GAME ANALYTICS WORKSHOP: CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
The first Game Analytics Workshop will be held in conjunction with AIIDE 2016 in San Francisco, California, October 8th.
The analysis of player behavior is an old stable in the design, development and research of games and the people who play them, but in recent years the technology has emerged that allows the tracking of detailed behaviors in games from entire populations of players. This has caused a surge in the data available to game developers and game researchers alike. On the academic side of the equation, incredibly detailed records of player behavior has provided researchers with a new range of possibilities for building game AI, build behavioral models or explore relationships between design and behavior. However, the data deluge has also brought new challenges along with the opportunities, notably the fundamental problem of how to derive actionable insights from large amounts of often high-dimensional and time-dependent data which can be captured from a variety of sources. In essence, gameplay telemetry express all the four classical features of big data, i.e. volume, variety, volatility and veracity.
Game Analytics has emerged as the umbrella term for quantitative analysis of behavior – whether from players or production – across academia and industry. The player focus is by far the most common, and aims at exploring player behavior, improve AI, improve game design, ensure optimal user experiences, identifying valuable players or those at risk, assist and inform learning and training games, personalize and adapt gameplay, or assist matchmaking – just to mention a couple of topics. Game Analytics is a domain in rapid evolution, covering a broad spectrum of games, platforms and techniques. In recent years, machine learning has become an important part of both research and practice in Game Analytics. The context of analytics has also emerged as an important topic, e.g. data visualization.
Workshop goals
Given the recent introduction of Game Analytics as a domain of research crossing into many of the traditional areas of games research, there is as yet a limited number of publications in the domain, and virtually no standards or accepted principles in the field, across research and industry. To address this problem, the workshop has the following main goals:
- Discuss and assess the current state-of-the-art in Game Analytics and the current major challenges in the domain across industry and academia, including academia-industry collaboration, documenting ROI, integrating applied and basic research and developing standards.
- Develop strategies for progressing the state-of-the-art and approaching major challenges in the domain.
- Disseminate knowledge about Game Analytics principles and methods to academia and industry.
Submitting to the workshop
We welcome submissions as either full papers describing novel research (6 pages) or short papers describing work in progress (4 pages) plus extra one page for references. All papers should adhere to AAAI formatting. The workshop follows a single-blind review process. Accepted papers will be included in the AIIDE proceedings published via IEEE. We also accept proposals for presentations and talks from industry professionals, in the form of a 500 max. word abstract describing the proposed talk, and a 500 max. word author bio. Abstracts will not be published in the proceedings. Talks should be aimed at a 20 min. duration. Informal proposals for roundtables, panels etc. are also welcome, please contact the organizers before submitting such a proposal.
Submission page
All submissions should be made via EasyChair. The submission system can be accessed here (note that you will need to create a free EasyChair account):
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=gaw2016
Important dates:
Deadline for paper submissions: 14th July 2016 at 12:00 CET
Notification for accepted papers: 21st July 2016
Deadline for camera-ready papers: 31st July 2016 at 12:00 CET (this is a hard deadline)
Workshop date: October 8th, in connection with AIIDE 2016. This is a half day workshop depending on interest.
Workshop locale: AIIDE Conference, held at the: Embassy Suites by Hilton San Francisco Airport – Waterfront, 150 Anza Boulevard, Burlingame, California 94010 USA, Telephone: +1-650-342-4600,sfoburlingame.embassysuites.com. Travel information and registration available at the AIIDE 2016 website.
Organizing committee
Nick Ross, University of San Francisco
Rafet Sifa, Fraunhofer IAIS
Julian Runge, Wooga and Humboldt University Berlin
Anders Drachen, Aalborg University & The Pagonis Network