used to hire people, and obtained support from NSF.

In the event itself, the days are split into four symposia (Org Science Research, Education Research, Vendor Research, and Grad Student Top Research), two keynotes, and a few other events.  Your experience will include this fantastic lineup of presenters:

Keynotes: Sidney D’Mello (U Colorado Boulder) and Richard Landers (U Minnesota)

Org Sciences: Sarena Bhatia (AON), Sebastian Loh (Southern Illinois U), Andrea Sinclair (HumRRO), Elizabeth Short (QC Holdings), Tim Warszta (West Coast U of Applied Sciences)

Education: Russell Almond (Florida State U), Karrie Godwin (Kent State), Rich Halverson (U Wisconsin Madison), Tanner Jackson (ETS), Mina Johnson-Glenberg (Arizona State U)

Vendor Researchers: Jason Blaik (Revelian), Kristen DiCerbo (Pearson), Lara Montefiori (Arctic Shores), Alina Siemsen (AON/cut-e), Kelly Trindel (pymetrics), Jim Wexler (Persona Labs)

You can find more details about each presenter here: http://gbaworkshop.tntlab.org/program

To keep the conference a reasonable size (and to stay in budget!), we are holding total attendance strictly at 125.  To attend, you need to apply for a seat. You can do so here: http://gbaworkshop.tntlab.org/registration

Additionally, 25 of the 125 seats are reserved for graduate students, which will all be funded for up to $500 in travel reimbursement.  If you are or know of any student interested in attending a conference on game-based assessment, you may be able to do so with all expenses covered!  But you must apply here before May 31: http://gbaworkshop.tntlab.org/registration

Additionally, students are encouraged to submit papers/abstracts to present in the Graduate Student Top Research Symposium, from which we will select the top 5 to present.  You could present at an NSF conference!  If you are or know of any grad students who have done compelling theoretical or empirical work on game-based assessments, please apply! The link above will also allow you to submit a tentative title and up to 350-word abstract that will act as your presentation application: http://gbaworkshop.tntlab.org/registration but you must do so before May 31!

Please note that graduate students do not need to apply to present in order to be funded, but it will help your chances of being selected if your abstract looks good!

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CfP: Games Studies Summit: Paratextualizing Games

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The fact that new communication media have always produced new possibilities for cultural evaluation, analysis, and participation is particularly true of digital games. Gaming no longer only takes place as a “closed interactive experience” in front of TV screens or PC monitors at home (or at work), but also as broadcast on video-sharing and streaming platforms or as cultural events in exhibition centers and e-sport arenas. The development and popularization of new technologies, forms of expression and online services – from Let’s Play videos to live streams, from video essays to podcasts – has a considerable influence on the academic and journalistic as well as on the popular discourse about games.

Ian Bogost asks in his 2015 collection of essays: How to talk about Videogames? To further investigate and to expand upon this question is the pivotal point of this year’s Clash of Realities’ Game Studies Summit. They do not just want to ask which paratexts gaming cultures have produced, i.e., in which forms and formats and through which channels we talk (and write) about games. They also ask: How do paratexts influence the development of games? How is knowledge about games generated and shaped today and how do boundaries between (popular) criticism, journalism, and scholarship have started to blur? How do new forms of communicating about games affect the medium of the game itself? In short: How does the paratext change the text?

The Game Studies Summit is hosted by the Cologne Game Lab and the Institute for Media Culture and Theatre (University of Cologne). It will take place on November 20, 2019.

Call for Papers: [PDF]
Deadline for submissions: June 30, 2019
Please send abstracts (no longer than 300 words) along with a short bibliography/ludography to hcs@colognegamelab.de
Notifications of acceptance/rejection will be sent by the end of August. In special cases, we will be able to cover for travel and accommodation costs.

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CfP: GHItaly 2019 Workshop on Games-Human Interaction

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GHItaly19 aims at bringing together scholars and industry practitioners to establish a common ground on the topic.

The main goal of the event is to spur discussion, exchange of ideas, and development of new ways of researching, teaching, and working on games-human interaction.

The perspective that the workshop aims at investigating is the design of visual interfaces applied in the specific field of the production of video games. However, the application range of video games that the workshop invites to explore has to be intended in its broadest sense: both entertainment and applied finalities.

