IEEE Games, Entertainment, & Media (GEM) 2018

IEEE Games, Entertainment, & Media (GEM) 2018

Call for Papers, Special Sessions, Tutorials and Industry Contributions

 

Continuing the grand tradition & broadening the scope of the IEEE International Games Innovation Conference (IGIC, 2009 – 2013) and IEEE Games Entertainment & Media (GEM, 2014 – 2016) we introduce the GEM 2018 conference to be held on-campus at the National University of Ireland Galway, August 16th – 18th .

 

Introduction:

The Games, Entertainment and Media (GEM) Conference began in London 2009, and moved to venues in the US and Canada until 2016. For 2018 the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society will re-boot GEM outside of North America for the first time in a decade at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG).

 

Situated on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean the West of Ireland has traditionally been the site of the first trans-Atlantic air-flights and there are many historic links between Ireland, the US & Canada stretching back to the times of the Irish famine. Today you can explore the rich heritage & history of the West of Ireland via the Wild Atlantic Way and Galway is conveniently situated at the mid-point of this 1,500 mile long costal adventure.

 

Today, our aim is to build a bridge between gaming and digital media research in North America and in Europe and the UK. Ireland, with unique historic links to North America, coupled with a pivotal role as a technology European technology hub and strong economic ties with the UK, offers a unique venue for gaming and digital media researchers to meet and share the latest innovations.

 

Conference Scope

In scope GEM encompasses all aspects of gaming and interactive digital media ranging from theoretical advances in algorithmic and mathematical techniques, to new enabling technologies, advanced consumer electronics systems, novel sensing technologies, to socio-economic impacts and unique and original uses and applications of these technologies. GEM is for scientists, engineers, psychologists, sociologists, mathematicians, programmers and games researchers of all disciplines, united in their interest and enthusiasm for digital games, interactive entertainment & media and the significant uses and impacts these technologies have on our lives.

 

If you would like to see your personal area of GEM research represented in Galway in 2018 please contact Peter Corcoran, Sam Redfern, or Charlotte Kobert to share your ideas and vision for a special or panel session, a tutorial or a hands-on demonstration or workshop.

 

Conference Research Themes

The main conference theme reflects recent technology developments in consumer technologies, in particular the availability of advanced AR software, advances in sensing and computer vision & display technologies and the growing sophistication of new cloud computing services; thus we find ourselves in a world open with new technological capabilities to create “Augmented Spaces and Virtual Worlds”.

GEM delegates are encouraged to submit original research works exploring these new, emerging possibilities to create exciting, engaging, authentic digital gaming and interactive-media experiences for end-users. The main conference tracks are:

 

Academic Research Themes

  • GEM in the Cloud
  • Mobile & Wearable Technologies for GEM
  • Augmented & Virtual Reality in GEM
  • Social and Economic Aspects of Digital GEM
  • Societal & Behavioural Impacts of GEM
  • Medical Applications of GEM
  • Augmented Spaces for GEM
  • Emerging Technologies:
    • User Interface,
    • Location-Awareness,
    • Touch & Haptics,
    • Motion Capture,
    • Distributed Intelligence,
  • eSports
  • Serious Gaming
  • Education & Learning through GEM
  • Artificial Intelligence in GEM
    • AI Engines & Accelerators
    • Deep Learning & Neural Networks

 

Industry Research Themes

  • GEM Design, Development & User Experience
  • Serious Gaming & Industry Applications
  • Practical Case Studies of GEM
  • GEM Platforms & Infrastructure
  • Standards & Open-Source GEM

 

Peer & Invited Contributions

Peer-Reviewed Contributions (Academic)

  • Long/Short Paper + Oral Presentation (20 mins)
  • Long Paper + Poster

 

Peer-Reviewed Contributions (Industry)

  • Long Oral Presentation (PPT slides, 20 mins)
  • Industry Demo (Tabletop – Slides optional)

 

Invited Contributions

  • Keynote Talk (PPT slides, 30-45 mins)
  • Panel Session
  • Special Oral Session (3-5 long papers)
  • Special Poster Session (8+ posters)
  • Tutorials & Hand-on Workshops

 

Plenary Keynote Sessions:

GEM will feature 6 plenary keynote sessions. Details will be available shortly on the conference website, accessible via the short link: http://bit.ly/GEM2018 .

