Download here the whole Call for Papers as PDF.

Submission Types

• Full Technical Papers (10-14 pages)
• Short Technical Papers (4-8 pages)
• Poster Papers (max. 4 pages)
• Demonstrations / Interactive Installations (max. 4 pages)
• Industry Full/Short Papers, Posters, Demonstrations (same page restrictions as above)
• Tutorial / Workshop submissions (max. 4 pages)
• Doctoral Consortium submissions (max. 4 pages)

Submissions must be in Springer LNCS format. All submissions will be reviewed by the conference’s international program committee. Accepted papers will be published as technical papers, poster papers, demo papers or extended abstracts. Authors might be asked by the program committee to resubmit their paper in a different category. Extended versions of selected papers will be invited for a special issue of the “Entertainment Computing” journal.

Important Dates

March 10^th, 2012 Workshop proposal submission
April 1^st, 2012 Full/short paper submission
May 20^th, 2012 Notification for full/short papers
May 30^th, 2012 Poster/demo/installation/doctoral consortium submission
June 15^th, 2012 Notification for posters/demos/installations/doctoral consortium
June 22^nd, 2012 Camera ready submission (all submission types)
Sep. 26^th to 29^th, 2012 Conference: University Bremen, Germany

Topics

We invite authors to submit original papers, posters or demos in all areas of Entertainment Computing including (but not limited to):

Technologies for Entertainment Computing

• Computer Graphics
• Digital Audio
• Human Machine Interfaces
• Artificial Intelligence
• Integrated Development
• Computer, Video, Console and Internet Games

Design and Creative Environment

• Game Design
• Interactive Sound
• Graphic Design
• Art and Novel Media
• New Genres of Entertainment Technology

Advanced Applications and Platforms

• Augmented, Virtual or Mixed Reality
• Ubiquitous / Pervasive Entertainment
• Entertainment and Ambiant Intelligence
• Robots and Cyberpets
• Mobile Entertainment
• Self-Reflecting Entertainment Computing

Application Domains of Entertainment Computing

• Games / Serious Games
• Interactive TV and Cinema
• Edutainment
• Authoring and Communication
• Healthcare
• Simulation
• Digital Entertainment and Sports
• Digital Entertainment and Pleasure
• Games for Special Audiences / User Groups (elderly, childern, people with mental or physical disabilities)
• Human Computation Games

Theory

• Impact of Entertainment Technology on Users and Society
• TransMedia, Art and Entertainment
• Methodologies, Paradigms, Tools for Entertainment Applications
• Narratives / Digital Storytelling
• Social Impact, Social Networking, Sound and Music

Technical Papers

Technical papers are the main medium for presenting new research results to the community at ICEC. Submissions should describe novel unpublished work relating to one or more of the topics listed above.

Papers must be submitted in the Springer LNCS format (see below). Papers must be written in English. As to account for the expected variety in submissions to this multidisciplinary conference, paper lengths may vary within a certain limit. Short paper submissions have to be between 4 and 8 pages in length. Full paper submissions have to be between 10 and 14 pages in length. In any case, reviewers will be instructed to judge the contribution of a paper relative to its length. Typical contributions presenting significant research advances/results should be around 12 pages in length (Full Technical Papers). Contributions presenting more focused approaches/results should be around 6 pages in length (Short Technical Papers). Papers with exceeding length relative to their contribution will be rejected. All papers will be reviewed by the ICEC 2012 program committee. Accepted papers will be divided into two categories, long presentations and short presentations. The committee may accept papers conditionally or for a different category. Authors may be asked to either shorten or lengthen their paper accordingly. Authors may also include a video (optional) in their submission. Video files should be at most 50MB in size. See the general submission information for more details about preparing your submission.

Posters

Posters provide an interactive forum in which authors can present work to conference attendees during special poster sessions. Posters provide an opportunity to describe new work or work that is still in progress and will be more lightly reviewed than papers. A poster submission should be in the form of a four-page paper in Springer LNCS format, describing the research problem, contribution, and value to ICEC attendees, submitted as a PDF file. Authors may also include a video (optional). Video files should be at most 50MB in size. See the general submission information for more details about preparing your submission. Posters will be displayed on cork boards during specific sessions. We expect to be able to accommodate posters of up to 3 feet by 4 feet (portrait format), so we suggest using that size or smaller. Additional details concerning the poster format will be made available following author notification.