TOPICS

The workshop aims at collecting contribution advancing the research applied to video games.

This edition will especially focus on the influence of visual interface design on the final quality of user experience.

Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):

  • Adaptive and Context-Aware Interfaces
  • Agency of objects
  • Artificial Intelligence applications
  • Biometric measures for interaction
  • Critical or meaningful play experience
  • Distributed and Online systems
  • Full-body Interaction
  • Game Design & Level Design
  • Human Computer Interaction applied to visual interfaces Immersive VR systems
  • Information Visualization
  • Interaction Design Tools
  • Interfaces for Social Interaction and Cooperation Motion-based Interaction
  • Moral choices
  • Multimodal Interfaces
  • (Multi)Sensory Interfaces
  • Procedural rhetoric
  • Sensemaking
  • Storytelling
  • Usability and Accessibility
  • Visualization techniques
  • Virtual and Augmented Reality

SUBMISSION

All paper submissions must be in English, and they must not exceed six (6) pages in length, including references. The papers must be formatted using the ACM SIGCHI format ( http://chi2019.acm.org/authors/chi-proceedings-format/ ).

Papers must be submitted online via EasyChair submission system: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ghitaly19

All the papers will be subject to a double review process by the members of the Programme Committee. The proceedings with the papers accepted to the GHItaly19 workshop will be published in CEUR Workshop Proceedings ( http://ceur-ws.org ), and will be indexed by SCOPUS.

The authors of the best papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their work to an international journal.

IMPORTANT DATES

  • June 3: Submission deadline
  • June 21: Review notification
  • July 8: Camera ready submission
  • September 23: GHItaly 2019 Workshop
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CfP: Games and Learning Alliance conference in Athens, Greece

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== GALA conf Call for Papers ===

Seeking original contributions that advance the state of the art in the technologies and knowledge available to support development and deployment of serious games (SG). Experimental studies are strongly encouraged.

Please refer also to the Aims and scope section and also check the workshop pages, that will have different CFPs.

Submit a contribution to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=gala2019

Conference details at https://conf.seriousgamessociety.org/

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

Technology track:

  • Human-Computer Interaction for SGs (hardware, software)
  • Modeling and simulation
  • Learner performance modeling, assessment (stealth, formative, summative) and feedback
  • Learning analytics
  • Adaptivity
  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning for SGs
  • Big data for SGs
  • Neuro-scientific principles, experiments and applications
  • Computing architectures for SGs
  • Technological support for collaborative games
  • Immersiveness and multimedia experiences
  • Augmented and virtual reality
  • Computer Graphics & Visual Effects
  • Emotions and Affective Interaction
  • Interactive narrative and digital storytelling
  • Procedural content generation
  • Smart toys for learning
  • Efficient development tools
  • Social computing
  • Support for gamification
  • Security & privacy
  • Interoperability and standards
  • Quality of service for SGs

Cognitive Science track:

  • Cognitive processing in an SG
  • SG for Cognitive disorders
  • Cognitive Architecture in SG design and development
  • Neuroscience in SG

Pedagogical foundations track:

  • Pedagogical theories and their applications in the field of serious games
  • User modelling
  • Methodologies and principles for serious games user assessment
  • Support for educators and trainers
  • Pedagogical principles of gamification
  • Support higher-order thinking through serious games

Serious Game design track:

  • Mapping pedagogical goals, outcomes and principles into serious game mechanics
  • SG mechanics
  • Gamification design
  • Design of score, rewards, achievements, and related interfaces
  • Ubiquitous/pervasive gaming
  • Support for educators and trainers
  • Balancing realism, engagement, learning and entertainment
  • Collaboration and cooperation

Application track:

  • Case studies on developing/deploying serious games in application domains such as business, management, entrepreneurship, environment, cultural heritage, health, fitness, sport, smart buildings, humanities, engineering, manufacturing, security, safety, ethics, etc.
  • User studies applying serious games in formal education
  • User studies applying serious games in training (professional, corporate and executive training, skill development and other workforce programs)
  • User studies of applying serious games in the above domains, studying effectiveness for learning/training
  • Understanding how, when, with whom, for what to use serious games
  • Gamification in various application domains
  • Verification of learning transfer
  • Study of the long-term impact
  • Assessing personal abilities through serious games
  • Usability studies

