Schedule

April 15 – 18 2025 // Vienna & Graz

Conference Day 1

Tuesday, 15.04.2025
University of Vienna, Universitätsring 1, 1010 Wien

7:30 Departure Graz & Registration at the Bus
9:30 - 16:00 Registration at University of Vienna
Garderobe / Wardrobe
9:30 - 10:30 Arrival at University of Vienna & Coffee
Garderobe / Wardrobe
10:30 - 12:00 Workshops
  • United in Exclusion? Research approaches to misogyny and intersectionality in video game culture (Room: HS 30)
  • Sixth Workshop on Tabletop Games ((Room: Elise-Richter-Saal)
  • 2nd Eudaimonia in Digital Games Workshop (Room: 31)
  • 16th Workshop on Procedural Content Generation Room (Room: 32)
  • xAI in Game Playing (Room: HS 27)
  • Professional Development in the Game Industry Work processes and workers’ well-being in Digital Games Production (Room: HS 33)
  • Workshop on Live Game Design (Room: Erika-Weinzierl-Saal)
12:00 - 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 14:30 Workshops
  • United in Exclusion? Research approaches to misogyny and intersectionality in video game culture (Room: HS 30)
  • Sixth Workshop on Tabletop Games ((Room: Elise-Richter-Saal)
  • 2nd Eudaimonia in Digital Games Workshop (Room: 31)
  • 16th Workshop on Procedural Content Generation Room (Room: 32)
  • xAI in Game Playing (Room: HS 27)
  • Professional Development in the Game Industry Work processes and workers’ well-being in Digital Games Production (Room: HS 33)
  • Workshop on Live Game Design (Room: Erika-Weinzierl-Saal)
14:30 - 15:00 Coffee & Cake
Garderobe / Wardrobe
15:00 - 16:00 Keynotes
with Univ.-Prof. Dr. Margarete Jahrmann (Kleiner Festsaal / Small Ceremonial Hall)
16:00 - 18:00 Sightseeing
Explore Vienna and the University of Vienna in your pre-registered tours.
Meeting point for the guided tours:
Tour 1: A Guided Walk Through Vienna’s Historic Center
Tour 2: Exploring the University of Vienna
Tour 3: Exploring the University of Vienna 
18:00 - 20:00 Dinner Break
Free time – Explore local restaurants and cafes on your own!
20:00 Return to Graz
Meeting point for the departure: Parkplatz Rathaus / City hall parking lot

Conference Day 2

Wednesday, 16.04.2025
TU Graz, Campus Inffeldgasse 25d, 8010 Graz, Austria

9:00 – 17:00 Registration & Poster Session
  (Room: Lobby Inffeldgasse 25d)
9:30 - 10:00 Coffee & Breakfast
10:00 - 11:00 Keynotes
  (Room: HS i7)
11:00 - 12:30 Paper Session 1A:
Technical Game Dev (& AI)		 Paper Session 1B:
Game Design I
  (Room: HS i7)

Stories from the Bottom Up: Emergent Narratives with Composable Story Sifting Patterns
Lyu, Millard and Gibbins

Souls-VR: Dodge-Rolling in Virtual Reality
Kirjonen, Slezas, Dutta, Laattala and Hämäläinen

Is the Jedi Force Pull Method Effective? Evaluating Eye-Tracked Object Grabbing in VR (remote)
Shishir and Zhao

Live Game Design: Prototyping at the Speed of Play
van Rozen

 (Room: HS i3)

Beyond Satisfaction: Game Feel Design for Emotionally Impactful Experiences
Bhatnagar, Laattala, Dutta, Cole and Hämäläinen

Understanding Game Art Practice Beyond Technical Expertise: A Qualitative Study
Hawey

Virtual Proximity, Real Anxiety: How Co-located VR Gameplay Increases Mutual Player Distance and Fear of Colliding
Tietenberg, Ring and Masuch

