Workshop: http://www.image.ece.ntua.gr/events/its-emotion-in-games/
ITS 2012:  http://its2012.teicrete.gr/

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
Computer games research has recently experienced the adoption of its own technological advancements (rich interactivity, 3D graphical visualisation and role playing game-style incentive structures) by an increasing number of domains (e-commerce, news reading, web 2.0 services, and human-computer interfaces). The capability of games delivering enhanced user immersion and engagement defines the driving force behind this adoption. Inevitably, games are unique elicitors of emotion and the study of user experience in those environments is of paramount importance for the understanding of game play internal mechanics. In this framework, games are increasingly used in learning, both in formal education and in teaching social and/or vocational skills, putting into action higher-level psychological concepts, such as attention, engagement and flow, and introducing modern reward systems to make game play more appealing.

Recognition of player emotion, dynamic construction of affective player models, and modelling emotions in non-playing characters, represent challenging areas of research and practice at the crossroads of cognitive and affective science, psychology, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. Techniques from AI and HCI can be used to recognize player affective states and to model emotion in non-playing characters. Multiple input modalities provide novel means for measuring learnability, player satisfaction and engagement. These data can then be used to adapt the gameplay to the player's state, to drive the player to particular learning objectives.

This workshop is a sequel of the EmoGames workshop held in conjunction with ACII (http://www.image.ece.ntua.gr/events/acii-emotion-in-games/ ).

The workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners in affective computing, user experience research, social psychology and cognition, machine learning, and AI and HCI, to explore topics on player experience research, affect induction, sensing and modelling and affect-driven game adaptation, and modelling of emotion in non-playing characters. It will also provide new insights on how gaming can be used as a research instrument to induce and capture affective interactions with single and multiple users, mobile and ubiquitous devices and model affect- and behaviour-related concepts, building on concepts such as flow and engagement, and helping operationalize them. Human-robot interaction and technology-enhanced learning have also significant relation to gaming, as possible fields of application, but also as research fields which can benefit from gaming as an interaction paradigm.

The workshop will include a keynote, paper and poster presentations, and panel discussions. To promote a fruitful exchange of ideas, paper abstracts will be posted on the workshop web page prior to the workshop, enabling visitors to discuss, comment, and post questions to the authors. Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their work to a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, "Emotion in Games", to be published in mid-2013.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Interested participants should submit papers of not more than 8 pages, formatted according to the Springer LNCS guidelines (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0 ). Papers must be submitted as PDF to emogames@image.ntua.gr

IMPORTANT DATES
Paper Submission        March 30
Acceptance Notification April 30
Camera-ready versions     May 15
Workshop                 June 14-15

WORKSHOP TOPICS
Topics include:

Natural interaction in games
* controlling games with hand&  body gestures, body stance, facial expressions, gaze&  physiology
* sonification in games
* speech recognition&  prosody analysis of players
* mapping low-level cues to affective states
* mapping non-verbal cues to player satisfaction

Emotion in player experience
* affective player modelling
* artificial&  computational intelligence for modelling player experience
* adapting to player affect/player experience
* optimizing for/adapting to player satisfaction
* adaptive learning&  player experience
* affect-driven procedural content generation

Emotion modelling in non-player characters
* emotion synthesis in affective non-player characters
* modelling effects of emotions on non-player character decision-making
* affective influences on task&  objectives planning for non-player characters
* alternatives for expressing emotions in non-player characters

Higher-level concepts
* user engagement, attention&  satisfaction
* maximising user engagement
* social context awareness&  adaptation
* affective&  behavioural states in gaming
* psychology of gaming
* ethics&  morality in player and non-player characters

Game-based corpora (naturally evoked or induced emotion)

Games for learning
* Emotion and affect in user studies and user-centred evaluation
* Designing for special needs
* Reward systems and transfer in games
* User modelling (vocational vs. children games, formal education vs. social skills, etc.)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Georgios N. Yannakakis (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
Ana Paiva (Instituto Superior Técnico/INESC-ID, Portugal)
Kostas Karpouzis (ICCS-NTUA, Greece)
Eva Hudlicka (Psychometrix Associates, Inc., USA)
James Lester (North Carolina State University, USA)