Research Publication Offers 360 Degree View of Global Gaming
ACM Games: Research and Practice Now Accepting Submissions
New York, NY, October 12, 2022 – Games are touching more people and parts of our lives than ever before: More than three billion people across the globe are playing video games today, across ages, genders, and regions of the world. With the “metaverse,” technology companies are pushing visions trialed by online role-playing games and virtual worlds decades ago. Digital games have become the test beds and frontiers for much research in artificial intelligence. At the same time, games and their makers and players are transforming and diversifying, with new and resurgent global audiences and creator communities, genres and formats, and platforms and business models: from the commercial rise of mobile and free-to-play games, to new virtual reality and AI technologies, to the renaissance of board and role-playing games, to creators, players, and researchers working to make games more accessible, inclusive, and sustainable.
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, in collaboration with ETC Press (a digital-first open access publishing house of Carnegie Mellon University focusing on entertainment technologies), announced it is now accepting submissions for a new publication, ACM Games: Research and Practice. The editors envision ACM Games as “a lighthouse for games research—a central reference point that defines the state of the art on games and playable media, bridging academic research and industry practice.” The publication will showcase major contributions to games and playable media that are practically useful and grounded in robust evidence and argument. ACM Games is also designed to give a forum to new and underrepresented voices and phenomena.
ACM Games will be an online, quarterly, peer-reviewed publication. To bridge industry and academia, it features a diverse editorial board spanning both a wide range of article formats including postmortem-style case studies and registered reports as well as journalistic summaries making technical work accessible. ACM Games embraces open science and scholarship.
The publication is accepting papers on a wide range of topics, including:
- AI and Data: AI, data science, and visual analytics in games and playable media
- Alt.Play: Novel, critical, alternative, and boundary-crossing phenomena and interventions in games and playable media
- Applied Gaming: Serious games, gamification, and game- and play-based interventions in education, health, and other domains
- Audiences and Communities: Community management, content moderation, community health and safety, esports, streaming, and players as producers
- Audio and Music: Music and sound design and technology for games and playable media
- Business and Production: Business, marketing, monetization models, production processes, structures, workflows, and life cycles for games and playable media including analyses of industry shifts, production cultures, and working conditions
- Computing: Architectures, engines, operations, and tools for game and playable media development
- Design: Principles, methods, and practices of designing games and playful experiences
- Education: Teaching and learning game and playable media design, development, research, and scholarship
- Graphics: Graphics algorithms, techniques, rendering, and pipelines for games and playable media
- Hardware and Haptics: Computing devices, controllers, sensors, actuators, peripherals, and haptics for games and playable media
- Immersive Experiences and Future Realities: Embodied, extended (AR/XR/VR), persistent, and shared realities in games
- Inclusive Gaming: Accessibility, localization, culturalization, and inclusion and diversity, making games and playable media welcoming for all
- Ethical, Political, and Societal Issues: The social impacts of games and playable media, their industries, and communities
- Narrative: Narrative design and technology for games and playable media
- Simulation: Games physics and physical authoring in games
- Game User Research and Player Experience: Understanding, studying, and modeling players, their experience and behavior
- Visual Arts: Visual design and art direction for games and playable media
“Research on games and playable media has rapidly expanded and diversified,” explained ACM Games Co-Editor-in-Chief Sebastian Deterding, Professor of Design Engineering at Imperial College London. “But with that, the field has become more fragmented. This fragmentation has made it harder for applied and integrative work to find a home. We want Games to be a “big tent”—a single venue where professionals in academia and industry can share work that advances how they understand, make, and teach games and playable media.”
“Games and playable media are not only expanding across forms, but also across materials, countries, and cultures,” added Games Co-Editor-in-Chief Kenny Mitchell, Professor of Video Game Technology at Edinburgh Napier University and Technical Director of Rendering at Roblox. “But most research publications today still focus on digital console and PC games from the Global North. We envision ACM Games as filling an unmet need to represent the breadth and diversity of the field, both in terms of the people who participate in gaming and the ways in which they do it.”
The first issue of ACM Games: Research and Practice is slated to be published in 2023. In addition to co-EiC’s Deterding and Mitchell, the ACM Games editorial team includes two senior associate editors and over 60 associate editors. Reflecting ACM’s global membership, the ACM Games editorial team is made up of professionals working in countries including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, the UK, and the US.
About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting educators, researchers, and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources, and address the field's challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession's collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.
About ETC Press
Carnegie Mellon University's ETC Press is an open-access, academic press that publishes journals, proceedings, trade, and textbooks that explore the intersection of technology and society. The ETC Press takes an experimental approach to publishing, using emerging technologies to produce more than 150 projects using a variety of formats, from glossy, print hardback books to interactive, mobile books.
Contact:
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