 

Publication Opportunities:

The conference proceedings will be published on IEEE Xplore.

In addition, there will be opportunities for special sections in several IEEE Journals and technical Magazines including:

  • IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics
  • IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

IEEE Technology in Society Magazine

Selected papers will receive mentoring & advice from members of the GEM organising committee develop their articles for archival publication in relevant IEEE Journals.

 

Technology Demonstration Sessions:

GEM has a tradition of emphasising new and emerging technologies and their role in improving and enhancing the user experience, interactivity and social aspects of gaming and interactive media.

This year we will have several industry-led sessions with a focus on new audio & display technologies and other novel approaches to providing enhanced and augmented interactive spaces. Details will be available shortly on the main conference website or at the short link: http://bit.ly/GEM2018 .

 

Conference Venue:

GEM 2018 will be held in the Alice Perry Engineering Building on the NUI Galway campus. The venue is close to the Corrib Student Village where reserved accommodation is available for delegates. The venue is a 15 minute walk from downtown Galway.

 

Conference Organization:

Conference Chair: Peter Corcoran of NUI Galway; founding editor, IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine; dr.peter.corcoran@ieee.org

Program Chair: Sam Redfern, university lecturer & game programmer;  sam.redfern@nuigalway.ie

Publicity Chair: Lee Stogner; l.stogner@ieee.org

Publications Chair: Tom Wilson; tom.wilson@ieee.org

Conference Manager: Charlotte Kobert; ckobert@ieee.org

Conference Timeline (indicative)

Submissions should be made via the EDAS conference management system (www.edas.info); if you do not yet have an EDAS account then please register; submit a paper via the menu; select the GEM 2018 conference.

Submissions should be in standard IEEE two-column format. For additional details or queries please contact the publication chair or conference manager.

Submission deadlines:  31st March 2018

Notification:  May 2018

Camera-Ready papers: June 2018

Conference Venue: National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG), August 15th-17th.

Getting There:

Delegates are recommended to fly into Dublin Airport where there are coach services every 30 minutes to Galway. These are comfortable modern coaches with onboard WiFi. Alternatively it is possible to fly into Shannon Airport but transport to Galway is less frequent so this is only advised if you plan to hire a car to explore the Wild Atlantic Way (https://www.wildatlanticway.com/ )

 

For Further Information on the conference please consult the official IEEE GEM 2018 website at http://sites.ieee.org/ieeegem/

 

For Further Information on Galway and the West of Ireland:

https://www.wildatlanticway.com/

https://www.galwaytourism.ie/

http://thisisgalway.ie/events/

 

 

 

Elena Bertozzi, PhD. Associate Professor

Game Design & Development

Quinnipiac University * 203-582-7998* CAS 1 327 *

elena.bertozzi@qu.edu *  ardeaarts.org  * familyplanninggame.qu.edu

DIGITAL⇌CULTURE 2018

A one-day conference hosted by the Digital Culture Research Network, and supported by the Midlands3Cities DTP (M3C) Cohort Development Fund

 

Date: Friday 20th April 2018
Venue: University of Nottingham

Abstract Submission Deadline: Friday 9th February 2018

 

‘Digital⇌Culture 2018’ explores the varied links between digital and cultural processes. Digital tools such as social media, mobile devices, video games, data analysis infrastructures, and networked technologies increasingly permeate our everyday lives. As a result, the production and expression of ‘meanings’ or ‘values’ – like the experience and performance of identity, gender, embodied lived experience, political activism, linguistic engagement, knowledge and power relations – are increasingly co-constituted by digital platforms.

This one-day conference, which includes keynote speeches from Prof. Tim Jordan (University of Sussex, UK) and Dr. Katrin Tiidenberg (Aarhus University, Denmark), aims to bring together researchers from a wide array of disciplines with an interest in digital culture. Visit https://digitalculture2018.wordpress.com/
for more information and updates.

