CHI PLAY is the international and interdisciplinary conference, sponsored by ACM SIGCHI, for researchers and professionals across all areas of play, games, and human-computer interaction (HCI). We call this area ‘player-computer interaction’. The goal of the CHI PLAY conference is to highlight and foster discussion on high-quality research in games and HCI as a foundation for the future of digital play. To this end, the conference blends academic research papers, interactive play demos, and industry insights.
Submissions
As an ACM SIGCHI-sponsored conference, CHI PLAY welcomes contributions that further an understanding of the player experience, as well as contributions on novel designs or implementations of player-computer interactions, and contributions to theory. We invite contributions to CHI PLAY across a variety of research techniques, methods, approaches, and domains, including, but not limited to:
- Playful interactions and new game mechanics
- Innovative implementation techniques that affect player experiences
- Studies of applied games and player experiences (e.g., games and play for health, wellbeing, and learning)
- Accessible and inclusive design and player experiences
- Esports, live streaming, and spectator experiences
- Advances in game user research and game evaluation methods
- Psychology of players and typologies of games and players
- Gamification, persuasive games, and motivational design
- Virtual and augmented reality in games and play
- Novel controls, input or display technologies for games and play
- Tools for game creation
- Theoretical contributions on play and games
- Innovations to advance the work of game designers and developers
- Game analytics and novel visualizations of player experiences
- Developer experiences and studies of developers
- Industry case studies
CHI PLAY welcomes contributions on the effects of various technologies, software, or algorithms on player experiences. Technical contributions without impact on players or game designers and developers are not within the scope of CHI PLAY.
FULL PAPERS (JOURNAL ARTICLES)
IMPORTANT FACTS
- CHI PLAY 2022 full papers will be published in the ACM Journal PACMHCI.
- Papers submitted to CHI PLAY 2022 will receive one of three decisions: Accept with Minor Revision, Revise and Resubmit, and Reject. If asked for revisions, authors will have 6 weeks to implement them and submit to a second round of review from the same associate chairs and external reviewers. We anticipate that the majority of papers will receive an Accept with Minor Revisions or a Reject decision in the first round, and that only a small number of papers will be carried forward into the Revise and Resubmit process.
- No minimum or maximum page length is imposed on papers. Rather, reviewers will be instructed to weigh the contribution of a paper relative to its length.
- CHI PLAY 2022 will use the new ACM Master Article Templates; detailed instructions on formatting can be found at http://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions. Authors should submit manuscripts for review in a single column format, which is available for LaTeX (use the “manuscript” call to create a single column format) and Word. Typical papers are under 8,500 words, or about 17-20 pages excluding references in the single column ACM Master Article Template. We particularly welcome short papers on a focused contribution.
Important dates (all times are 23:59 Anywhere on Earth or AoE):
February 23, 2022 | Full (journal) papers submission deadline |
April 27, 2022 | Notifications given (accept/minor/major/reject) |
June 8, 2022 | Revisions due |
July 6, 2022 | Final notifications given |
CHI PLAY is the premiere international venue for research in interactive games and play. We invite authors to submit their best research on all topics relevant to interactive play. Papers will receive a minimum of three reviews and be handled by an Associate Chair (AC), who will provide a meta-review. Accepted papers will be published in the November 2022 issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACMHCI).
SUBMISSION PROCESS DETAILS
CHI PLAY 2022 is using the Precision Conference System (PCS) 2.0: https://new.precisionconference.com/
Authors submitting papers for peer-review to ACM publications must comply with the SIGCHI Submission and Review Policy including, but not limited to: That the paper submitted is original, that the listed authors are the creators of the work, that each author is aware of the submission and that they are listed as an author, and that the paper is an honest representation of the underlying work. That the work submitted is not currently under review at any other publication venue, and that it will not be submitted to another venue unless it has been rejected or withdrawn from this venue. For information about re-publication in English of work previously published in another language, please refer to section 1.5.4 of the ACM SIGCHI policy: https://sigchi.org/about/sigchi-policies/conference-policies/submission-and-review/
Confidentiality of submitted material will be maintained. Upon acceptance, the titles, authorship, and abstracts of papers will be used in the Advance Program. Submissions should contain no information or material that is or will be proprietary and/or confidential at the time of publication, and should cite no publication that will be proprietary or confidential at that time. Final versions of accepted papers must be formatted according to detailed instructions provided by the publisher. Copyright release forms must be signed for inclusion in the PACM HCI and the ACM Digital Library. Papers may be made available publicly up to two weeks prior to the conference date.
FORMATTING AND LENGTH
ACM authoring templates and detailed instructions on formatting can be found at http://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions.
Authors should submit manuscripts for review in a single column format, which is available for LaTeX (use the “manuscript” call to create a single column format) and Word.
Word users: if the typefaces are not showing up correctly, be sure you have installed the fonts included in the ACM template download.
