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CHI 2018 SIG CHI 2018, April 21–26, 2018, Montréal, QC, Canada

Games and Play SIG: Engaging


Underrepresented Communities

Lennart E. Nacke Zachary O. Toups Abstract


HCI Games Group, The Games-and-Play community has thrived at ACM
Play & Interactive Experiences for
University of Waterloo,
Learning Lab, SIGCHI with a consistent increase in games- and play-
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Department of Computer Science, related submissions across research papers,
Pejman Mirza-Babaei New Mexico State University, workshops, posters, demos, and competitions. The
UXR Lab, Las Cruces, New Mexico, United commu- nity has attracted a significant number of
University of Ontario Institute academic researchers, students, and practitioners to
States
of Technology,
CHI confer- ences in recent years. CHI 2018 is being
Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
Katherine Isbister held in Mont- réal, a major game development hub.
Katta Spiel Computational Media, Montréal is not only a home for major game studios but
Human-Computer Interaction University of California, Santa also more than 100 smaller game studios. In line with
Group, the “Engage With CHI” spirit of CHI 2018, this SIG aims
Cruz,
TU Wien,
Santa Cruz, CA, United States to engage the Games and Play community in a
Vienna, Austria
discussion about the directions that we can take to
advance towards demographics that will benefit from
HCI games research but are currently
underrepresented: small, independent developers, non-
profit organizations, and academics that create mobile
games, games for health, games for change, and/or
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for per-
sonal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not educational games.
made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-
party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact
Author Keywords
the Owner/Author. Video Games; Entertainment; HCI; Games; Play; Gami-
fication; CHI PLAY; Playful Experience.
CHI'18 Extended Abstracts, April 21–26, 2018, Montreal, QC, Canada ©
2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-
5621-3/18/04. https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3185360 ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.0. General; K.8.0. General: Games

SIG11, Page1
CHI 2018 SIG CHI 2018, April 21–26, 2018, Montréal, QC, Canada

Organizers Introduction are interested in finding out how they can benefit from
This SIG is organized by Len- Games and play technologies have been a driving force existing HCI strategies, tools, and techniques, or how
nart Nacke, Pejman Mirza-Ba- for research since emotionally engaging experiences our approaches and policies need to be modified,
baei, Katta Spiel, Zachary O. became a prominent area of user research at CHI adapted, or re-thought to meet the requirements to en-
Toups and Katherine Isbister, [1,2,3,4]. Despite the immediate importance of design gage with these underrepresented communities. It is
who have all been very active to deliver engaging experiences in games, HCI prac- necessary to discuss expectations, resource costs,
in CHI games community in the tices and methods are not mature throughout the in- training needs, value-to-cost ratios, as well as policies
past. Nacke and Isbister have dustry and associated academic and non-profit domains and strategies to reach and engage beyond usual CHI
served as Games and Play sub- [5,6,8]. This inexperience impacts small developers. By audiences. The outcome of this SIG meeting will be a
committee chairs. All of them small developers, we mean independent ("indie") de- collection of best practice recommendations, guidelines,
have multiple CHI publications velopers, non- profit organizations, and other develop- tools, and individual success stories on how these col-
and organized workshops, ment units that have an interest in game development laborations may work.
courses and SIGs for CHI in the or gamification and are underrepresented in the CHI
past. community. The games community includes researchers and practi-
tioners focusing on player-centered design and evalua-
Reaching our Audience Small developers often lack resources, knowledge, and tion of games and entertainment applications. Topics
A goal of this SIG is to discuss experience to include HCI research in their processes, that are consistently of interest in this SIG are:
and identify directions to en- yet would benefit greatly from it. Further, such groups
gage with game development are unable to communicate the results of research work • player-oriented game development including analy-
communities to promote HCI to stakeholders involved in game development (e.g., sis, design, games user research and evaluation of
research on games. We want to programmers, designers, producers, marketers) [5,6, desktop, mobile, mixed reality, tabletop, serious, ex-
increase the representation 9]. This miscommunication often leads to a lack of col- ertion, and affective games;
small developers at CHI. We laboration between academic researchers and game de- • development of interactive TV formats, DVDs, and re-
will ask all CHI 2018 game-re- velopers, which would otherwise be mutually produc- lated media;
lated workshop organizers and tive. Moreover, this means research outcomes are often • interactive applications for media consumption and
session chairs to communicate not effectively disseminated to the communities who usage on the web, in the car, and with mobile plat-
this SIG to their participants could use and benefit from them the most. forms; and
and plan to be active within the • other entertainment-focused applications.
ACM SIGCHI’s CHIPLAY com- Within the scope of this year's conference, and in line
munity and online. We will also with the "Engage With CHI" spirit of CHI 2018, we pro- Although this list of topics is not comprehensive, it
use our local industry connec- pose to build a SIG meeting targeting the "long tail" in demonstrates an impressive portfolio of research on in-
tions to promote CHI2018 (and game development (i.e., small developers). Our goal is teractive entertainment technologies that can (and
game related events such as to bring the CHI games and play community together should) have higher impact on efforts within the game
this SIG) to developers in [4] to discuss how to better understand, investigate, development communities.
Montréal. promote, and provide the value of HCI research in
games for these small companies and initiatives. We