Demonstrations and Interactive Installations

Peer-reviewed demonstrations show early implementations of novel, interesting, and important entertainment computing concepts or systems, or can serve to showcase commercial products not previously described in the research literature. At the ICEC, demonstrations also encompass interactive works of art or installations of interest to the entertainment computing community. Demonstrations should be brief, so that they can be shown repeatedly. We particularly encourage demonstrations with which attendees can interact. A demonstration or installation submission consists of: 1) an extended abstract that should be no more than four Springer-format pages in length, 2) an accompanying video which should be at most 50MB in size, and 3) a supplement document with a list of a) technical requirements including electrical and connectivity needs and b) space requirements including display and footprint needs. By default, demos will have a table, chairs and internet connection available. By their nature, interactive installations are intended for larger, potentially public spaces. We will try to accommodate for the needs of these types of installations, but please include a minimal set-up so that we know the range of requirements that we will need to meet. Successful demonstration/installation submissions will be contacted by the chair to confirm the availability of the requested resources. The abstract, digital video and requirements supplement must be submitted electronically.

Industry Papers / Posters / Demonstrations

Industry papers, posters, and demonstrations are intended to increase the knowledge transfer between academia and industry in entertainment computing. While regular contributions are mainly reviewed for their scientific novelty and contribution, industry papers should focus more on practical solutions and results that are of immediate interest to the industry or especially facilitate communication between industry and academia. Possible examples are (but are not limited to):

• Novel and interesting applications (both commercial and non-profit)
• New frameworks, tools, or libraries
• Business models (especially for serious games)
• Development best practices
• Novel input devices

Industry contributions should follow the same guidelines as regular contributions in terms of layout, pages, additional material etc. (see above). We specifically invite industry members to consider submitting a poster or demo to present live working systems.
If you work in the industry and would like to make a submission, but you are not used to working with scientific paper templates and publication procedures, please do not hesitate to contact us for assistance.

Tutorials / Workshops

We invite proposals for workshops that will be held in conjunction with ICEC 2012. We invite proposals in all areas of entertainment computing (see conference topics listed above) and particularly welcome proposals that will focus on and promote discussion on new and emerging trends. Workshop proposals are restricted to four pages in length (in the Springer LNCS format) and must include the following information:

• Contact information (name, affiliation, address, phone number/fax, and email) of the workshop organizer(s)
• Relevant CV information of the workshop leader(s)
• Workshop title
• Workshop objective
• Background/relevance of workshop topic
• Expected workshop outcomes (publications, activates, “take-home” skills development, etc.)
• Names of potential workshop participants and expected number of participants
• Workshop due dates (schedule of submission and review of submitted material for your workshop)

Workshops can be scheduled for either half a day or a full day (please indicate your choice). Please submit your workshop proposal via the electronic conference system.

Doctoral Consortium

The ICEC 2012 Doctoral Consortium provides an opportunity for doctoral students to explore and develop their research interests in an interdisciplinary workshop, under the guidance of a panel of distinguished researchers. We invite students who feel they would benefit from this kind of feedback on their dissertation work to apply for this unique opportunity to share their work with students in a similar situation as well as senior researchers in the field. The strongest candidates will be those who have a clear idea and an area, and have made some progress, but who are not so far along that they can no longer make changes. Also, as well as stating how you will gain from acceptance, both you and your advisor should be clear on what you can contribute to the Doctoral Consortium.
The Consortium has the following objectives:

• Provide a supportive setting for feedback on students’ current research and guidance on future research directions
• Offer each student comments and fresh perspectives on their work from researchers and students outside their own institution
• Promote the development of a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research
• Contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers and conference events

Current graduate students pursuing a PhD project who would benefit from detailed workshop discussions of their doctoral research should submit a single PDF file consisting of:

1. A 4-page extended abstract of your thesis work in Springer LNCSformat. Clearly specifying:

• Originality of the work with respect to current concepts and techniques
• Importance of the work with respect to fundamental issues and themes in entertainment computing
• Results to date and their validity
• Contribution of the work (expected and/or achieved) to entertainment computing

2. Your CV
3. A one-paragraph statement of expected benefits of participation for both yourself and the other consortium participants (i.e., what will you contribute as well as gain).