"Pull the Lever, Kronk!": Mapping Controller Affordances to Collaborative Sense-Making in Play (remote)
Truesdell
12:30 - 13:30 Lunch
13:30 - 15:00 Paper Session 2A:
Game Design II		 Paper Session 2B:
Game Analytics
  (Room: HS i3)

A Design Toolkit of Ludic Contentious Politics: The case of Protest in Videogames
Bashandy

Computational Tools for Table-Top Role-Playing Games: A Scoping Review
Shyne and Cooper

Tracing Research Through Design with Ponte: bridging game development repositories and qualitative research tools
Granzotto Llagostera, Khaled and Sinervo

Mobile Augmented Reality: A Systematic Review of Current Research and the Untapped Potential of Interactive Marker-Based Games
Tawde and Kriglstein

 (Room: HS i7)

Explaining and Clustering Playtraces Using Temporal Logics
Gutiérrez-Sánchez, Pérez-Liébana and Gaina

Player Perception Matters: Insights into the Use of Esports Live Companion Tools
Wang, Dormann and Wallner

STRIVE: Socio-behavioral Taxonomy Representation for Interactive Virtual Environments
Bisberg, Chen, Twyman, Williams and Ferrara
15:00 - 15:30 Coffeebreak
15:30 - 17:00 Panel:
"AccessibleWorlds? Accessibility,
Design, and the Right to Play" 		 Paper Session 3B:
Game AI I 
  (Room: HS i3) (Room: HS i7)

Language Models as Narrative Planning Heuristics
Senanayake and Ware

Analysis of Non-robustness of a Large Game Corpus (remote)
Bazzaz and Cooper

Towards a Celeste AI Framework: Agent-free Automated 2D Level Generation for Multidirectional Platformers
Robinet, Gómez-Maureira and Preuss

Analytic Procgen with Composable Design Space Expressions
Mawhorter and Smith
17:00 – 17:30 Break
17:30 – 18:30 Poster Reception
Room: Lobby Inffeldgasse 25d)

Conference Day 3

Thursday, 17.04.2025
TU Graz, Campus Inffeldgasse 25d, 8010 Graz, Austria

8:30 – 17:00 Registration & Poster Session
  (Room: Lobby Inffeldgasse 25d)
8:30 – 09:00 Coffee & Breakfast
9:00 – 10:00 Keynotes
 

Free for All? Player Autonomy and Equitable Access to Playful Experiences
(Room: HS i7)
10:00 – 10:30 Coffeebreak
10:00 – 12:00 Doctoral Consortium
  (Room: HS i5)
10:30 – 12:00 Paper Session 4A:
Game Design III 		 Paper Session 4B:
Game AI II 
  (Room: HS i3)

Enhancing Player Satisfaction Through Personality-Based Narrative Adaptation in Digital Games
Auer and Lankes

The Many Views of Game-Related Experiences with the Experiential Tetrad
Soraine and Carette

Accessibility and Inclusion in the Game Industry: A position paper
Westin, Brusk and Palmquist

Thematization of actions in openworld action-adventure games
Junnila

 (Room: HS i7)

Slice of Life: A Social Physics Game with Interactive Conversations using Symbolically Grounded LLM-Based Generative Dialogue
Treanor, Samuel and Nelson

Playing RollerCoaster Tycoon with Reinforcement Learning (remote)
Campbell and Verbrugge

The Procedural Content Generation Benchmark: An Open-source Testbed for Generative Challenges in Games
Khalifa, Gallotta, Barthet, Liapis, Togelius and Yannakakis

Evaluating Large Language Models through Communication Games: An AgentBased Framework Using Werewolf in Unity
Poglitsch, Szakács and Pirker
12:00 – 13:30 Lunch
12:00 – 13:30 Doctoral Consortium Lunch
13:30 – 15:00 Games & Demo Session
  (Room: HS i6)
15:00 – 15:30 Coffeebreak
15:30 – 17:00 Games & Demo Session
(Room: HS i6)
17:00 – 20:00 Break
20:00 Conference Banquet
Schlossberg Restaurant

