CoGames 2016 - 2nd International Workshop on Collaboration and Gaming (CoGames 2016)

Development of video games is by definition a multi disciplinary process involving several professions, ranging from artists to engineers. The AAA game titles produced today require rather large teams with a high level of competence (technology, programming, networks, architecture, etc.), creativity and skills. Compared to traditional software development, game development is characterized by rapid changes of hardware, high performance requirements, and software requirements that are unstable and hard to predict. Video games are also used for other purposes than pure entertainment, e.g., for education, training, exercising, and simulation.
In the current trends, game developers are focusing more and more on games where players must collaborate to achieve goals in the game. Collaborative games introduce challenges for game developers to handle technical issues, performance issues, network issues, distributed environments, sharing of information, and heterogeneous networks and devices. Further, collaborative games open new areas and applications for games to be used for new purposes that can benefit from more than just fun. Creation of these “serious collaborative games” adds additional challenges including matching of content and game activity and modeling of player proficiencies. As players expect that games can be played anywhere, the integration of mobile gaming, hand-held and online-gaming on smartphones, consoles and tablets is becoming ever more important. This integration introduces new challenges and leads to new opportunities.
This Workshop on Collaboration and Gaming - held as part of the 2016 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS 2016) - will focus on the area of collaboration and gaming, with emphasis on new game concepts, new technologies, evaluations, usage areas and games prototypes. Special attention is dedicated to serious games, in particular for learning. The aim is to have a dedicated track that fosters closer interactions among researchers, industry and users communities, providing an opportunity for them to meet and discuss their ideas. We invite original contributions from researchers in academia and computer industry on these emerging and important areas of information technology. Papers should contribute to an advancement over the state of the art, preferentially providing empirical results from new tools/systems and/or user studies.
CoGames Topics of Interest include (but are not limited to):
Collaborative games, game technology and game frameworks
Collaborative serious games
Platforms for collaborative games
Usability of collaborative games
Mobile collaborative games and game frameworks
Quality of service in collaborative games
Online collaborative games
Computational and artificial intelligence to support collaborative gaming
User profiling and performance assessment in collaborative games
Modeling of users and interactions
Learning and Adaptation in collaborative games
Reliability and availability in collaborative games
Real-time issues (e.g., networking, computation) in collaborative games
Integration and interoperability in collaborative games
Pervasive/ubiquitous collaborative games
New software engineering tools and methods for designing collaborative games
Requirement engineering of collaborative games
Design and software architecture of collaborative games
Data mining in collaborative games
Database support for collaborative games
Testing and prototyping of collaborative games
Context-aware gaming
Interactive Digital Media Applications and Games
Emerging Games Platforms, Technologies and Applications
Privacy and Security in collaborative games
Repository and content management of collaborative games
Tools (authoring, assessment, etc.) and sub-systems for collaborative games
Human-Computer Interaction (devices, methodologies and tools) to support collaboration
Serious games aimed at supporting collaboration
Animation and Virtual Reality in game design
Learning and Adaptation in Collaborative Games
Human, social and psychological aspects of games
Social and Humanities Aspects of Games
Business modeling and economic aspects of collaborative games
Games Management, Business, Marketing, and Ethics