Transmedia Interactions and Digital Games Workshop – Salzburg

Thankyou Sal for the heads up on this great event. The Human-Computer Interaction Design Department at School of Infomatics, Indiana University, are calling for workshop participants. The workshop ‘Transmedial Interactions and Digital Games’ is held in conjunction with the 4th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (http://www.ace2007.org/ ) on June 12th in Salzburg, Austria.

[Workshop Aims & Goals]

As virtual worlds and games grow in importance, present limitations in access to them limits their ability to achieve their potential. In persistent online worlds, peer actions and event changes have cumulative effects that are consequential to individuals, whether or not they are available, just as in real life.  But unlike real life, where we have plenty of tools to help us juggle multiple responsibilities, access into virtual worlds today occurs through a single access point; active participation requires a significant stationary commitment. Even the most dedicated users have difficulty keeping up with the dynamic information. To remain active and included, users need better ways to communicate, cooperate, and coordinate. Transmedial access, in which players access to a game and their characters/data is made possible across different devices, offers a promising solution to this problem. It also inaugurates a new category of interaction design: transmedial interaction.

This workshop explores the state of the art of transmedial interaction in games, which today unfortunately is often at most mere afterthought. It provides a participatory environment in which attendees can chart new paths forward, from developing viable business models and understanding the technical infrastructure to developing critical vocabularies and evaluative frameworks.

The workshop is intended for a broad audience, which will collaboratively achieve the following:

* Review current state-of-the-art examples of transmedia interactions in entertainment computing, especially video games

* Survey the technical infrastructure needed for transmedia interactions in digital games (e.g., feedback, adaptivity, etc.)

* Understand how the strength and weakness of different media channels shape player experiences during transmedia interactions

* Construct design guidelines for transmedial interactions and determine the components needed for successful and seamless transmedial interaction design

* Consider evaluation criteria for transmedial interactions
 
[Submission]

We encourage participation from diverse academic disciplines including design, HCI, computer science,, media and game studies, strategic communications, and psychology, as well as industry experts and practitioners, for a total of 15-20 people. Specifically, this workshop will create a synergy among the following target audiences:

* Online and mobile game designers interested in developing appropriate mechanisms to overcome the difficulty of designing for multiple media channels and cross-media experiences

* Interaction designers and researchers interested in human-human and human-machine interactions across devices, including mobile and ubiquitous computing

* Gaming industry pioneers interested in the exploration of novel ways to extend and integrate different media channels capacities to create cross-device and cross-network experiences for their target customers

* Entertainment computing marketers interested in identifying key challenges and solutions in promoting transmedial experiences

Sounds fabulous: http://hcid.informatics.indiana.edu/ace2007/

 

One Reply

  • Hey, thx. This is great for my research, but you might want to add the list of technologies they use to make the games…

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