PerGames 2006

The 3rd International Workshop on Pervasive Gaming Applications will be held in Dublin, Ireland, on May 7th 2006 in conjunction with 4th Intl. Conf. on Pervasive Computing (PERVASIVE 2006).
Full call for papers below.

********

In addition to printed and online proceedings, selected paper submissions will be published in the prestigious ACM Journal COMPUTERS IN ENTERTAINMENT (CIE) – www.acm.org/pubs/cie.html

The PerGames series of international workshops addresses the design and technical issues of bringing computer entertainment back to the real world
with pervasive games. Previous PerGames events were held in Vienna (2004)and Munich (2005) and attracted researchers and practitioners from all over the world.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

* Mixed reality installations

* Innovative input devices (Eye-Toys, Magic Wands etc)

* Augmented tabletop games

* The physical world as a game board

* Social experience vs technological experience

* Emerging game concepts

* Augmented reality games

* (Mis-)use of enabling technologies

* Mobile computing entertainment

* Experience design for heterogeneous devices

* Business cases for pervasive computing games

* Social implications and social protocols

* Privacy and awareness issues

* Mixing games and serious applications

Participants will be invited based on a research paper or a live demonstration submitted prior to the workshop.

Research Papers

Each research paper should be six to ten pages and should address a relevant topic for pervasive gaming applications. Participants will be chosen on the quality/ originality of their submission.

Live Demonstrations

Given the success of the live demonstrations at previous PerGames events, we now explicitly call for live demonstrations as an alternative category of contribution to the research papers. Depending on the nature of submitted live demonstrations we aim at a ratio of 3:1 between paper presentations and live demonstrations. Please contact the organizers for discussing your live demonstration proposal.

Student Participation

Graduate students are also invited to participate in the workshop. Students
are not required (but allowed) to submit a research paper. Students should,
however, submit a one-page-paper outlining their research interests and
their motivation to participate in the workshop.

Please visit the workshop site http://www.pergames.de for information about participation and submitting research papers.

Submission deadline is February 16, 2005.

Workshop Website: http://www.pergames.de

Pervasive Conference Website: http://www.pervasive2006.org

Organizers:

Carsten Magerkurth: Fraunhofer IPSI, AMBIENTE division, Darmstadt, Germany

Matthew Chalmers: Dep. of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Scotland

Staffan Björk: The Interactive Institute: GAME Studio, Göteborg, Sweden

Léonie Schäfer: EUC – DG Information Society & Media, Brussels, Belgium

To contact the organizers, please send email to: 2006@pergames.de

PerGames 2006

3rd International Workshop on Pervasive Gaming Applications held in Dublin, Ireland, on May 7th 2006 in conjunction with 4th Intl. Conf. on Pervasive Computing (PERVASIVE 2006.

http://www.pergames.de

PerGames 2006

The 3rd International Workshop on Pervasive Gaming Applications will be held in Dublin, Ireland, on May 7th 2006 in conjunction with 4th Intl. Conf. on Pervasive Computing (PERVASIVE 2006).
Full call for papers below.

********

In addition to printed and online proceedings, selected paper submissions will be published in the prestigious ACM Journal COMPUTERS IN ENTERTAINMENT (CIE) – www.acm.org/pubs/cie.html

The PerGames series of international workshops addresses the design and technical issues of bringing computer entertainment back to the real world
with pervasive games. Previous PerGames events were held in Vienna (2004)and Munich (2005) and attracted researchers and practitioners from all over the world.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

* Mixed reality installations

* Innovative input devices (Eye-Toys, Magic Wands etc)

* Augmented tabletop games

* The physical world as a game board

* Social experience vs technological experience

* Emerging game concepts

* Augmented reality games

* (Mis-)use of enabling technologies

* Mobile computing entertainment

* Experience design for heterogeneous devices

* Business cases for pervasive computing games

* Social implications and social protocols

* Privacy and awareness issues

* Mixing games and serious applications

Participants will be invited based on a research paper or a live demonstration submitted prior to the workshop.

Research Papers

Each research paper should be six to ten pages and should address a relevant topic for pervasive gaming applications. Participants will be chosen on the quality/ originality of their submission.

Live Demonstrations

Given the success of the live demonstrations at previous PerGames events, we now explicitly call for live demonstrations as an alternative category of contribution to the research papers. Depending on the nature of submitted live demonstrations we aim at a ratio of 3:1 between paper presentations and live demonstrations. Please contact the organizers for discussing your live demonstration proposal.

Student Participation

Graduate students are also invited to participate in the workshop. Students
are not required (but allowed) to submit a research paper. Students should,
however, submit a one-page-paper outlining their research interests and
their motivation to participate in the workshop.

Please visit the workshop site http://www.pergames.de for information about participation and submitting research papers.

Submission deadline is February 16, 2005.