Submission

We invite proposals from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to present theoretical and empirical research in response, but not limited, to the following topics:

– How can we meaningfully study the relationship between digital platforms and the activities they enable?
– What is the relationship between features of digital platforms and the communicative acts they mediate?
– How can we understand the value landscape of digital entertainment?
– How do features of digital platforms become re-appropriated as resources for the construction and performance of identity, and to what extent does this in turn shape perceptions of the platform?
– How do digital platforms participate in knowledge-creation and the establishment of dominant discourses?
– How do digital platforms affect the aesthetic and artistic practices of mediation?

To encourage proposals from doctoral students, we are awarding six joint-travel/accommodation grants to successful proposals. Further details below. There will be no  fee charged for presenting at, or attending, this conference.

Submissions should follow the below format and be submitted to digitalculture2018@gmail.com by 23:00 GMT on Friday 9th February 2018.

 

Paper Title
Speaker Name
Speaker Contact Email
Abstract (Up to 250 words outlining the paper’s main arguments, methods, and relevance to the conference theme)
Speaker Biography (Up to 100 words)
Keywords (3 terms relevant to the paper)

 

Funding

We are pleased to offer six joint-travel/accommodation grants, each of which includes one night’s accommodation at the University of Nottingham (arranged by the organising committee) and up to £50 travel expenses.

The grant is open to all doctoral applicants, but at least three of the grants are reserved for non-M3C-funded applicants based at the DTP’s six institutions (Uni. Of Nottingham; Nottingham Trent; Birmingham City; Uni. of Birmingham; De Montfort; Uni. of Leicester). Those currently funded by M3C are not eligible to apply for this grant. This grant will only be offered to doctoral students whose papers have been accepted for the conference.

If you wish to apply for the grant, please complete a Grant Application Form which can be found here and submit it along with your abstract. Grants will be awarded on the basis of the conference organising committee’s collective consideration of submitted applications.

 

 

Betti Bodi

AHRC/M3C Doctoral Candidate

https://vpp.midlands3cities.ac.uk/x/488uAQ

Dept of Culture, Film and Media

University of Nottingham
Room B57, Trent Building
University Park

NG7 2RD

Happy 2018 – Ways to keep in Touch

Happy New Year! Let’s make 2018 Awesome and full of great events and exciting research.

A couple of reminders:

We have a E-mail / Newsgroup list that you can join here – http://mail.digra.org/mailman/listinfo/uk

We also have a Facebook Page – https://www.facebook.com/britishdigra/

Both of these are great ways of letting us know about events and opportunities you want shared, that would be of interest to British Digra members.

Finally we’ve  extended the deadline for submissions bids to host British Digra 2018 to 5pm on Sunday 14th January 2018. Details here – http://bdigra.org.uk/british-digra-conference-2018-call-for-hosts

Literature and Video Games: Beyond Stereotypes

An interdisciplinary Leverhulme International Network event hosted by University of St Andrews
20-21st June 2018

Organised by Prof. Margaret-Anne Hutton (Univ. of St Andrews Modern Languages; Leverhulme Network P.I.); Prof. Gregor White, Dr Robin Sloan and Dr Dayna Galloway (Abertay Univ., Dundee), Dr Matthew Barr (Univ. of Glasgow)

Literature specialists and games scholars: learn something new; do something different; challenge the stereotypes.

Full programme now available: download programme.

Register via Eventbrite

Confirmed participants:

Rhianna Pratchett
http://www.rhiannapratchett.com/

Christopher Brookmyre
https://www.brookmyre.co.uk/

Judy Tyrer
http://www.everjane.com/

Simon Meek
http://www.thesecretexperiment.co.uk/

Imre Jele
http://animalfarmgame.com/

Don Paterson
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/don-paterson

Registration

The event is free but places are limited. Please register via Eventbrite

PLAY/PAUSE Symposium – 24th January 2018, University of Birmingham, B15 2TT

PLAY/PAUSE Symposium – 24th January 2018, University of Birmingham, B15 2TT

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Gaming the System: Play, Procedure and Procedurality in Videogames and Virtual Reality

Procedures are embedded ways of understanding our cultural, social and political systems; they provide fixed guidelines and rules to be followed. While procedures are seemingly fixed, procedurality, on the other hand, is a constantly evolving mechanism for ‘creating, explaining or understanding processes’ (Bogost, 2007). For our inaugural event, PLAY/PAUSE welcomes papers that will analyse procedures and procedurality in relation to videogames and Virtual Reality (VR).

