Special Issue of Simulation & Gaming: Service Design Games (May 2014)

Deadline for submissions: 31 May 2014
Website: http://sg.sagepub.com/ and http://www.unice.fr/sg/

Service Design may, to an outside eye, seem an unlikely area in which to use games and play. However, the fields of Service Innovation, Service Design, Participatory Design and Co-Design have a strong tradition of using games and playful activities to improve existing services and innovate new ones. Games are used with the staff, management, customers and other stakeholders of service providers. Yet these games have so far been developed, deployed and analyzed in relative isolation from the research conducted within game studies and the study of simulation/games. The aim of this symposium (special issue) is to fill this academic void by bringing together, consolidating and promoting contributions from service design games and placing them into dialogue with work in the sibling fields. Thus, the study of service design games will also contribute to simulation and game studies and design worldwide, and will in turn assist service designers in making their games even more efficient and interesting than they are now.

Think Design Play: 5th Intl Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Conference (Sep 2011, Netherlands)

Dates: 14-17 September 2011
Hosted by the Utrecht School of the Arts in the Netherlands
Website: www.gamesconference.org
Deadline for submission: 21 February 2011

After Leveling Up in the Netherlands (2003), Changing Views in Canada (2005), Situated Play in Japan (2007) and Breaking New Ground in England (2009) the 5th DiGRA Conference returns to Utrecht for Think Design Play.

The goal of the DiGRA conference is to advance the study of games and playfulness. DiGRA 2011 seeks to connect game research to the creative industries and society by fostering the development of an integrated practice of game research, design, engineering, entrepreneurship and play. The conference is designed as a physical and online playground for meaningful dialogue between all players in the field of games. Whilst the conference will include the presentation of (peer-reviewed) papers and practice, invited talks and workshops, we are also very interested in supporting alternative forms and processes through which to participate and stimulate debate and discussion.