SIG11, Page2
CHI 2018 SIG CHI 2018, April 21–26, 2018, Montréal, QC, Canada

Through this broad range of HCI expertise, this SIG of- Scope games research at CHI to determine the breadth
Goals and Action Items
fers small developers and researchers a platform to in- of the community. Can and should it include other ar-
§ Bring the community to- form each other and plan collaborations. eas? How can we identify those areas and tie them to
gether to share their work. SIGCHI’s other communities?
§ Identify directions for re- Issues to cover during the SIG
search and standards for col- The aim of this SIG is to provide a forum for the mem- Expand beyond CHI. While there is a strong games aca-
laboration with game devel- bers of this important sub-field of CHI to plan ways to demic community, we would like to strengthen the field
opers. serve the community best at upcoming CHI confer- in general with better scientific outlets for publishing
§ To discuss ways the CHI con- ences. This year, the SIG is focuses on small develop- games research.
ference can welcome indies ers, so our primary issues are to:
and non-profits to partici- Educate new researchers about the publishing stand-
pate. Understand the challenges small developers face. By ards, common methodologies, and, of course, the re-
identifying common pitfalls, developers’ constraints, viewing process that is ever changing, but always fo-
§ Identify the key challenges
and other challenges in taking up HCI research in their cused on keeping its quality.
that prevent small develop-
development practices.
ers from taking advantage of
Integrate other research communities. SIGCHI is not
the CHI community.
Identify lightweight HCI practices that can be easily in- the only organization with a games community. There
§ Publish whitepapers that corporated by small developers. We expect that a core are other interesting venues that would improve their
identify open problems in en- outcome will work toward actionable practice for small quality and ours by collaborating with us. Outlets like
gaging with indie developers. developers. ICA (International Communication Association) game
§ Make games and entertain- studies and Digital Games Research Association (DI-
ment content from CHI more Welcome small developers to the community. While GRA) have always been important for games research
prominent to game develop- conference attendance can be expensive and challeng- and will remain publishing venues that we could con-
ment communities. ing for small developers, we will identify ways to de- sider working with. We need to discuss possible inte-
§ Discuss and document the velop mutually beneficial relationships. grations or scholarship support for researchers working
community efforts beyond within the Game Developers Conference (GDC) or other
standard publications by ex- As in years past, the SIG will also continue to address professional venues. A strong part of the success of the
tending existing work in the following, bearing in mind our focus on small devel- games research at CHI has been tie-ins to the games
games research and devel- opers and time constraints at the SIG: industry and relevance of the work for them.
opment.
Identify current trends in games and interaction re- Collaborate with industry. In the past, we have suc-
Acknowledgements
search to determine the makeup of the CHI community, cessfully integrated industry speakers in both CHI and
The authors would like to thank note changes, and ensure research remains timely. CHI PLAY gaming talks and panels. What is a good
NSERC and SSHRC, FWF, NSF, strategy to continue to involve these practitioners and
and the Austrian Science Fund developers? Also, is there a way to drive research
for funding this work. within CHI that directly benefits small developers?

SIG11, Page3
CHI 2018 SIG CHI 2018, April 21–26, 2018, Montréal, QC, Canada

Process/Schedule/Agenda 2. Regina Bernhaupt and Katherine Isbister. 2012.


We will inform the games community members about Games and entertainment community SIG: shaping the
the SIG goals beforehand to enable participation of the future. In CHI EA '12. 1173–1176.
attendees in the organization of the SIG. As this SIG is
3. Lennart E. Nacke, Anna Cox, Regan L. Mandryk, and
central to the success of games-and-entertainment- re-
Paul Cairns. 2016. SIGCHI Games: The Scope of Games
lated activities and connecting with small developers in
and Play Research at CHI. In CHI EA '16. 1088–1091.
2018 and beyond, the agenda is planned as follows:
4. Katherine Isbister. 2016. Connecting through
Intro and Recap (10 minutes) of what was done this
play. interactions 23, 4 (June 2016), 26–33.
year in preparation for the SIG meeting, and more gen-
erally by the subcommittee, and how we interfaced 5. Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Veronica Zammitto, Jörg Nie-
with the main conference planning. senhaus, Mirweis Sangin, and Lennart Nacke. 2013.
Games user research: practice, methods, and applica-
We will use the remainder of the session to gather ide-
tions. In CHI EA '13. 3219–3222.
as for how to move forward with the community be-
yond 2018 (using game-like support people feel com- 6. Lennart E. Nacke, Christiane Moser, Anders Drachen,
fortable with). The following topics will be discussed: Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Andrea Abney, and Zhu (Cole)
Zhenyu. 2016. Lightweight Games User Research for
(1)Identification of items the community should focus
Indies and Non-Profit Organizations. In Proceedings of
on in 2019 (Next step action items, including the pro-
the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Hu-
posed focus on small developer community members);
man Factors in Computing Systems. 3597–3603.
(2) Identification of volunteers willing to lead commu-
nity actions in 2019 and beyond (3) Summary of action 7. Lennart E. Nacke, Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Magy Seif
items for next year(s). (4) Wrap-up with results and El-Nasr, Heather W. Desurvire, and Regina Bernhaupt.
action items. We want to conclude the meeting with a 2014. Games and entertainment community SIG:
plan of how to move forward with the community in the reaching beyond CHI. In CHI '14 Extended Abstracts on
next years based on the input of everyone attending Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1123–1126.
the SIG. We will provide an opportunity for everyone to
get involved in SIG communications. 8. Anders Drachen, Pejman Mirza-Babaei and Lennart
Nacke. 2018. Games User Research. Oxford University
References
Press
1. Regina Bernhaupt, Wijand Ijsselsteijn, Florian 'Floyd'
Mueller, Manfred Tscheligi, and Dennis Wixon. 2008.
9. Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Naeem Moosajee, and Bran-
Evaluating user experiences in games. In CHI '08 Ex-
don Drenikow. 2016. Playtesting for indie studios. In
tended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Sys-
Proceedings of the 20th International Academic Mind-
tems. 3905–3908.
trek Conference. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 366-374.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2994310.299436.

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