Dear Colleagues,
I’m delighted to announce that the Experimental AI in Games workshop is returning to AIIDE this year for a third time. As in previous years, EXAG will be a welcoming and friendly workshop aiming to showcase some of your freshest ideas, newest prototypes, most experimental work and bold visions for what games can be, should be, might be or will be.
I’ve included the Call for Papers below. We’re also taking submission for tutorials and demonstrations of software – these have a later deadline, also detailed below.
All of this information, and more, can be found on our website: http://www.exag.org
We can’t wait to receive your submissions, and look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!
All the best,
Mike, Antonios, Alex
EXAG 2016 Organisers
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CALL FOR PAPERS
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The 3rd Experimental AI in Games Workshop
http://www.exag.org
October 8-9, 2016
Located at AIIDE 2016 in San Francisco, California
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DEADLINES
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Paper Submission deadline: June 27
Acceptance notification: July 20
Camera-ready deadline: July 29
Demos and Tutorials Submission Deadline: September 1
Demos and Tutorials Notification: September 14
EXAG 2016: October 8-9
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ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
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The Experimental AI in Games (EXAG) workshop aims to foster experimentation at the interface of AI (broadly construed) and all aspects of games and game development. EXAG solicits submissions in three tracks:
+ Papers arguing for new roles of AI in games and game development or presenting prototypes of experimental applications of AI in games and game creation
+ Tutorials – short talks that introduce new ideas, teach people to use new tools or libraries, or describe useful resources
+ Demonstrations of innovative tools, games, art or other creations in and around experimental AI and games
We have much more planned for EXAG besides talks, including our traditional games night, a show and tell demo session, a revamped game jam, and possibly some special game events!
EXAG will be held on October 8-9, 2016 and be co-located with the Artificial Intelligence in Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE) 2016 conference located in San Francisco, CA, USA.
To support experimentation, EXAG will include a number of socializing, demonstration, and (optional) coding/hackathon events. DAGGER is an evening event where local game developers and AIIDE attendees meet up to play and share their games and demos with each other, eat some food, and get to know each other. EXAG is running a demonstration track alongside its main track for games or tools which may be of interest to EXAG attendees. Demonstration submissions will be considered for inclusion in both DAGGER and the main event itself, schedule permitting. If you are submitting a paper to the main track which includes or refers to a game or tool that you wish to demonstrate, you should still submit a separate demonstration abstract of roughly 500 words, at least 1 image of the system, and a link to the game/system.
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WORKSHOP TOPICS
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EXAG 3 will touch on a variety of experimental topics. Workshop topics include, but are by no means limited to:
+ Full or prototype games demonstrating novel or experimental applications of AI
+ Procedural content generation in game development or as a game mechanic
+ New applications of AI to game design problems or game mechanics
+ Automated game generation
+ Computational Creativity in Games
+ Formal and computational models of game design and aesthetics
+ AI-powered tools for expert and novice game design
+ New approaches to traditional game AI problems, e.g. agents, planning, narrative
+ Fringes and beyond – showing us new ideas in and around gaming that might influence or improve our research
+ Oops! Research (games, experiments, theories) that didn’t quite work and an explanation about the failure and lessons learned
We welcome submissions that push our understanding how AI can be applied to or influence game design. The above topics are suggestive only!
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SUBMIT!
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EXAG 3 will be accepting three types of submissions, all in AAAI format.
Submission of papers takes place via our EasyChair site:
https://easychair.org/conferen
Submissions of Tutorials and Demonstrations is done via a Google Form:
http://tinyurl.com/exag16demot
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SUBMISSION TYPES
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<Papers>
Papers of up to 6 pages of text and unlimited space for references and acknowledgments. Papers may address any of the workshop topics (or other topics authors consider of interest to the community). Papers should support new topics through arguments spanning prototypes, thought experiments, or other forms of evidence.
Not sure a topic is relevant? Reach out to the organizers and we can help!
Are you an indie or games industry person and not sure? Contact us and we’ll help sort things out!
Papers will be presented at the workshop; presentation lengths will depend on the total number of acceptances. Reviewing will use a double blind process: reviewers will not know the identity of authors and authors will not know the identity of reviewers.
<Tool Tutorials>
Tutorials will allow for a presentation to demonstrate the use of a specific tool, technique, system. Tutorials can also introduce an interesting subculture or discipline from around games or outside it that may be relevant or inspiring to the EXAG audience. Submissions should be an abstract of up to 500 words, including at least 1 image if presenting software and a link to a website for others to access that tool/technique/system.
Tutorial presentations will be managed after submissions are received, but will likely receive a talk-length slot (25 mins) with optional breakout time for hands-on tutoring where appropriate. Tutorial submissions do not need to be anonymised, but can be if the authors wish.
<Game/Experiment Demos>
Demos will emphasize a presentation of a game or experimental research system (procedural content generator, AI director, interactive dance installation, etc.). Submission requirements mirror tutorials: up to 500 words in an abstract, at least one image of what will be demonstrated, and a link for web access to that thing (if possible).
Demo presentations will be allocated time based on the total number of acceptances (expect at least 10 minutes) and an (optional) showcase session where workshop participants can try the demos. Demos are perfect to show research systems, innovative game designs (even those that aren’t quite mature or don’t yet work!), or novel experiments at the intersection of AI and games (interpreted as broadly as you want, honestly).
Demo submissions do not need to be anonymised, but can be if the authors wish.
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ORGANISATION
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Antonios Liapis – @SentientDesigns – an.liapis@gmail.com
Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta
Mike Cook – @mtrc – mike@gamesbyangelina.org
Games Academy, Falmouth University
Alex Zook – @zookae – zook.ae@gmail.com
Blizzard Entertainment
Program Committee announcements coming soon:
http://www.exag.org