Workshop Website: http://www.pergames.de

Pervasive Conference Website: http://www.pervasive2006.org

Organizers:

Carsten Magerkurth: Fraunhofer IPSI, AMBIENTE division, Darmstadt, Germany

Matthew Chalmers: Dep. of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Scotland

Staffan Björk: The Interactive Institute: GAME Studio, Göteborg, Sweden

Léonie Schäfer: EUC – DG Information Society & Media, Brussels, Belgium

To contact the organizers, please send email to: 2006@pergames.de

Eirplay games today launched play.ie, a digital media entertainment portal. The portal features both web and mobile entertainment content for the Irish market.

Games are free to play and view and Peter Lynch, CEO of Eirplay, has offered a special discount to gd.ie readers. If you enter ‘ds’ after any order you get 50% off standard content and €2 off premium (e.g. a text order would be PLAYNOW 1001 ds )

Peter Lynch said today that “Play.ie responds to the demands in the local market for Irish themed Web and mobile content. We have new characters like Ogie, Propman and Penno; all based on Irish sports, events and news. Unlike other mobile portals, we have a strict policy of no subscriptions, registrations or clubs. This means that our visitors are only charged for what they ordered; there will be no weekly billing messages or annoying costly texts. The site will be updated each week and our aim is to provide an opportunity for Irish digital media designers, game developers and students to showcase their work.”

Play.ie was designed and developed by EirplayGames. It is hosted and maintained using the company’s proprietary mobile content portal technology.

More information:
Peter Lynch
EirplayGames
Digital Depot
Dublin 8

Web: www.eirplaygames.com & www.play.ie

Eirplay games today launched play.ie, a digital media entertainment portal. The portal features both web and mobile entertainment content for the Irish market.

Games are free to play and view and Peter Lynch, CEO of Eirplay, has offered a special discount to gd.ie readers. If you enter ‘ds’ after any order you get 50% off standard content and €2 off premium (e.g. a text order would be PLAYNOW 1001 ds )

Peter Lynch said today that “Play.ie responds to the demands in the local market for Irish themed Web and mobile content. We have new characters like Ogie, Propman and Penno; all based on Irish sports, events and news. Unlike other mobile portals, we have a strict policy of no subscriptions, registrations or clubs. This means that our visitors are only charged for what they ordered; there will be no weekly billing messages or annoying costly texts. The site will be updated each week and our aim is to provide an opportunity for Irish digital media designers, game developers and students to showcase their work.”

Play.ie was designed and developed by EirplayGames. It is hosted and maintained using the company’s proprietary mobile content portal technology.

More information:
Peter Lynch
EirplayGames
Digital Depot
Dublin 8

Web: www.eirplaygames.com & www.play.ie

A call for position papers is out for a workshop on Player Centered Game Design to take place in Montreal, Canada on the 23rd of April. Deadline for proposals is 15th of Dec. Full call below.

******

Videogame design is still commonly implemented by applying esoteric heuristics gathered over many years of professional experience. A recent review of game developers found very few consider the target audience during the design process, and instead design products
for their own amusement (Sykes and Patterson, 2004).

Even though in recent years user-centered design (UCD) processes have been taking shape within game companies such as Microsoft Game Studios, researchers are still breaking ground by finding novel ways to apply these methods to games during all phases of development. As with productivity software, UCD administered too late during game development will often illuminate problems that cannot be resolved, due to the excessive costs of applying changes late in the production phase.

Applying UCD early and often in the process is believed to yield the best results.

We therefore invite papers which explore the application of UCD to support the entire game design process, including: concept design, pre-production,
production and post-production. The workshop aims to deliver a practitioner’s guide to player-centered game
design, which:

– Identifies practical UCD techniques that support videogame design

– Shares practitioners hands-on experience of applying UCD to the game design process

The workshop will be limited to 12 participants. Participation is encouraged from a range of disciplines including Game Design, Computer Science, and User Research.

The main criterion is that the
paper should primarily address the use of UCD to support one or more stages of videogame design.

Please submit a three-page position paper (in pdf format) to jon.sykes@gcal.ac.uk.

Papers must be
received by 15th December 2005.

Participants will be notified of selection by 6th February 2006.

CO-CHAIRS

Jonathan Sykes, eMotion Lab, Glasgow Caledonian University

Melissa Federoff, Games User Research, Microsoft Game Studios

Venue: Montreal, Canada http://www.chi2006.org/
Dates: 23 April 2006

CHI 2006 Workshop: Player-Centered Game Design

Venue: Montreal, Canada http://www.chi2006.org/

Dates: 23 April 2006

A call for position papers is out for a workshop on Player Centered Game Design to take place in Montreal, Canada on the 23rd of April. Deadline for proposals is 15th of Dec. Full call below.

******

Videogame design is still commonly implemented by applying esoteric heuristics gathered over many years of professional experience. A recent review of game developers found very few consider the target audience during the design process, and instead design products
for their own amusement (Sykes and Patterson, 2004).

