IEEE Conference on Games 2021 - Call for Proposals

[Paolo Burelli]

[Apologies for multiple cross-posting!]

IEEE Conference on Games 2021 - https://ieee-cog.org/2021/index.html

Copenhagen - August 17-19th 2021

Call for Proposals

We welcome proposals for tutorials, competitions and specials sessions for the 2021 edition of the IEEE Conference on Games. The Conference on Games (CoG) evolves from the traditional Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG) to bring together leading researchers and practitioners from academia and industry in the field of Games, to discuss recent advances and explore future directions.

Games offer a fantastic domain for computational creativity, design, technology, education, social sciences and, undoubtedly, artificial and computational intelligence. The annual IEEE Conference on Games (IEEE CoG) seeks to share insights and cutting-edge research related to game technologies and design, covering scientific, technical, and human aspects of games.

This year's edition of the conference will be organised as a hybrid conference to allow the maximum possible participation. In the ideal scenario, the conference will be co-located with the ability for researchers around the world to attend the talks and interact remotely. However, depending on the global situation at the time of the conference, we will transition to a fully remote format if necessary.

While the technology to support the format has not yet been decided (probably some form of Zoom and Discord), please be aware of the technical challenges and opportunities of this format when envisioning your tutorial, competition or special session. Check the rest of the document and the website (https://ieee-cog.org/2021) for more details on each type of proposal.

Call for Tutorials

We invite submissions for tutorials to be held at IEEE CoG 2021. This is an opportunity for you to share your expertise and influence future research directions in the CoG community. Tutorials can be on any topic in the scope of the conference. Please note that the conference's scope includes all technical research areas as they intersect with games. We especially encourage tutorials that reflect and respond to this broader scope. For a partial list of topics relevant to the expanded scope of the conference, please visit Topics and Tracks

Typically, tutorials are expected to run for 1.5 hours, but longer ones will also be considered. The format may be negotiated through the Tutorial Chairs.

Proposals should include the following information:

• Title
  
• List of presenters with contact details and short biographical details (less than 150 words for each presenter)
  
• Outline of topic coverage and format of tutorial (less than 400 words in total)
  
• Links to the presenter/organizer web page or the tutorial page (optional)
  
• Duration and logistical requirements
  
• Proposals should be sent by email to the Tutorial Chairs by January 14th 2021 or sooner. Notification of acceptance will take place by February 12th.
  

Email proposals and enquiries to both Tutorial Chairs: Jesper Juul (j...@jesperjuul.net) and Sebastian Risi (se...@itu.dk).

Call for competitions

The CoG 2021 Organising Committee invites proposals for competitions to be held at the conference. These may be completely new ones or competitions held already in the last years, possibly at other venues. Proposals are due by January 14th 2021, and will be reviewed based on their relevance to the CoG community. Please see the topics covered by the CoG conference. Competitions can be based on well-known games as well, but competitions based on custom-made and lesser-known games are also welcome. The competition needs to define a set of rules and objectives for determining the score of each player.

To submit your proposal, send an email with the title "CoG 2021 Competition Proposal" to the competition chairs Ruck Thawonmas (ru...@is.ritsumei.ac.jp) and Antonios Liapis (antonio...@um.edu.mt).

Please, include the following information with your proposal:

• Organisers’ names.
  
• Competition title.
  
• Description of the competition (about 200 words).
  
• Web address.
  
• Whether the competition will have several tracks or not, and if they should be considered different competitions or a single one.
  

Additionally, the following item can be submitted with the proposal or later:

• Video of the competition/tracks (see below).

Please, also note the following:

1. The IEEE CIS Student Game-Based Competition Sub-Committee (SGBC) has determined, in agreement with the Games TC meeting held at CIG 2017, that all competitions (including all tracks) must provide a short video for entrants. Competitions that do not provide this video will not be accepted at CoG 2021. However, submission of the video is not necessary for the proposal but can be deferred to after provisional acceptance of the competition. This requirement applies to both new and old competitions. The objective of creating these videos is to raise the general quality of our competitions and attract as many participants as possible by providing an easier start with the respective frameworks. The duration of the video is to be decided by the organizers, but it should have (English) subtitles to aid non-native English speakers. The content should demo concepts like how to install the required software packages, write an entry for the competition and submission instructions. The rationale is that if the whole process can be shown in less than 5 minutes, participants will feel more encouraged to participate and prepare a submission for the contest.
   
2. We will of course provide certificates for all competitions and we will try to make some price money available, but we also encourage the organizers to look for financial sponsorship to make their competition more attractive.
   
3. Competition papers. These are regular papers (up to 8 pages) that describe one or more entries to the competitions that are running at this year’s CIG. Competition papers need to include evaluation of the contribution, including (if possible) results on the same benchmark as that used by the competition, and comparison to other competition entries. Because the problem domain is well-known, these papers can be reviewed faster than regular papers. The same quality standards will apply to competition papers as to regular papers. Competition papers should be submitted by 28th May 2021. The competitions do not need to be accompanied by competition papers; a competition can run even in the absence of any submitted papers.
   

Call for Special Session Proposals

A special session addresses one or more topic areas within games research and is intended to bring together researchers working on those topics to provide an excellent session at the IEEE Conference on Games. Please read the call for papers for CoG 2021 and its list of topics before submitting your special session proposal.

A special session proposal should not be more than two pages, not including the brief biographies of the proposers and the draft call for papers.

Please include the following information with your proposal:

• Title - the title of the proposal
  
• Description - a description of the topic of the session and its place in games research.
  
• Example topics – a bullet list of topics that the session might cover.
  
• Justification – a brief explanation making the case that the special session belongs in the conference. An estimate of the number of submissions should be included.
  
• Sponsors – a list of researchers proposing the session. At least one must be an IEEE member and all sponsors are expected to serve as reviewers for the papers in the special session. If your session is accepted, you must also provide a list of reviewers sufficient to your expected submissions.
  
• Sponsor Biographies – each sponsor should include a brief biography that demonstrates professional excellence and qualification to review for the special session. The bio should include a current e-mail address.
  
• Draft Call for Papers – on its own page, a draft call for papers to be used in advertising the special session. The draft call for papers should not fill more than one page.

Inquiries and proposals should be sent to Simon Lucas (simon...@qmul.ac.uk) and Yun-Gyung Cheong (aim...@skku.edu). Proposals must be in PDF format and will be approved on a rolling basis (submit now!), reviewed promptly, and placed on the conference web site, in part to prevent duplicate submissions. If someone has beaten you to the punch, contact them and offer to serve as a member of their review panel.

No applications would be considered after January 14th, 2021.