6th Annual IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference CCNC 2009 10 - 13 January 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada

Special Session on Digital Entertainment, Networked Virtual Environment and Creative Technology


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Computer games become increasingly important; not only in entertainment but also in serious applications. Games are being used in education, training, decisions support, communication, marketing and even as art forms. Games enable people to experience environments and situations that could never be experienced in real life, because they are too dangerous, unreachable, or simply do not exist. Games can train abilities in new, effective and enjoyable ways. And games can create new social networks in which people from all over the world meet, talk, and play together.

New technology, like faster computers and graphics cards, new interface techniques, broadband connections and mobile devices, lead to new game play possibilities. But they also put a large burden on those of us who must create such games. Players get more demanding. They expect not only realistic graphics and physics but also natural behaviour of the entities that inhibit the virtual game worlds. They expect gripping storylines that are smoothly incorporated in the game play. They expect to be challenged by game play that understands the player and automatically adapts to her abilities.

This is only achievable by hard work and new research. Research in new graphics and physics techniques, research in new forms of artificial intelligence, research in human-computer interaction, research in learning and automatic scenario design, and research in the artistic aspects of games. Fortunately digital entertainment and creative technology is nowadays considered as a serious academic domain and the number of researchers studying these topics is rapidly increasing. An excellent way to advance the state-of-the-art in digital entertainment, networked virtual environment and creative technology is to have people from all these different, multi-disciplinary areas of research meet and discuss their problems and achievements. The IEEE Digital Entertainment, Networked Virtual Environment and Creative Technology Special Session is an excellent opportunity for this. The purpose of this session is to bring together academic and industry researchers, designers and computer entertainment developers and practitioners, to address and advance the research and development issues related to computer entertainment. Papers presenting original research and applications are being sought in all areas of digital entertainment, networked virtual environment and creative technology. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):
Topics areas:
* Distributed simulation and communication in multi-player games
* MUVE
* Real-time animation and computer graphics for video games
* Game console hardware and software
* Artificial intelligence in games
* Interactive physics
* Uses of GPU for non-graphical algorithms in games
* Multi-processor techniques for games
* Speech and vision processing as user input techniques
* Development tools and techniques
* Procedural art
* Sound Design and music in games
* Cinematography in games
* Game design and game genres
* Story structure (setting, plot, character, theme) in games
* Games (Casual, Serious, Mobile, Networked, Alternative Reality, Ubiquitous, Pervasive, etc.)
* Gamer culture and community; such as modding communities, LAN parties, creative gamer content and machinima
* Independent game developers
* Economics and business models in the game industry
* Game production pipelines
* Tools and Middleware

Submission Instructions
Authors are invited to submit regular technical papers or position papers. The position papers should present novel technologies at an early stage of development or share future vision. All submissions should describe original, previously unpublished research, not currently under review by another conference or journal. Manuscripts should not exceed five (5) pages in double-column IEEE format. Please submit the paper through EDAS. Formatting details can be found under Author Information on the CCNC web site.

Session Organisers
Kevin Wong (K.Wong@murdoch.edu.au) - Murdoch University, AU Seah Hock Soon, (ashsseah@ntu.edu.sg) - Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Abdennour El Rhalibi (a.elrhalibi@ljmu.ac.uk ) - Liverpool John Moores University, UK