Theme

Inspired by the rich history of Malta which spans over 7 millennia, the theme for FDG 2020 is "Games and their Heritage". While this theme seems especially suited for academics interested in archeology and games, its topics are not limited to social sciences. For game criticism, the theme is appropriate for a reflection on ethics in video games—as well as ethics in game academia, which is becoming ever-more relevant. Games for a purpose around cultural heritage, history education etc. can be highlighted. The theme can challenge current practices in game technology and AI, focusing on ensuring replicability and the creation of persistent repositories, corpora or shared wiki-spaces. For game design and player experience, the theme motivates comparisons of past and current games in the same genre, or remakes of the same game. More broadly, "games and their heritage" is a relevant theme to incentivize surveys and meta-reviews of past work.

Paper Submissions

FDG invites authors to submit short (5-6 pages excluding references) or full papers (7-10 pages excluding references) reporting new research. Both short and full papers need to be anonymized and submitted in the ACM SIGCONF version of the ACM Master Template to a paper track. Accepted papers will be included in the proceedings under their track. When submitting, authors are requested to select one of the following tracks that fits most closely with their submission.

Game Artificial Intelligence

This track focuses on the many applications of computational and artificial intelligence to the playing, design, development, improvement, and testing of video games. Topics include general game-playing AI, procedural and player-driven content generation, mixed-initiative authoring tools, computational narrative, believable agents, and AI assisted game design.

Game Design and Development

This track focuses on research that furthers the practice of game design and development. Submissions that examine, validate, invalidate, or create game making practices, patterns, mechanics, dynamics or aesthetics are encouraged to submit. Such work includes innovative and alternative methods of design, practical examinations of implementation protocol, socio-cultural critique of game-making culture, and empirical analysis of game-making processes and more. The focus of this track is scholarly examination of game design and development, as produced through case studies, A/B testing, review of literature, comparative analysis or other such appropriate efforts.

Game Criticism and Analysis

This track calls for papers that approach the criticism and analysis of games from humanities-informed perspectives. Submissions are encouraged from scholars engaging in narrative, visual and software studies approaches to games and games criticism using methodologies such as archival research, hermeneutics, and oral history. This track will also consider critical theoretical and/or historical analysis of games, and game genres from perspectives such as (but not limited to) postcolonial theory, feminism, historicism, subaltern studies, queer theory, the environmental humanities, and psychoanalysis.

Computer-Human Interaction and Player Experience

This track focuses on the exploration of different ways for designing and implementing interaction between the player and the game, as well as on understanding the experiences derived from those interactions. This track will consider qualitative and quantitative experimental studies. Topics include, but not limited to, persuasive games, augmented reality, virtual reality, novel controllers, user research, and player psychology.
Game Analytics and Visualization

This track is suitable for all papers pertaining to aspects of game data science, analytics and game data visualization. This includes work based on player behavioral data analysis, including player modeling, churn analysis, and creating or understanding players' profiles as well as aspects of business intelligence, such as performance evaluation or workflow optimization. Papers submitted to this track should present contributions that advance the current state-of-the-art, taking into account the knowledge bases in academia and industry, of players, play behaviors, processes or performance. We encourage submissions that span methodological approaches including quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods, as well as novel contributions to methodological approaches. Examples of topics include visualization of game data, analysis of behavioral (or other) game data, advances in methodological approaches to analyze and visualize game data, as well as applying or expanding statistical methods, machine learning, including deep learning, and AI, as well as visualization algorithms used to collect or analyze game data.

Game Technology

This track is suitable for papers on game engines, frameworks, computer graphics techniques, rendering, animation, networking, novel interaction techniques (such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and alternate controller schemes) and other technical areas. Papers submitted to this track should advance our technical knowledge in creating games. Papers on analytics, visualization and artificial intelligence should be submitted to the more specific track and not this one.
Games beyond Entertainment

This track calls for papers showing results on the use of games, gaming, and game design for primary goals that are not entertainment. Topics include serious or transformational games, games with a purpose, advergames and exergames, gamification and gameful design, game-based learning and curricula, informal learning in games, and educational and other 'serious' uses of entertainment games and gaming practices. Authors are encouraged to highlight the importance of the target problem that the game is addressing, and how their design or research findings makes a contribution to the current state of research on games for a purpose.

Game Education

This track is concerned with the teaching of games, game development and design, and game-related concepts at all levels of education and training. Topics include design and development of curricula, instructional methods, teaching tools and techniques, assessment methods, learning/instructional activities, collegiate game programs, e-sports and educational program management. (Note: for research in gamified and game-based learning, please submit to Games beyond Entertainment track, unless it is work on game-based/gamified learning of game concepts).