Full Papers

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, industry perspectives of games and play, and courses and workshops about games and play.


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 2023 full papers will be published in the ACM Journal PACMHCI. 
  • Papers submitted to CHI PLAY 2023 will be peer reviewed and rated, and provided with one of three decisions: Accept with Minor Revisions, 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.
  • CHI PLAY 2023 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. 
  • 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. Typical papers are under 8,500 words, or about 17-20 pages in the single column ACM Master Article Template, excluding references, figure/table captions, and appendices. Papers that are widely over the typical length (e.g., above 12,000 words) will be examined carefully to ensure that the size of the contribution warrants the length of the paper.Papers whose lengths are incommensurate with their contributions will be rejected.

Important dates (all times are 23:59 Anywhere on Earth or AoE):

February 21st, 2023Full (journal) papers submission deadline
April 21st, 2023Notifications given (accept/minor/major/reject)
June 2nd, 2023Revisions due
July 7th, 2023Final notifications given
August 10th, 2023Camera-ready deadline
August 10th, 2023Video Presentation deadline

CHI PLAY is the premier 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 a Fall 2023 issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction (PACMHCI).

SUBMISSION PROCESS DETAILS

CHI PLAY 2023 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,figure/table captions, and appendices in the single column ACM Master Article Template, and we ask that authors be mindful of the reviewer time that their submission takes up. Papers that are widely over the typical length (e.g., above 12,000 words) will be examined carefully to ensure that the size of the contribution warrants the length of the paper. Papers whose lengths are incommensurate with their contributions 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 the anonymization policy, including within the supplemental materials, 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 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

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, and that not all papers that were invited to provide a revised version will be accepted for inclusion at CHI PLAY 2023.

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 2023.

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. Papers that violate the anonymization policy, including within the supplemental materials, will be desk rejected.

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 modelling.
  • 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. For example, interview guides, additional illustrations of their designs, or  videos that further describe their systems, and to submit links to pre-registrations on the Open Science Framework (OSF) when appropriate for their work. Authors should further consider using 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.

ACM PUBLICATIONS POLICY ON RESEARCH INVOLVING HUMAN PARTICIPANTS AND SUBJECTS

All authors of full papers conducting research involving human participants and subjects must meet appropriate ethical and legal standards guiding such research, as detailed in the ACM Publications Policy on Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects, including:

  • minimization of potential harms, making sure any risks are justified by potential benefits
  • protection for the privacy and right to self-determination of participants and subjects
  • adhering to relevant institutional, local, national, and international regulations
  • adhering to the principle of informed consent
  • adhering to the principle of justice
  • adherence with all other applicable ACM policies.

To ensure that authors are in compliance with these policies, authors of papers involving human participants will be asked to confirm having read the policy and provide a mandatory description of how participants were selected, what consent processes were followed (i.e., did they consent and if so what they were told), how they were treated, how data sharing was communicated, and any additional ethical considerations.

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 October 2023. 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/2023/

AUTHORS TAKE NOTE:
The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of your conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

Important Dates:

(all times are 23:59 AoE)

Attendance

September 10th, 2023Early Bird Registration
From September 11th, 2023Regular Registration

Full Papers (Journal Articles)

February 21st, 2023Submission deadline
April 21st, 2023First-round notification
June 2nd, 2023Revisions due
July 7th, 2023Final notifications given
August 10th, 2023Camera-ready deadline
August 10th, 2023Video Presentation deadline

Work in Progress

June 22nd, 2023Submission deadline
August 3rd, 2023Notification
August 24th, 2023Camera-ready deadline

Perspectives on Play

June 22nd, 2023Submission deadline
August 3rd, 2023Notification
August 24th, 2023Camera-ready deadline

Student Game Design Competition

June 22nd, 2023Submission deadline
August 3rd, 2023Notification
August 24th, 2023Camera-ready deadline

Interactivity Track

June 22nd, 2023Submission deadline
August 3rd, 2023Notification
August 24th, 2023Camera-ready deadline

Connections Track

June 22nd, 2023Submission deadline
August 3rd, 2023Notification
August 24th, 2023Camera-ready deadline

Doctoral Consortium

June 22nd, 2023Submission deadline
August 3rd, 2023Notification
August 31st, 2023Revised video deadline

Student Volunteer

August 6th, 2023Application deadline
August 11th, 2023Notification

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