CFP: 1st FDG workshop on Tabletop Games (deadline May 31)
Antonios Liapis
Hi PCGers,
If you're by any chance working on board/card game generation (or
human or computer-assisted board game design), or you're working
on Artificial Intelligence for playing tabletop games, this call
for papers may be of interest to you! Cameron Browne and I are
organizing an FDG workshop on Tabletop Games, and the goal is to
get different researchers approaching tabletop games from
different disciplines and towards different goals (from studying
them, to designing them, to applying AI on them) together. If
you're interested, please read below or visit
http://tabletopgamesworkshop.org/ for more details. As the subject
reads, the important date is the submission deadline on May 31,
and the fact that the workshop will be hosted in Malmö University,
Sweden along with the FDG conference ( http://fdg2018.org ) during
7-10 August.
I hope that this is to your liking,
A. Liapis
----------- CFP -----------
Tabletop games have seen an increase in sophistication, and a
desire to explore new themes, mechanisms and play complexity, and
even innovate technologically. Tabletop games have also been
consistently popular over the years, with ever larger conventions,
publicity, and community involvement. Finally, there is a broad
range of research interest in tabletop games from the functional
aspects of board game play (abstracted for artificial intelligence
play) to anthropological studies of role-playing or historical
studies of proceduralism on the tabletop. However, much of this
research occurs in isolation, without sufficient interaction
between researchers in this broad application field. The goal of
this workshop is to advance knowledge in tabletop games by
bringing together researchers and fostering discussion about the
current state of the field. Moreover, it serves to establish
connections and link research topics and researchers in this
highly interdisciplinary field.
Important note on scope
We define tabletop games here to include any game played by a
group of players (or one player, in niche cases) on the tabletop:
this includes board games, role-playing games, technology-enhanced
board games (e.g. Mansions of Madness or Alchemists),
and so on. Computer simulations of tabletop games are also
included, e.g. for simulated board game play for the purposes of
artificial intelligence or other computational tasks. Importantly,
the topics of this workshop do not include playground
activities or urban games, pervasive games (e.g. played throughout
the day during other activities), and games intended to be played
exclusively on the computer (e.g. digital card games such as Hearthstone).
Therefore, while a computer-based generator which outputs a map
and description which can be played on a tabletop role-playing
game such as Dungeons & Dragons is acceptable, should
the same generator only output dungeons played on the computer it
would not be acceptable. Similarly, a computer simulation
(interactive or not) of Chess would be acceptable provided that it
simulates a board game (in this case Chess) which can be played on
the tabletop. If you have any questions on whether a topic is
within scope of this workshop, please contact the organizers at tg2...@easychair.org for
the specific case.
Submissions
We welcome submissions as either full papers describing novel research (up to 6 pages) as well as short papers (2 pages).
Tabletop games span a broad range of applications, but indicative topics for papers include but not limited to:
- Ethnographic studies on playing or designing board game play.
- Comparisons between specific board games or a study in a game’s historical evolution in case of multiple editions and remakes.
- Studies in design patterns, taxonomies or other elements of board games.
- A procedural reading of board game design.
- Board games for a purpose (e.g. education, psychological support, training).
- Artificial Intelligence for playing board games, card games, or tabletop role-playing games.
- Automated generation of board game elements (rules, pawns, board setups, cards, tabletop role-playing dungeons, ...).
- Technology-mediated board game play, e.g. as game master, time keeper, or audiovisual stimulus.
- Lessons learned from commercial (or otherwise) board game design (including post-mortems)
- Critical analysis of board games.
- Board game design informed by game studies research.
We welcome research papers of up to 6 pages in length. We also welcome short papers on positions, visions and work in progress on topics that are relevant to the topic of tabletop games: short papers should include some key references. We also encourage the submission of demonstrations of research prototypes and various interesting tabletop designs, which can be accompanied by a long or short paper (of 2 pages). Submissions for game demos and other artifacts will be open at a later date, but accompanied descriptions will not be published.
Papers submissions will be subject to double-blind peer review, and each submission will be peer reviewed. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to give an oral presentation of their paper at the workshop. All submissions should be anonymized, as the review process is double-blind. All submissions (short and long papers) should be in PDF format and comply with the ACM SIGCONF format and need to import ACM CCS 2012 concepts. Both LaTeX and Word ACM SIGCONF templates are acceptable for producing the PDF file.
Papers should be submitted through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tg2018
Important Dates
May 31: Paper submission deadline to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tg2018
August 7-10: half-day workshop, Malmö University, Sweden
Antonios Liapis
Let me remind you that we have less than two weeks to go before the paper submission deadline for the Tabletop Games Workshop ( http://tabletopgamesworkshop.org/ ). If you're working on game generation for (physical) role-playing and board games, or you're working on board game design, or on AI for board game play, we hope that this workshop will be of interest to you. We welcome both short papers (2 pages) and long papers (6 pages) so we're looking forward to both mature work and visions. Just like the PCG workshop (which also has a submission deadline soon!), this workshop will be hosted in Malmö University, Sweden along with the FDG conference ( http://fdg2018.org ) during 7-10 August.