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The use of computing technology for entertainment purposes is not a recent phenomenon.
Video game consoles, home computers and other entertainment media
have been used widely for more than three decades, and people of all ages are spending
an increasing amount of time and money on these technologies.
More recent is the rise of a vibrant research community focusing on gaming and
entertainment applications. Driven by the growth and the coming of age of the gaming
industry, and by its increasing recognition in the media and the minds of the
broader public, the study of computer games, game development and experiences is
attracting the interest of researchers from very diverse fields: social sciences, computing,
electrical engineering, design, etc.
Research of this kind looks to extend the boundaries of gaming technologies. In a
relentless drive for innovation, it looks to create and understand an ever increasing
range of experiences, and examine how games can provide value for educational,
therapeutic and other ‘serious’ purposes. These themes were reflected in the call for
participation and eventually the papers accepted for presentation.
The Fun n’ Games conference was the second event of a bi-annual series of conferences.
The first event of the series was held in Preston in 2006 organized by the
University of Central Lancashire. Following the success of this event it was decided
to run a follow up.
The aim of this second event in the series was to bring together researchers creating
innovations in games and technologies supporting games, researchers studying
the experiences of playing games, and those exploring the emerging theme of serious
games.
Fun n’ Games was designed as a single-track conference for interaction between
participants coming from different disciplines. It included a workshop program, a
posters session and a demonstrations program. This volume contains the refereed
technical papers presented at the conference and the invited papers by the keynote
speakers. An adjunct proceedings volume distributed to the conference attendees
includes the papers in the other categories (demos, posters, workshop abstracts).
Technical papers were selected after a rigorous review process. In all, 36 technical
papers were submitted, of which 17 were selected for presentation. Each paper was
reviewed by three to five reviewers and a meta-review was conducted separately by
the Chairs. The selection criteria were designed to invite contributions from both
scientific and design disciplines; they included soundness, originality, innovativeness,
potential impact. We are confident that this process is reflected in the quality of the
selected articles and we hope that the proceedings are a useful point of reference for
designers and scientists working in this field. |
