game conferences
CHIPlay (see also the “Games and Play” track at CHI): Top conference for games, but is a bit limited in topics. It focuses on how players interact with games, and has a decent split between quantitative and qualitative studies.
FDG: Sells itself as the conference where technical and non-technical people meet. Focuses on automatically generating content in games, creating systems that bolster narratives in games, and design work in general.
DiGRA: Focuses on the artistic and social impacts of games. They look at gaming culture, gaming trends, and have interesting experimental game design.
EXAG: This is a track within the larger AI conference AIIDE. They look at AI in games. (Notably, most AI in games is unlike ChatGPT or LLMs. The Youtube channel “AI in games” has a good breakdown)
COG: Mostly technical conference, but still pretty general. Has an interesting track on “simulations”, which includes training simulations for firefighters and roleplay games to teach business students how to run a business.
There are plenty of conferences for educational games specifically, but they tend to be more local and held sporadically. Some of the bigger ones are Serious Play and Games 4 Change (non-academic conferences). For academic conferences, see Meaningful Play, GALA, ECGBL, Games Learning Society, Play Make Learn. Some notes from Erik Harpstead on edugame conferences
Random Scratchpad Notes
FETC: Florida edtech conference
I’ve heard of these two but have no idea what they are:
- AERA
- HSLS
CHI CHIPlay AIIDE FDG EXAG COG UBICOMP CSCW ISCRAM
Chaima’s recommendations: SAGE SIGCSE FDG Computers and Education
Serious games conference - Portnoy (Sue Boll?)
Most of the funding agencies fund STEM games
Civic something - game teaching civics iCivics (civics game)
Meaningful play ICA Conference Game Studies
ECGBL
DiGRA
GALA (edugames)
Games Com (Germany)