Submission Guidelines

Papers and abstracts should be submitted through the submission web site in PDF format. All materials will be reviewed and processed electronically. The information about the work and a contact author’s email address, mailing address, and phone number must be submitted through the submission website by the deadline (see above). Submissions should not be anonymized for review. Movies or other materials can also be submitted through the submission web site. The movies must not exceed 50 megabytes in size. Any additional materials must also be received by the deadline. All submissions will be reviewed by the ICEC 2012 program committee.

Get your SuperNews here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2080114/ARVEL%20SuperNews%20Fall%202011.pdf

http://www.virtual-worlds.net/vw2012/

Dear colleagues,

We are delighted to announce and call for papers for the Third International Conference on Virtual Worlds (VW’2012) which will be held from July 3 to 5, 2012 in Paris (La Défense).

Background

A Virtual World can be defined as a computer-simulated environment with its own physical and biological laws, populated by dynamic interacting entities such as artificial creatures and human avatars. Whereas Virtual Reality largely focuses on the design of 3D immersive spaces, and Artificial Life on the modeling and study of life-like systems, Virtual Worlds embrace both dimensions by synthesizing an entire digital universe. Their design and realization requires competency in various fields from Virtual Reality and Physics to Artificial Life and Ecology, Computer Graphics, High Performance Computing, and more.

Virtual Worlds have many applications in 3D simulation, computer games and online business. However, the approach is still broader and more fundamental. It also addresses the crucial problem of elucidating the constitutive principles by which large numbers of interacting elements can self-organize and produce emergent phenomena as they are observed in the natural world. Therefore the study of Virtual Worlds is particularly concerned with the formal basis of synthetic universes and offers a promising new way to contribute to the understanding of Nature and of complex systems in general.

Subjects

Topics of interest for the conference include, but are not limited to:

Virtual World applications

-           Video games and entertainment

-           Educational, medical and business solutions

-           Virtual economies

-           Social and philosophical implications

-           Virtual Worlds and Ecology

Virtual World technologies

-           High performance and low latency solutions

Virtual and Augmented Reality

-           “Avatarization”

-           Human-machine interfaces

Virtual World fundamentals

-           Artificial physics and chemistries

-           Complex systems, emergence, self-organization

Artificial Life

-           Artificial life and ecosystems

-           Evolution, co-evolution and adaptation

-           Collective intelligence, cooperation, communication

Artificial creatures

-           Avatars

-           Virtual creatures

-           Intelligent agents

-           Conversational agents

Submissions

The Program Committee of VW’2012 is looking forward to high quality papers on substantial, original, and unpublished research.

Full papers may be submitted electronically from 16 October 2011 to 16 January 2012 via the conference website.

All submitted work will be assigned for double blind peer review. Authors of accepted papers will be asked to register to the conference and present their work.

Papers must be submitted in LNCS format and be up to 10 pages in length including abstract, figures and references. Formatting instructions are available at :  http://www.springer.com/lncs

Short papers (4 pages including abstract, figures and references) can also be submitted and selected ones will be presented as posters during demos session.

Artistic and technical demos are also welcome and can be submitted by contacting alainlioret@gmail.com before 12 December 2011.

Final demos has to be set up before 05 May 2012.

Important Dates

Paper submission deadline:               16 January 2012

Notification of acceptance :                05 March 2012

Early registration before :                   15 March 2012

Final paper deadline:                          05 April 2012

Conference days :                              03 July to 05 July 2012

Demos and Posters

Short Paper submission deadline:     16 January 2012

Notification of acceptance :                05 March 2012

Early registration before :                   15 March 2012

Final poster and demo deadline:        05 April 2012

We look forward to welcoming you at the conference!