Does the procedurality of videogames offer us, as programmer Brie Code argues, the tools to adapt to a twenty-first-century ‘overwhelmed with shock, with information, with change’? Or are videogames an embodiment of the controlled degrees of freedom offered to individuals under late-capitalism and neoliberalism? Does VR technology offer unprecedented immediacy and the potential to be, as Jennifer Alsever calls it, ‘the ultimate empathy machine’? Or does it further indulge a misguided impulse towards mastery of our physical environment? And what of ‘metagames’, Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux’s term for the games ‘occurring before, after, between and during games’? Are the hacks, speed-runs and fan-made mass-involvement games like Twitch Plays Pokemon (2014) a creative flourishing of the commons? Or do they simply indicate the outsourcing of labour by media industry discourses?

This symposium provides a meeting place for researchers within and outside the field of game studies, and seeks to broaden the academic consideration of videogames and VR: away from the consideration of them as niche, relatively new technologies, towards mediums that have the capacity to encourage and create academic discourses that reflect the cultures they are created in.

We welcome a broad range of proposals for 20-minute papers on the role or significance of procedurality in regards to (but not limited to) the following topics:

  • The interplay between narrative and ludic elements of videogames
  • Embodiment and modes of perception in videogames and/or VR
  • Gaming, metagaming, and fan cultures
  • Videogames and philosophy
  • Representing and playing history in videogames
  • The influence of videogames on other media, e.g. novels, films, plays, etc.

 

Abstracts of no more than 250 words, along with a bibliography and short bio, should be sent to playpauseuob@gmail.com by Friday 22nd December 2017. We particularly welcome proposals from PGRs and early career researchers.

PLAY/PAUSE is part of the Centre for Digital Cultures at Birmingham, fuelling academic discussion of Videogames and Virtual Reality.

Twitter: @PLAYPAUSE_UOB
Blog: playpauseuob@wordpress.com

DiGRA 2018 – The Game is the Message – CFP

The Game is the Message

http://digra2018.com

July 25-28, 2018

Campus Luigi Einaudi, Università di Torino, Turin, Italy

Lungo Dora Siena, 100 A, 10153 Turin, Italy

Conference chairs: Riccardo Fassone and Matteo Bittanti

Games have long since moved out of the toy drawer, but our understanding of them can still benefit from seeing them in a wider context of mediated meaning-making. DiGRA 2018 follows Marshall McLuhan, and sees games as extensions of ourselves. They recalibrate our senses and redefine our social relationships. The environments they create are more conspicuous than their content. They are revealing, both of our own desires and of the society within which we live. Their message is their effect. Games change us.

To explore this change, we invite scholars, artists and industry to engage in discussions over the following tracks:

– Platforms

Game platforms invite new textualities, new technologies and new networks of power relations. Game structures, their integration with and use of the technology, as well as the affordances and restrictions offered by the platforms on which they live, influence our experience of them.

– Users

Games invite new relations between their users, and players strive for and achieve new modes of perception. This reconfigures our attention, and establishes new patterns and forms of engagement.

– Meaning-making

The connection between a game and its content is often interchangeable – a game is clearly recognizable even if the surface fiction is changed. But games still produce meanings and convey messages. We ask, what are the modes of signification and the aesthetic devices used in games? In this context we particularly invite authors to look at games that claim to be about serious topics or deal with political and social issues.

– Meta-play

The playing of the game has become content, and we invite authors to explore spectatorship, streaming, allied practices and hybrid media surrounding play and the players. How can we describe and examine the complex interweaving of practices found in these environments?

– Context

Games are subject to material, economic and cultural constraints. This track invites reflection on how these contingencies as well as production tools, industry and business demands and player interventions contribute to the process of signification.

– Poetics

Games are created within constraints, affordances, rules and permissions which give us a frame in which games generate meaning. Games have voice, a language, and they do speak. This is the poetics of games, and we invite our fellows to explore and uncover it.

– General

Games tend to break out of the formats given them, and so for this track we invite the outstanding abstracts, papers and panels on alternative topics to the pre-determined tracks.