Overleaf authors: Authors using the Overleaf platform can use the templates provided within Overleaf. Papers should be converted to PDF before submission. Authors can use the settings \documentclass[manuscript, review, anonymous]{acmart} to remove author information and add line numbers for the review process.
No minimum or maximum length is imposed on papers, however, reviewers will be instructed to weigh the contribution of a paper relative to its length. Typical papers are under 8,500 words or about 17-20 pages excluding references in the single column ACM Master Article Template, and we ask that authors are mindful of the reviewer time that their submission takes up.
Note: Valuable but concise contributions are welcome as short papers. Shorter, more focused papers will be reviewed with the expectation of a small, focused contribution. Papers whose length is incommensurate with their contribution will be rejected.
ANONYMOUS REVIEW POLICY
Papers are subject to anonymous reviewing. Submissions must have authors’ names and affiliations removed, and avoid obvious identifying statements. Any grant information that identifies the author(s) and their institution should be removed as well. Papers that violate this policy will be desk rejected. Please check in particular the front page, headers and footers, and the Acknowledgement section. Also, check the meta information in papers prepared using Word.
Citations to authors’ own relevant work should not be anonymous, but rather should be done without identifying the authors. For example, “Prior work by [authors]” instead of “In our prior work.”
CHI PLAY does not have a policy against uploading preprints to SSRN or arXiv before they are submitted for review at the conference.
REVISION CYCLES AND DECISIONS
Also see: Important Changes to CHI Play 2022 Paper Decisions
CHI PLAY will be returning submissions to the primary contact author with one of the following decisions, along with the reviews, after the first review cycle:
Accept with Minor Revisions: Submissions that receive this decision are ready or nearly ready for publication, though they may require a few small changes. The final version of the paper must be submitted by revisions deadline for verification by the corresponding associate chair.
Revise and Resubmit: Submissions that receive this decision have real potential, but will require major portions rewritten or redone, and then re-reviewed. Authors should submit their revised manuscript at the revision deadline, along with a summary explaining how they addressed the reviewers’ comments and incorporated changes in the revision. To the extent possible, resubmissions will be assigned the same Associate Chair and reviewers for re-review. We anticipate that a smaller number of submissions will be accepted into this category, as compared to Accept with Minor Revisions.
Reject: Submissions that receive this decision have been determined to be not acceptable in their current form and also not able to complete the needed revisions within the 6-week revision period. Rejected papers are not able to submit a revision to CHI PLAY 2022.
Desk / Quick Reject: Authors should only submit completed work of publishable quality and within the scope of ACM CHI PLAY. The ACs and Editors may Quick Reject any submission that they believe has little chance of being accepted if it goes through the peer-review process. Incomplete or otherwise inappropriate submissions will be desk rejected without review.
CONTRIBUTION TYPE FOR REVIEW HANDLING
When uploading the paper to the PCS reviewing system, authors will be able to indicate the primary and secondary contribution type of their paper for appropriate reviewer assignment:
- Empirical-Qualitative, e.g., ethnography, qualitative user studies.
- Empirical-Quantitative, e.g., quantitative user studies, statistical methods, data modeling.
- Empirical-Mixed Methods, e.g., combined qualitative and quantitative empirical research.
- Artefact-Technical, e.g., building novel systems, algorithms, visualizations, architectures, implementing novel features in existing systems.
- Artefact-Design, e.g., research through design, envisionments, guidelines, methods, techniques.
- Theoretical, e.g., conceptual frameworks, theory underpinning CHI PLAY studies/domains, theoretical analysis, and essays.
- Meta-Research, e.g., meta-analyses, systematic reviews
OPEN AND TRANSPARENT SCIENCE
Authors are encouraged to submit supplementary material when possible and when aligned with their methods, e.g., interview guides, additional illustrations of their designs, or videos that further describe their systems, and to submit links to preregistrations on the Open Science Framework (OSF) when appropriate for their work. Authors should further consider to use open access repositories and make their data and other material available when appropriate for their work. Authors of quantitative work in particular are encouraged to describe efforts to make their work more reproducible. Please note that all supplementary materials must be anonymized.
VIDEO FIGURES
Video figures are mandatory for submissions that draw from custom-built games or systems that are not freely available (e.g., novel systems, interaction techniques, game designs, mechanics, or envisionments). Figures should showcase the game or system comprehensively (i.e., demonstrate core game mechanics or offer a playthrough) so that reviewers can explore all relevant aspects. Please note that this applies to submissions that contribute systems (i.e., artefacts) and those that study systems (i.e., empirical work). Generally, authors of all papers should consider submitting a video that illustrates their work as part of the submission if appropriate. Videos should be no more than three minutes long.
PRESENTING AT THE CONFERENCE
Accepted papers are invited to present at the conference in November 2022. Presenting at the conference is strongly recommended but not required. At least one author must register for the conference in the corresponding author category and pay a registration fee for the work to be published in PACM HCI.
For more information, visit https://chiplay.acm.org/2022/