[See also a Call for Papers for AutoPlay. Gaming in the Age of Automation, a special issue of the Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. –Matthew]
Call for Papers to the 2017 workshop on Non-Player Characters and Social Believability @ FDG
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA
August 14-17 2017 (1 day, exact date TBD)
http://www.npc-workshop.org/
Submission deadline: May 10
The 2017 workshop on Non-Player Characters and Social Believability intends to be a point of interaction for researchers and game developers interested in modeling, discussing, developing systems for NPC social behavior and social affordances. This can include behaviour based on social and behavioural science theories and models, systems for social believability frameworks, approaches, methodologies, theories, interpretations, social affordances when interacting with NPCs, and more. We invite participants from a multitude of disciplines in order to create a broad spectrum of approaches to the area.
In the context of this workshop, NPCs in games are not limited to opponents but can play any role. The development of multiplayer games has increased the demands put on the NPCs as believable characters, especially if they are to cooperate with human players. From the beginning of digital games, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been part of the main idea of games containing acting entities, which is to provide the player with “worthy” opponents (NPCs). The development of multiplayer games has increased the demands put on the NPCs as believable characters, especially if they are to cooperate with human players. However, the social aspect of intelligent behavior has been neglected compared to the development and use AI for other domains (e.g. route planning). In particular, the interplay between intelligent behavior that is task-related, the emotions that may be attached to the events in the game world, and the social positioning and interaction of deliberating entities is underdeveloped. This workshop aims to address this by putting forward demonstrations of work in the integration of these three aspects of intelligent behavior, as well as models and theories that can be used for the emotional and social aspects, and for the integration between the three aspects. The day will be dedicated to demonstration and discussion, with ample time for collaboration and comparison of theory, method, practice, and results.
The workshop is co-located and organised with the 2017 Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) conference in Cape Cod, MA, USA. The exact workshop date is TBD, but will take place sometime during the conference (August 14-17 2017).
For more information about the workshop, please see the our web site:
http://www.npc-workshop.org/
Topics of interest include the following as related to NPCs:
- designs created to explore hypotheses
- realized prototypes, demos, and applications
- technological approaches: then, now, and the future
- behavior modeling and behavior design
- philosophical approaches to sociality and believable behavior
- trade-off between autonomous characters and control over storylines, and dialogue
- authoring social behavior
- social interactions involving groups
- connecting contextual modeling to animation and speech/sound
- provocative ideas
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
We will accept submissions for the following:
- Papers
- Demos
- Interesting artifacts
Conference submissions will be subject to double-blind peer review. Each submission will receive feedback from at least two reviewers. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to give an oral presentation of their paper. Demo and artifact authors will be invited to give a lightning presentation of their submission, and be given the opportunity to show it in detail during a breakout session.
We welcome research papers of up to 6 pages in length. We especially encourage the submission of demonstrations of research prototypes and various interesting artifacts. Demonstrations and artifacts should be accompanied by a 1-2 page (excluding references) description and a video showcasing the main features of the demo/artifact (link in document).
All submissions should be in the PDF format and use FDG formatting; more information and templates are available on the FDG 2017 site, http://www.fdg2017.org.
Papers should be submitted through EasyChair:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=npcsbg2017
Accepted papers will be published in the ACM Digital Library, courtesy of FDG.
DATES
Submission deadline: May 10
Acceptance notification: June 7
Camera-ready deadline: June 20
Workshop: August 14-17 (1 day, exact date TBD)
If you have any questions feel free to send an e-mail to Henrik Warpefelt (henrik.warpefelt@SPELDESIGN.UU.SE).