Steering Committee

- Alain Lioret,  Université Paris 8 (Chairman)

Contact : alainlioret@gmail.com

- Jean-Claude Heudin , Institut International du Multimédia (Co-chairman)

Contact : jean-claude.heudin@devinci.fr

- Stefan Bornhofen, EISTI (Co-chairman)

Contact : sb@eisti.fr

- Jean-Claude Torrel, Institut International du Multimédia (Co-chairman)

Contact : jean-claude.torrel@devinci.fr

Provisional Program Committee

Bruce Damer, DigitalSpace, USA

Jeffrey Ventrella, CDM, Vancouver, Canada

Sébastien Barot, Bioemco,  France

Evelyne Lutton, INRIA, France

Emmanuel Cayla, ESTP, France

Kevin Korb, Monash, Australia

Marc Métivier, Univ. Paris Descartes, France

Tom Barbalet, BIOTA, USA

Frederic Fol Leymarie , University of London, GB

Pierre Berger, Paris ACM Siggraph, France

Penousal Machado, University of Coimbra, Portugal

Jon Mc Cormack, Monash, Australia

Maciej Komosinski, Poznan University, Poland

Mathew Lewis, Ohio State University, USA

Robyn Taylor, Alberta, Canada

Simon Richir, Ensam Angers, France

Marc Ebner, Univ. Tübingen, Germany

Gerald de Jong, Darwin @Home, USA

Joseph Nechvatal,  BIOTA, France

Alan Dorin, Monash, Australia

Daniel Thalmann, EPFL, Suisse

Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, Miralab, Suisse

Tatsuo Unemi, Tokyo, Japan

Leonel Moura, Portugal

Joseph Nechvatal, School of Visual Arts, USA

Broadening this out, there is some interest now in applying ideas from gaming into different areas of life – promoting student engagement, solving social problems, or even applying gaming to *everything*. Indeed, I’ll be borrowing some of these ideas this summer for an UNversity summer school I’m trying to support. But when everything becomes a game, what will keep folk playing all these games? In a global scale, how will games to improve the world compete against games for scoring points for brand merchandise?

I guess that people will inevitably pick and choose games and entertainments as they do now – just from an increasing, and increasingly broad, range of alternatives. I wonder if a world full of extrinsic (externally awarded) rewards for every action could impede the development of individual intrinsic reward mechanisms – peoples ability to set their own goals and develop their own internal reward systems for jobs well done.

As an incentive to think about this, I’ll be awarding 10 points for every comment received (spam and one-liners apart).

It would be great to be proven wrong though…

Sony’s EyePet (no, it’s not an affirmative statement from the north of England) is a virtual pet game for the PS3 due out in October this year. This extends the previous EyeToy offerings in allowing a much richer set of augmented reality interactions with your virtual pet. I saw this in action last week when I was along at the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, and it was easily the most impressive thing on show (having said that, there were no live demo’s of anything Natal related!).

You can see the official demo below, and from what I saw at EIEF and from other comments and reports its a pretty accurate picture of EyePet in play – what you see here is what you get in the game:

For what it’s worth, I also grabbed a little video of my own – you can see the action on the big screen at the back, while some kids play around with the pet in the foreground. My own video is here on Flickr. This game is almost sure to be a hit – and I expect a lot more interest in console AR on the back of this. Actually, I suspect that Sony London already have some kind of follow-up in the works…

ARhrrrr is an augmented reality shooter for mobile camera-phones. The phone provides a window into a 3d town overrun with zombies. Point the camera at our special game map to mix virtual and real world content.

With videos of the game in play, it is quite something to see:

Then a few weeks ago I got to see Wikitude running on an Android phone. This very neat app overlays local points of interest (and distance) on the camera view as you hold the phone up and point it around you. Practical and useful Augmented Reality, running on a phone now, not some distant point in the future.

Yesterday, via OLDaily, I learned on Tom Hoffman’s blog about an AR app for the iPhone that does something similar for the New York subway system – so you’ll always be able to find the nearest stations, and know what lines they server.

Then today I found that folks with a Nokia N95 (or N96, N82, N73, …) can also have fun with AR – as my current phone is an N95 thats good news to me. Sergey Ten at Cellagames has created a few free to download games including a Desktop Defence game.

As soon as I get my phone back (long story) I’ll be giving this a try.

And I have to also include a link to the Handheld Augmented Reality lab in Graz.

The learninggames angle? This technology has a lot, an awful lot, of potential uses in a huge range of educational projects, games and activities. I’ll leave exactly what to your imagination.

no significant relationship between violent video game exposure and school shooting incidents has been demonstrated in the existing scientific literature, and that data from real world violence call such a link into question.

Paper here, and discussion on GamePolitics.com.

