Call for Papers - IEEE VS-Games 2011 Workshops
Fotis Liarokapis
3rd International Conference in Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications
In technical Cooperation with the IEEE Computer Society
Natural Interaction and Player Satisfaction in Games
Scope
Analyzing, capturing and synthesizing player experience in both traditional screen-based games and augmented- and mixed-reality platforms has been a challenging area within the crossroads of cognitive science, psychology, artificial intelligence and humancomputer interaction. Recent advances in readily available sensors (e.g. in mobile phones), hardware (e.g. Nintendo Wii-remote, Microsoft Kinect, Playstation Move) and computing power enable users to interact with computers, handheld devices and game consoles using the same paradigm as in their everyday life: with spoken commands, facial expressions, hand and body gestures. These non-verbal means of expressivity can be studied both in terms of affect and interaction, as well as in terms of gameplay, using concepts from machine vision and understanding, machine learning and psychology.
In addition to this, those new interaction modalities enhance the importance of the study and the complexity of player experience. Artificial and computational intelligence can be used to synthesize the affective state of player (and non-player) characters, based on multiple modalities of player-game interaction. Multiple modalities of input can also provide a novel means for game platforms to measure player satisfaction and engagement when playing, without necessarily having to resort to post-play and off-line questionnaires. For instance, players immersed by gameplay will rarely gaze away from the screen, while disappointed or indifferent players will typically show very little response or emotion. AI/CI algorithms can also be used to adapt the game to maximize player’s experience, thereby, closing the affective game loop: e.g. change the game soundtrack to a vivid or dimmer tune to match the player’s powerful stance or prospect of defeat; from the point of view of non-player characters, an injured or frustrated opponent will look down when facing defeat, informing the users about its status, much in the way a human opponent would be expected to. In addition to this, procedural content generation techniques may be employed, based on the level of user engagement and expressed interest, to dynamically produce new, adaptable and personalized content (e.g. a new stage in a platform game, which poses enough challenge to players, without disappointing them).
This special session aims at bringing together specialists from machine learning and vision, computational intelligence, affective computing, and multimodal interfaces to discuss advances in designing and measuring player experience and affect induction, sensing and modelling.
Topics of interest
Research areas relevant to the special session include, but are not limited to, the following:
• artificial and computational intelligence for modelling player experience
• cognitive/affective models of player satisfaction
• modelling affect in the context of games
• analysis of player’s facial expressions, gestures, body stance, gaze, speech content and prosody and physiology
• mapping low-level cues to affect and emotion
• using games to record affective databases
• synthesising/reproducing player affect in the game environment
• adapting to player affect/player experience/satisfaction via procedural content generation
• adaptive learning and player experience
Special session organisers
• Georgios Yannakakis, Centre for Computer Games Research, IT University of Denmark
• Kostas Karpouzis, Image, Video and Multimedia Systems Lab, National Technical University of Athens
• Kostas Anagnostou, Department of Informatics, Ionian University
Program Committee
• Elisabeth André (University of Augsburg, DE)
• Ginevra Castellano (Queen Mary University of London, UK)
• Dimitris Grammenos (ICS-FORTH, GR)
• Arnav Jhala (UC Santa Cruz, USA)
• Stefanos Kollias (National Technical University of Athens, GR)
• Jean-Claude Martin (LIMSI-CNRS, Paris-South 11, FR)
• Matteo Matteucci (Politecnico di Milano, IT)
• Alexandros Potamianos (Technical University of Crete, GR)
• Pieter Spronck (Tilburg University, NL)
• Ana Paiva (INESC-ID, PT)
• Christopher Peters (Coventry University, UK)
• Julian Togelius (IT University of Copenhagen, DK)
Important Deadlines
• Submission deadline: 20th Jan 2011
• Notification of acceptance or rejection: 25th Jan 2011
• Submission deadline for full versions: 30th Jan 2011
Leveraging the Potential of Virtual Worlds
Scope
Since their launch, Virtual Worlds (VW) have been seen as a rapidly evolving trend that could play an important role in the future internet. VWs gained enormous popularity at the beginning of the decade and still maintain a strong fan base with 580 million people worldwide currently registered as virtual world users.
Due to the large number of users that they attract and the significant amount of time that users spend inside them, Virtual Environments offer a significant potential for organisations that want to reach out to a larger crowd such as businesses and government bodies. Moreover, Virtual Worlds provide the context inside which people interact with each other in many ways and therefore are rich in user generated content as well as social networking information. When properly leveraged, this information can bring value to a wide range of domains such as commercial applications, search engines and recommender systems. Finally, Virtual Worlds can be viewed as a micro-society with dynamics resembling those of real world societies, making them an ideal testbed for experimentation in a society simulation.
The objective of this workshop is to examine the ways in which the capabilities of Virtual Worlds can be exploited. We are interested in both technological and sociological approaches as well as in case studies showcasing the areas that can benefit from using Virtual Worlds and the challenges and risks involved.
Topics of interest
Researchers and practitioners are invited to present final results and work in progress. However, submissions have to be original research in the area of Virtual worlds. The topics of interest include but are not limited to:
• Managing Identity in a Virtual World: Trust, Privacy and Reputation
• Architectures for leveraging Virtual Worlds capabilities
• Integration of VW applications with enterprise IT systems
• VW Enterprise Applications layered on top of the core virtual world architecture – scenarios, architectures
• Making sense of VW content : Information retrieval and data mining mechanisms
• VW Applications in real life domains: health, education, cultural heritage, the environment and government services
• Modelling, simulation, virtualisation, scenario-building and evaluation
• Policy Simulation in Virtual Environments: case scenarios
• VW Economies : Modelling and trading systems in virtual worlds
• Virtual Worlds as a means for gathering public opinion
• Social Networks as sources of content
• Social Networks interoperability
• Interoperability and application portability between Virtual worlds and social networks
Special session organisers
• Prof. Theodora Varvarigou, National Technical University of Athens
• Konstantinos Tserpes, National Technical University of Athens
• Michal Jacovi, IBM Research Labs, Haifa
• Magdalini Kardara, National Technical University of Athens
Program Committee
• Fotis Aisopos (National Technical University of Athens, GR)
• Prof. Dimosthenis Anagnostopoulos (Harokopio University of Athens, GR)
• Dr. Vasiliki Andronikou (National Technical University of Athens, GR)
• Fanny Coudert (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, BE)
• Prof. Anastastios Doulamis (Technical University of Crete, GR)
• Rania Hatzi (Harokopio University of Athens, GR)
• Bernard Horan (University of Essex, UK)
• Roman Klinger (Fraunhofer, SCAI, GE)
• Prof. Nikolaos Matsatsinis (Technical University of Athens, GR)
• Prof. Mara Nikolaidou, Harokopio University of Athens
• Prof. Vasilios Vescoukis (National Technical University of Athens, GR)
Important Deadlines
• Submission deadline: 20th Jan 2011
• Notification of acceptance or rejection: 25th Jan 2011
• Submission deadline for full versions: 30th Jan 2011
Faculty of Engineering and Computing
Tel: +44 (0)24 7688 7631
Check call for papers for VS-Games 2011: http://www.vs-games.org/
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