Games have often found inspiration from ancient times to contemporary history. Popular game series such as the Creative Assembly’s Total War or Sid Meier’s Civilisation have provided entertaining alternative simulations to established historical narratives. Playing with the past and connecting it to the present provides a greater understanding and arguably appreciation, of the human condition.  For more information, see this workshop's page on the conference website. 

This workshop aims to advance knowledge in the field of procedural content generation (PCG) by bringing together leading PCG researchers and facilitating discussion. Because academic workshops are a place for feedback and discussing new ideas, this year’s workshop will allow extra time for comments on each paper and a special demo session for people to discuss ongoing research.  For more information, see the workshop's web page.

Games have often found inspiration from ancient times to contemporary history. Popular game series such as the Creative Assembly’s Total War or Sid Meier’s Civilisation have provided entertaining alternative simulations to established historical narratives. Playing with the past and connecting it to the present provides a greater understanding and arguably appreciation, of the human condition.  For more information, see this workshop's page on the conference website. 

Previous assessments of digital games for the older adult market have focused on their use as a tool to promote aspects of well-being – e.g., fostering social interaction and providing cognitive and physical stimulation. This perspective suggests that the primary means of these games are to encourage older adults to better themselves, which introduces an overly functionalist perspective on play. In this workshop, we aim to shift this perspectives on games for older adults by highlighting the hedonic and eudaimonic (i.e., meaningful) value that they offer.  For more infomation, see the workshop's own website.

Social believability is of key interest to computer game studies and development, and believable game characters are of essence for player enjoyment and immersion. Thus, discussing elements of immersion from a research and a design perspective may contribute to developing more entertaining computer games. The purpose of the workshop is to allow discussion on the theories and models for NPC social behavior and social affordances in industry as well as between different but related academic disciplines. The expected outcome is a better understanding of the overlaps and differences within and between these communities.   For more information, see the workshop's own website.

Posters & Demos

Please see session P1, Monday's Poster & Demo session for details. 

Welcome to the City of Dundee by Lord Provost Bob Duncan

Keynote Address by: Lev Manovich, Professor of Computer Science, City University, New York, author of seminal work “The Language of New Media”

“What can Digital Humanities, Computational Social Science, and Cultural Analytics contribute to Game Studies?”

We are delighted to announce the next event in our series of workshops focusing on teaching game studies. Prior iterations have been held at past DiGRA and FDG conferences, and more than 100 participants have attended and taken part in a variety of activities. This workshop will be a half-day event, during the afternoon of August 2, 2016. It will include both open and closed sessions. Our open session will be available on a drop-in basis to anyone wishing to attend: no prior submission is required, and no advance notification is needed. For the closed sessions, we invite submissions.  See the workshop webpage for more information.

Questions of morality are a pervasive topic for media and the arts. Across every medium we see artists engaging audiences with challenging moral questions concerning topics such as war, crime, corruption, fidelity and the abuse of power. Questions of morality have long been central to how we understand ourselves, our lives, and our cultural contexts; and in turn our art forms have reflected, embodied, and challenged beliefs about right and wrong.  Read more about this workshop.

Posters & Demos

Please see session P1, Monday's Poster & Demo session for details. 

Keynote Address by:

Ju Row Farr, founder member of interactive media artists’ collective Blast Theory

“A Story, A Game, A Conversation” 

Posters & Demos

Please see session P1, Monday's Poster & Demo session for details. 

Keynote Address by:

Richard Bartle, Professor and Principal Teaching Fellow, University of Essex; creator of MUD and author of “Designing Virtual Worlds.”

“Bidirectional Research (Illustrated using an Unconventional Example)”

Posters & Demos

Please see session P1, Monday's Poster & Demo session for details. 

Keynote Address by:

Jo Twist, CEO, Ukie

“Fixing the pipeline: the future of the UK games industry”