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.

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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