CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
Exploiting Players? Critical Reflections on Participation in Game Development
Workshop @CHI PLAY 2017 in Amsterdam (http://chiplay.acm.org/)
Website: https://exploitingplayers.word
Submission Deadline: July 15, 2017
Workshop day: October 15, 2017
*SCOPE*
Player involvement in the process of game development has become a de-facto standard in both industry and academia. Participation is intended to empower players, while helping designers create better games. However, participation may also introduces uncertainty regarding players’ and designers’ relative roles, and creates new concerns over the exploitation of players, marginalization of designers, and the quality of game design outcomes.
In this workshop, we invite the games research community to critically reflect on methods used to facilitate player participation, with the goal of establishing dialogue around meaningful and constructive player involvement.
*CALL FOR PARTICIPATION*
The objective of the workshop is to *bring together researchers and practitioners* who work with end-users in various capacities to critically reflect on and refine research approaches to Participatory Design, User-Centred Design, Games User Research, and Game Analytics.
We invite participation from participants in industry and academia with an interest in the above fields. Papers should focus on participants’ personal, practical experiences with game development and methodologies that involve end-users, and include examples of instances where player involvement led to discouraging or surprising results.
More specifically, submissions should address the following overarching questions:
– What are challenges for player involvement from the perspectives of players?
– What are challenges for player involvement from the perspectives of game developers and researchers?
– What are limitations and opportunities regarding currently available player research methods?
Accepted papers will be presented at the workshop and shared on the workshop’s website. It is planned to involve all workshop participants in *joint publication of a survey paper* exploring challenges and outlining future opportunities for the involvement of players in game development.
*IMPORTANT DATES*
July 15, 2017: Submissions deadline
July, 31 2017: Acceptance notifications
October 15, 2017: Workshop
*SUBMISSION*
Submissions are *due on July 15th* (5 PM PST) and should be submitted via EasyChair:
https://easychair.org/conferen
Submitted papers should be no more than four pages in length, and use the SIGCHI Extended Abstracts format, available at:
http://www.sigchi.org/publicat
https://github.com/sigchi
*ORGANISERS*
Kathrin Gerling (University of Lincoln)
Guenter Wallner (University of Applied Arts Vienna)
Pejman Mirza-Babaei (University of Ontario, Institute of Technology)
John Shearer (University of Lincoln)
Conor Linehan (University College Cork)
Kieran Hicks (University of Lincoln and Hitpoint Games)