We invite full papers, 5000 – 7000 words plus references using the DiGRA 2018 submission template (http://www.digra.org/?attachment_id=148233), extended abstracts (from 500 words, maximum 1000, excluding references), and panel submissions (1000 words excluding references, with a 100 word biography of each participant). Full papers will be subject to a double-blind peer review. Extended abstracts will be blinded and peer reviewed by committees organised by the track chairs. Panels will be reviewed by the track chairs and the program chairs. General inquiries should be addressed to Riccardo Fassone – riccardo.fassone AT unito.it. Artist contributions, industry contributions, performances or non-standard presentations should be addressed to Matteo Bittanti  – matteo.bittanti AT iulm.it .

Submission will be opened December 1st, 2017, and the final deadline for submission is January 31st 2018. The URL for submissions is https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=digra2018 .

Program chairs are

Martin Gibbs, martin.gibbs AT unimelb.edu.au, University of Melbourne, Australia

Torill Elvira Mortensen, toel AT itu.dk, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Important dates:

  • Submission opens: December 1st, 2017
  • Final submission deadline: January 31st, 2018
  • Results from reviews: March 1st, 2018
  • Early registration deadline: March 15th, 2018
  • Reviewed and rewritten full papers final deadline: April 15th, 2018

British DiGRA conference 2018 – call for hosts

Following the successful first British DiGRA conference, hosted by Salford University in May this year, the British DiGRA Board are pleased to invite parties interested in hosting the next conference to apply via the form below:

https://goo.gl/forms/dcvHD16e9HNZcoy52

Applications should be submitted by 5pm on Friday 15th December, 5pm on Sunday 14th January with the conference expected to run sometime between late-April and June 2018. As soon as possible following the closing date, the Board will select a host from the submitted applications.

Queries may be addressed to Esther (neveah@gmail.com) or Matt (Matthew.Barr@glasgow.ac.uk). Applicants are encouraged to review the Inclusivity Policy: http://bdigra.org.uk/inclusivity-policy

After VR: the archaeology and potential of immersive media

13:00 – 18:00, 1 November 2017, Harvard Lecture Theatre, Winchester School of Art

Event details – More details here

For more information regarding this event, please email Dr Seth Giddings at S.Giddings@soton.ac.uk .

Taking the recent revival in commercial, popular, and academic interest in virtual reality and augmented reality technologies and applications as a prompt and a provocation, this event will present current research on the genealogies, realities, and imaginaries of immersive media in art, industry and popular culture before and after the screen.

A symposium at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton on Wednesday 1st November, hosted by the Transforming Creativity research group and AMT (Archaeologies of Media and Technology research group).

Speakers will include:

Jenna Ng (University of York)
Helen W Kennedy (University of Brighton)
Michael Goddard (University of Westminster)

The event will be convened by Seth Giddings, with Jussi Parikka as respondent

Lincoln Games Research Network Inaugural event

The newly formed Lincoln Games Research Network are hosting a free 1-day symposium event on 10th November 2017, with a range of external speakers and activities.
http://games.lincoln.ac.uk/?page_id=1647

To attend, please contact Jussi Holopainen (jholopainen@lincoln.ac.uk) or Patrick Dickinson (pdickinson@lincoln.ac.uk).

Schedule:

9:00 – 9:50 Keynote Speaker: Dr. Ben Kirman, University of York (Jackson Lecture Theatre), “Weirding games”.

10:00 – 10:50 Keynote Speaker: Dr. Sebastian Deterding, University of York (Jackson Lecture Theatre), “Outside the box: toward an ecology of game enjoyment”.

10:50 Coffee Break. Note: Remaining Sessions in INB 1103, intLab Research Room.

11:20 – 11:40 Speaker: Dr. Paolo Ruffino, University of Lincoln.

11:40 – 12:00 Speaker: Dr. Aki Järvinen, Sheffield Hallam University.

12:00 Break for Lunch

13:00 Research Speed Dating, Professor Antonella de Angeli, University of Lincoln

14:00 Game Ideation Session, Dr. Richard Wetzel, University of Lincoln

15:00 – 15:20 Speaker: Dr. Khaled Bachour, University of Lincoln

15:20-15:40 Speaker: Dr. Elisa Rubegni, University of Lincoln

15:40 Coffee Break

16:00 Play Games!