Games & Entertainment Spotlight

What's New with the Games & Entertainment Spotlight

The games and entertainment community has been growing rapidly during the past two years with an increasing number of games and entertainment related submissions in all venues and successful student game competition. In 2014 we are planning to make it the best year yet for the Games and Entertainment Community at CHI as a Spotlight. We are planning to continue the Student Games Competition, increase the quality and quantity of submissions from games researchers and practitioners, and increase the involvement and engagement of practitioners within the community.

There is a broad variety of submission possibilities, such as workshops which allows you to discuss with other experts from the field a certain topic, panels which enables you to discuss latest trends, papers and notes where you can show your research results, case studies & interactivity & videos where you can demonstrate your game or entertainment application, or alt.chi where you can use an show controversial, risk-taking, boundary pushing games. Please see below the summary for all possibilities for submissions at CHI. We also invite you to the Special Interest Group (SIG) on Games and Entertainment session scheduled at CHI 2014. Also, note that if you want to actively contribute to the community, please do not forget to register as a reviewer (indicating games as keywords) and notify us that you did so.

Spotlight co-chairs:

  • Magy Seif El-Nasr, Northeastern University, USA
  • Heather Desurvire, User Behavioristics, Inc., USA
  • Lennart Nacke, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada

You can contact us at games@chi2014.acm.org, if you have questions about games submissions.
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Introduction to the Games & Entertainment Spotlight

Games and Entertainment are part of our daily lives, and represent a growing segment of practice for our field. In contrast to work-oriented information systems, games and entertainment applications are not necessarily task oriented; successful user experience in games transcends and sometimes even contradicts traditional usability guidelines. Player-centered development requires adjustment of existing design and evaluation methods and development of new ones. There is much to learn from current commercial game and entertainment design and evaluation practice and game research community, that has broad relevance to the CHI community.

The games and entertainment community includes researchers and practitioners focusing on:

  • Player-oriented game development, including analysis, development and evaluation of all forms of games including (but not limited to) desktop games, mobile games, mixed reality games, exertion games, affective games, and serious games.
  • All aspects of design, development, and deployment of game and entertainment-focused virtual characters including avatars, non-player characters (NPCs), and embodied conversational agents (ECAs).
  • Designing motivational user experiences via the application of game design methods, tools, and elements (e.g., Gamification).
  • Use of games as novel methodological platforms or research methods.
  • Entertainment computing systems, platforms and applications at the intersection of humans and machines.
  • Design, development and evaluation of entertainment applications including interactive TV, multimedia and interactive applications for media and entertainment use whenever, wherever, and on whatever device.
  • Assessment and evaluation of the use of games for societal gain, such as health, fitness, education, science, training or other.

Types of Submissions

Submissions about games and entertainment are appropriate in any of the following forums. We especially encourage you to submit interesting case studies that illustrate how innovative game techniques were used in specific projects that have broad implications. We urge you to submit material to one or more of the following forums:

If you are a student, also consider entering the Student Game Competition.

Preparing your Submission

You must prepare your submission in the format that is required for each type of submission. Please use the term "games", "gaming" or "entertainment" in the title, abstract, or author's keywords to help us get it to qualified reviewers. You can contact us at games@chi2014.acm.org, if you have questions about games submissions. We encourage you to check the due dates, read the requirements for your submission ideas, and start now, if you haven't already.