Even though in recent years user-centered design (UCD) processes have been taking shape within game companies such as Microsoft Game Studios, researchers are still breaking ground by finding novel ways to apply these methods to games during all phases of development. As with productivity software, UCD administered too late during game development will often illuminate problems that cannot be resolved, due to the excessive costs of applying changes late in the production phase.

Applying UCD early and often in the process is believed to yield the best results.

We therefore invite papers which explore the application of UCD to support the entire game design process, including: concept design, pre-production,
production and post-production. The workshop aims to deliver a practitioner’s guide to player-centered game
design, which:

– Identifies practical UCD techniques that support videogame design

– Shares practitioners hands-on experience of applying UCD to the game design process

The workshop will be limited to 12 participants. Participation is encouraged from a range of disciplines including Game Design, Computer Science, and User Research.

The main criterion is that the
paper should primarily address the use of UCD to support one or more stages of videogame design.

Please submit a three-page position paper (in pdf format) to jon.sykes@gcal.ac.uk.

Papers must be
received by 15th December 2005.

Participants will be notified of selection by 6th February 2006.

CO-CHAIRS

Jonathan Sykes, eMotion Lab, Glasgow Caledonian University

Melissa Federoff, Games User Research, Microsoft Game Studios

Venue: Montreal, Canada http://www.chi2006.org/
Dates: 23 April 2006

Forfás today published its report, Benchmarking Ireland’s Broadband Performance, which assesses Ireland’s competitiveness in terms of broadband availability, take-up, quality and choice.

For those of us in the south still struggling to get decent connections with decent speeds it is not surprising that comparatively Rep. of Ireland is still underperforming with regard to broadband. Availability is still a key issue.

Key Findings of the report are:

* Broadband Availability
At the end of Q2 2005, Ireland ranked 25th out of the 32 countries for broadband take-up. When the comparator group is limited to the 21 countries benchmarked in the 2004 study, Ireland’s position has actually deteriorated, from 18th out of 21 in 2004 to 19th out of 21 in 2005.

* Broadband Costs
The cost of entry-level DSL in Ireland has decreased significantly since the launch of services in 2002. Based on the amortised monthly costs for 1Mbit/s DSL, Ireland currently ranks 7th cheapest of 32 countries benchmarked.

* SME Broadband take-up
In terms of broadband take-up by SMEs, out of 20 EU countries included, Ireland ranks 17th out of 20 for take-up by companies with a workforce of between 10-49 employees and 19th out of 20 for take-up by companies employing 50-249 people.

* Broadband Availability Notwithstanding significant improvements in DSL availability in Ireland since its launch in 2002, DSL coverage in Ireland based, on population, stands at 72%, making it the second lowest of the EU-15 countries.

* Quality of Service (bandwidth capacity/choice of advanced products)
A broadband innovation index, used to measure quality of service (bandwidth capacity/choice of advanced products) performance across the benchmark countries, ranks Ireland 21st out of 30 countries on this important indictor.

Read the press release: http://www.forfas.ie/news.asp?page_id=361

Download the report: http://www.forfas.ie/publications/forfas051205/index.html

Forfás today published its report, Benchmarking Ireland’s Broadband Performance, which assesses Ireland’s competitiveness in terms of broadband availability, take-up, quality and choice.

For those of us in the south still struggling to get decent connections with decent speeds it is not surprising that comparatively Rep. of Ireland is still underperforming with regard to broadband. Availability is still a key issue.

Key Findings of the report are:

* Broadband Availability
At the end of Q2 2005, Ireland ranked 25th out of the 32 countries for broadband take-up. When the comparator group is limited to the 21 countries benchmarked in the 2004 study, Ireland’s position has actually deteriorated, from 18th out of 21 in 2004 to 19th out of 21 in 2005.

* Broadband Costs
The cost of entry-level DSL in Ireland has decreased significantly since the launch of services in 2002. Based on the amortised monthly costs for 1Mbit/s DSL, Ireland currently ranks 7th cheapest of 32 countries benchmarked.

* SME Broadband take-up
In terms of broadband take-up by SMEs, out of 20 EU countries included, Ireland ranks 17th out of 20 for take-up by companies with a workforce of between 10-49 employees and 19th out of 20 for take-up by companies employing 50-249 people.

* Broadband Availability Notwithstanding significant improvements in DSL availability in Ireland since its launch in 2002, DSL coverage in Ireland based, on population, stands at 72%, making it the second lowest of the EU-15 countries.

* Quality of Service (bandwidth capacity/choice of advanced products)
A broadband innovation index, used to measure quality of service (bandwidth capacity/choice of advanced products) performance across the benchmark countries, ranks Ireland 21st out of 30 countries on this important indictor.

Read the press release: http://www.forfas.ie/news.asp?page_id=361

Download the report: http://www.forfas.ie/publications/forfas051205/index.html