In his spare time Dr. Kourosh Dini composes digital music and performs in Second Life via his avatar Kourosh Eusebio. In his day-job, he is a psychiatrist with a keen interest in computer games and computer gamers. His new book Video Game Play and Addiction reviews the effects of video game play. It has balanced coverage – with a lot of detail on the potential benefits of game play, and a correspondingly detailed review of problem gaming:

“Games have lots of benefits, which unfortunately, parents aren’t always aware of when the only games they’re exposed to are the controversial violent ones targeted to more mature players,” says Dr. Dini. “Age appropriate multi-player video games can allow children to learn how other people think – a key aspect of empathy. Games can also help a child become more comfortable with new and ever progressing technology.”

…… Nonetheless, ‘problematic’ game play is covered here in great detail as Dr. Dini provides a comprehensive review of the warning signs, causes and consequences of such behavior. “To be sure, there are those who play problematically. Learning how to tell the difference can be critical toward promoting healthy development.”

It started pre-Christmas, reading in the Grauniad about how pink is being used more than ever in marketing and packaging for toys for girls. Becky Francis, an educational researcher at Roehampton reviews the gender divide in toys and notes:

“The very clear message seems to be that boys should be making things, using their hands and solving problems, and girls should be caring and nurturing,” she says. “It is likely that many of the boys in the study sleep with a teddy, but this was not noted by parents as a favourite toy.”

A similar article appeared a few days ago in the Torygraph bemoaning the ‘Pink Plague’.

I recall a genuine feeling when I was an undergraduate that the strictly defined gender roles were being eroded and greater equality between the genders was being reached, so its a bit of a shock to realise that in the world of toys the differences are more entrenched than ever. For example, buying what I considered a very gender neutral toy a few years ago – a basic Lego set – I noticed that the store had decided it was a ‘boys toy’ and it had been stickered as such.

JeongMee Yoon has been making a pictorial archive of the blue/pink divide, and it makes interesting viewing here. There is some scientific work trying to determine the origin of this preference, although I think this has some way to go and is open to criticism currently – such as for studying the colour preferences of adults who are presumably already affected by cultural factors (Hurlbert & Ying, 2007) or for failing to take account of the history of colour/gender ties. As JeongMee notes:

Pink was once a color associated with masculinity, considered to be a watered down red and held the power associated with that color. In 1914, The Sunday Sentinel, an American newspaper, advised mothers to “use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention.” The change to pink for girls and blue for boys happened in America and elsewhere only after World War II.

Indeed, had pink always had the same associations it now holds, perhaps Fenton Tower in the Scottish Borders might not have seemed particularly fearsome because of its girlish hue…

But what has this got to do with computer games and computer science? More below…

The gender divide in Computer Science has long been an issue of some concern. While the world’s first even computer programmer may have been a woman, and the current president of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery – the largest professional/academic computing society worldwide)  may be female, but the career path does not currently attract good numbers into university.

Many of my colleagues have pointed out to me that female recruitment into CS degrees is actually behind what it was 20 years ago. We are somehow going backwards, not forwards. (Although there are some pockets of progress… see, for example, Joanna Goode’s NSF work on bringing the under-represented into CS – some details and wider discussion here.)

When it comes to computer games, however, there has been dramatic changes. 20 years ago the general perception (and no doubt figures existed to back this up) that computer games were almost exclusively a ‘boys’ thing. Today, without doubt, games have moved beyond this narrow demographic – with a wide range of titles aimed at all children and at families. Nintendo deserve special praise for their impact in this area – the ‘Touch Generations’ titles on the DS and Wii in particular. And aside from making the DS also available in Pink (from a large range of colours to suit all tastes), they have achieved this by making games interesting to as wide an audience as possible – not by trying overhard to make ‘games for girls’.

But where Nintendo have shown that girls will play computer games…

… the more marketing led have been busy producing wide ranges of games for girls. In any colour as long as it is pink. Gender stereotypical role enforcement now available on DS. Making games for girls is not a bad thing as such – but the ‘make it pink, make it girly’ approach is selling short, IMHO. Nintendo show that games can be made that appeal to all children, or to entire families – but I fear that over time the marketers will win. The games shop of the future may well have the blue shelves on the right, the pink shelves on the left.