Industrial track:

  • Serious games market studies
  • Business models for serious games
  • Pervasive gaming
  • Mobile gaming
  • Gamification
  • Products to support serious games development and deployment

Authors must follow a format according to the Springer LNCS template, that can be downloaded in word ( ftp://ftp.springernature.com/cs-proceeding/llncs/word/splnproc1703.zip ) or LATEX ( ftp://ftp.springernature.com/cs-proceeding/llncs/llncs2e.zip )

The maximum length for full papers is 10 pages.

The accepted articles will be published on Springer LNCS.

A dedicated special issue with an upgraded version of the best papers of the conference will be published on The International Journal of Serious Games.

Important dates:

  • Paper submissions due: 14 June 2019
  • Accepted papers decided: 19 august 2019
  • Camera-ready papers due: 13 September 2019
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CfP: Gamification 53rd HICSS 2020 conference

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Link to full CFP:
https://www.tut.fi/Gamification/2019/02/26/hicss2020_cfp/

=== GAMIFICATION track
Part of the “Decision Analytics, Mobile Services, and Service Science” –
track 53rd annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences HICSS
January 7-10, 2020 | Grand Wailea, Maui

=== IMPORTANT DATES

  • June 15: Submissions deadline
  • August 17: Notification sent to authors
  • September 4: Revision deadline
  • September 10: Final acceptance notifications sent to authors
  • - September 22: Deadline for authors to submit the final manuscript (camera
  • ready)
  • - October 1: Registration deadline
  • - January 7-10: Conference
  • - February 15, 2019 (date subject to change) (Optional) Submission deadline
  • for extended versions of selected papers for Internet Research or Electronic
  • Markets.

Authors of accepted papers have the option to fast-track extended versions
of their HICSS papers either to Internet Research (Impact factor 3.838)
(http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=int
r) or Electronic Markets (Impact factor 3.818)
(http://www.electronicmarkets.org/home).

Moreover, the Gamification mini-track is part of the Gamification
Publication Track aimed at persistent development of gamification research:
http://gamifinconference.com/gamification-track/

=== TOPICS (but are not limited to):

  • Users: e.g. Engagement, experience, motivations, user/player types
  • Education: e.g. Serious games, game-based learning, simulation games
  • Media: e.g. eSports, streaming
  • Commerce: e.g. Game business models, free-to-play, gamification as marketing, adoption
  • Work: e.g. Organizational gamification, gameful work, gamification in leadership
  • Technology: e.g. VR, AR, MR, gameful wearables and IoT
  • Toys & playfulness
  • Health: e.g. Quantified-self, games for health, health benefits
  • Cities: e.g. smart cities, urban gamification, playable cities, community engagement, governance
  • Theories/concepts/methods: Contributions to science around gamification

They encourage a wide range of submissions from any disciplinary backgrounds:
empirical and conceptual research papers, case studies, and reviews.

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Job: Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Computer Games

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The Department of Computing at Macquarie University, in Sydney Australia, is expanding its teaching and research programs in Game Design and Development and looking to hire new staff. Positions range from level B (Lecturer, equivalent to Assistant Professor in US terms) to level D (Associate Professor, equivalent to Professor in US terms).
As a games researcher you will be part of MQ’s Serious Games Research Network, an active interdisciplinary network of games researchers from Computing, Media, Philosophy, Psychology, Cognitive Science and Creative Writing. Our research themes include:
  • Ethical decision-making in videogames
  • Reasoning and problem-solving in games
  • Virtual Reality Games for Vision Science
  • Virtual Reality Games for Social Neuroscience
  • Games for Sustainability
  • Narrative design for games
  • Games for understanding multi-agent social interactions
You will also take have a role in developing Macquarie’s newly expanded Bachelor of Game Design and Development program, including teaching units in game design and virtual reality development.
Full details at http://jobs.mq.edu.au/cw/en/job/504307/lecturersenior-lecturerassociate-professor-in-computer-games. If you are interested or have any questions, please contact Program Leader, Dr Malcolm Ryan via email at malcolm.ryan@mq.edu.au.
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