About the Workshop on Research Prototyping in Games
This is a working workshop: the first half of the workshop is presentations, while the afternoon we will be breaking into groups to brainstorm and create prototypes for our research questions.
For this workshop, we invite participants to bring both their research questions and the prototypes built to answer them. The day will be dedicated to demonstration and discussion, with ample time for collaboration and comparison of practice, method and result.
Due to the growing complexity and system dependent nature of video games, prototyping has become an important part of the game design process. Prototypes give designers the ability to quickly test an idea for minimal cost in time and resources, and provide early feedback in the design process. However, prototyping is not an exact science; choosing the proper representation and determining which mechanics to abstract are an important part of the process and are not always obvious decisions. In games research, this problem is often compounded by the number of unknowns in both mechanics and design. The prototypes no longer focus on making the best possible game according to a design idea, but instead are created to explore a particular research question. Additionally, when creating a research prototype, it is important to design it with the evaluation in mind.
Important Dates
Paper submission:Mar 12, 2012
Notification to authors: Mar 25, 2012 (early registration is Mar 28)
Workshop held: May 29, 2012 (day before main conference)
Questions regarding the workshop can be sent to WRPG2012@gmail.com