Call for Contributions
FDG 2018: The International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG)
7-10 August 2018
Malmö, Sweden
http://fdg2018.org
Workshop Proposals due: February 12, 2018
Full and Short Papers due: March 12, 2018
The International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) is a major international event. It seeks to promote the exchange of information concerning the foundations of digital games, technology used to develop digital games, and the study of digital games and their design, broadly construed. The goal of the conference is the advancement of the study of digital games, including but not limited to new game technologies, critical analysis, innovative designs, theories on play, empirical studies, and data analysis.
FDG 2018 will include presentations of peer-reviewed papers (with rebuttal process), invited talks by high-profile industry and academic leaders, panels, workshops, and posters. The conference will also host a game competition, tech demo session, and a doctoral consortium. This year’s FDG conference will nominate two papers with honorable mention and one best paper from each track.
IMPORTANT DATES
FDG 2018 will accept communications in the form of full papers, short papers, workshops, posters, panels, games and demos. Full papers, short papers, and posters will appear in ACM’s digital library and will also be reachable from the conference website. High quality submissions are expected and will be rigorously reviewed for their technical merit, significance, clarity and relevance to the advancement of digital game research.
The date for the conference is 7-10 August 2018, with the following key dates:
Workshop proposals:
Submissions: February 12, 2018
Notifications: February 26, 2018
Full and short papers:
Submissions: March 12, 2018
Notifications: April 15, 2018
Rebuttal due: April 30, 2018
Final notification: May 7, 2018
Panels:
Submissions: May 7, 2018
Notifications: May 21, 2018
Doctoral Consortium:
Submissions: May 7, 2018
Notifications: May 21, 2018
Posters:
Submissions: May 14, 2018
Notifications: June 4, 2018
Games and demos:
Submissions: June 11, 2018
Notifications: June 25, 2018
VISION FOR THE CONFERENCE
The guiding vision for the conference is Creating Games from the Player and for the Player. The role of the player has evolved from being viewed as a mere consumer to a participant holding a key role within the game design, creation, and development processes. Such participation may be direct, e.g. as an involved party in pre-deployment testing and through active roles in support forums, or indirect through the continuous data collection that is becoming increasingly important post-deployment.
With this theme in mind, we would like to promote and expand cutting-edge research, involving theoretical and empirical studies from a wide variety of backgrounds, around the following topics: modeling and understanding the player, user experience research, player driven and data-driven content design and generation, mixed- initiative authoring, the role of the player in the on-line communities, designing for and participating in e- sports events, as well as gender and cultural aspects of digital games.
PAPERS
We invite research contributions in the form of a full paper of up to 10 pages in length or as short paper of up to 6 pages in length. We invite contributions from any discipline, from computer science, communication studies, learning sciences, and psychology to the visual arts, humanities, public policy, and architecture. When submitting authors are requested to select one the following tracks that fits most closely with their submission:
Artificial and Computational Intelligence for Games
This tracks focuses on the many applications of computational and artificial intelligence to the playing, design, development, improvement, and testing of video games. Topics include general game-playing AI, procedural and player-driven content generation, mixed-initiative authoring tools, computational narrative, believable agents, and AI assisted game design. Authors are encouraged to highlight how their work contributes to the expansion of the game research field.
Computer-Human Interaction and Player Experience
This track focuses on the exploration of different ways for designing and implementing interaction between the player and the game, as well as on the experiences derived from those interactions. This track will consider qualitative and quantitative experimental studies. Topics include persuasive games, augmented reality, virtual reality, novel controllers, player psychology, user research, and player psychology.
Player Modeling and Visualization
This track aims for studies and work centered on the representation of the player and the gameplay, as well as its later analysis and visual representation. Topics include game patterns discovery and analysis, player profiling, gameplay visualization, spatial and social analysis in games, player modeling, and behavior prediction.
Analysis of Game Design and Development
This track encourages the analysis, critical discussion, and proposal of frameworks for designing, developing, and evaluating digital games. This includes the understanding of existing mechanics, dynamics, software development processes, and socio-cultural aspects in which games are developed. It also encourages the development of taxonomies related to game genres, patterns, mechanics, or game characteristics that provide better understanding of games as playful artifacts.
Purposeful and Serious Games
This track calls for papers showing results on the design, creation, and application of innovative games whose primary goals are not entertainment. Authors are encouraged to highlight the importance of the target problem that the game is addressing, as well as to present results from quantitative or qualitative studies that effectively analyze the impact of the developed game. Sample topics include games for education, gender equality, visibilization and awareness of social problems, healthcare, and training.
Game Studies and Analyses
This track encompasses all the works regarding the study of games, and the impact of playing them in the culture and the society. Following this year’s vision for the conference, we welcome analyses, ethnographic studies, and theoretical papers from anthropology, sociology, and psychology, that focus on the role of the player in history, society, and culture. Topics include the role of the player in on-line communities, e-sports, gender, politics, religion, as well as cultural aspects of life in digital games.
Each track will nominate two papers for honorable mention. The conference attendees will vote for the best paper award among the honorable mention papers. The best paper and the remaining honorable mention papers will receive recognition during the gala dinner event.
WORKSHOPS
The conference workshops are full-day and half-day sessions focused on emerging game-related topics. Concise formal workshop proposals should be submitted, so that the chosen ones will be established as sessions within the conference program.
PANELS
Panel submissions should provide a list of speakers relevant to an interesting topic. We encourage both debate-style panels and emerging-area style panels that consolidate and explain recent work on a subject of interest to the FDG community.
POSTERS, GAMES, AND DEMOS
Work in progress and ongoing promising research will be submitted and presented as posters during the conference, in relation to one of the tracks specified for the full/short paper submission.
Games and Demos encourages submissions of technical demos and early game material, tools and techniques created for games, promoting an environment to exchange impressions, give feedback, and get in touch with the international emerging community of game developers and young scholars.
DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM
PhD students are invited to apply to the Doctoral Consortium, a forum for PhD students to get early feedback on their research, and to share impressions and goals with fellow students and researchers.