Conference Day 4

Friday, 18.04.2025
TU Graz, Campus Inffeldgasse 25d, 8010 Graz, Austria

8:30 – 17:00 Registration & Poster Session
  (Room: Lobby Inffeldgasse 25d)
8:30 – 09:00 Coffee & Breakfast
9:00 – 10:00 Keynotes
  (Room: HS i7)
10:00 – 10:30 Coffeebreak
10:30 – 12:00 Paper Session 5A:
Game Design IV		 Paper Session 5B:
Game Criticism I
  (Room: HS i3)

Lushness in Game Design: The Role of NonInteractive Visual Embellishments in Player Experience
Meiners, Reich, Gerling, Hicks and Alexandrovsky

Crunch on video game production: practices to avoid for healthier workplaces in Game Development
Bourscheid, Steil and da Silva Paixão

Understanding Disengagement From Competitive Multiplayer Games: An Exploratory Study of League of Legends
Seim, Strobel, Gerling and Alexandrovsky

“At first I wanted to design the exterior, but figured that it would most likely not be shown in-game” Game Engines as Sites For Creativity and Constraint in Higher Education
Healy

 (Room: HS i7)

Anti-Games, Fantasy Consoles, and the Rise of Speculative Game Development on Itch.io (remote)
Berge

Between Illusion and Reality: A Philosophical Reflection on the Fantasy Created by Video Games
Pan

Form and Function: Toward a Better Understanding of Design-Based Games (remote)
Sullivan, Salter, Stanfill and Wardrip-Fruin

Twitch Synchrony: The Emissions Impact of Streaming (remote)
Kerich
12:00 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 15:00 Paper Session 6A:
Game Criticism II		 Paper Session 6B:
Games Beyond Entertainment
  (Room: HS i7)

The Intersection of Play and History: Integrating Historical Content in Tabletop Role-Playing Games for Education
Petousi, Katifori, Sakellariadis, Servi, Kougioumtzian, Koutiva, Roussou and Ioannidis

Exploring the Purpose and Development of Academic Games: Analyzing Games Reported in FDG Publications from 2007 to 2024
Chen and Morrell

Temporal Collisions: On the Use of Narrative Conventions from Genre Fiction for LocationBased Cultural Heritage Games
Haahr, Nisi, Vreeke and Hargood

Shifting Genres: Limits of Video Game Genre Taxonomy in Roguelikes
Boucher, Telliel and Smith

 (Room: HS i3)

Dice Adventure: An Asymmetrical Collaborative Game for Exploring the Hybrid Teaming Effects
Zhang, Smith, Li, Dong, Harpstead and Maclellan

Evaluating the Impact of User and Learning Experience in Three Cultural Heritage VR Applications
Liu, Hargood, Tang and Hulusic

Mapping Practices of Academic Game Development
Yeung, Friehs and Gómez-Maureira

“I want to let them in”: Exploring Critical Consciousness Development through Roleplay and Reflection in “Papers, Please”
Turay, Baca Vázquez, To and Smith
15:00 – 15:30 Coffeebreak
15:30 – 17:00 Paper Session 7A:
Games Pedagogy (& GBE)		 Paper Session 7B:
Game Design V
  (Room: HS i7)

LEGO Prototyping in an Introductory Game Development Course
Horn

Game Design Games: Designing Games for Teaching Game Design
Wetzel

Routine, Twisty, and Queer: Pasts and Futures of Games Programming Pedagogy with No and Low Code Tools (remote)
Cox, Murray and Salter

 (Room: HS i3)

Building Story and Interest: How Lore and Atmosphere Affect Immersion Within an ARG (remote)
Cox, Forsting and Mosher

Trends in Gaming - Views of Industry Professionals and Game Scholars
Kultima

Toward Understanding Display Size for FPS Esports Aiming
Madhusudan, Spjut, Watson, Schneider, Boudaoud and Kim
17:00 – 17:30 Coffeebreak
17:30 – 18:00 Closing
(Room: HS i7)