Games and Play SIG: Engaging Small Developer Communities

The Games-and-Play community has thrived at ACM SIGCHI with a consistent increase in games- and play-related submissions across research papers, workshops, posters, demos, and competitions. The community has attracted a significant number of academic researchers, students, and practitioners to CHI conferences in recent years. CHI 2018 is being held in Montréal, a major game development hub. Montréal is not only a home for major game studios but also more than 100 smaller game studios. In line with the “Engage With CHI” spirit of CHI 2018, this SIG aims to engage the Games and Play community in a discussion about the directions that we can take to advance towards demographics that will benefit from HCI games research but are currently underrepresented: small, independent developers, non-profit organizations, and academics that create mobile games, games for health, games for change, and/or educational games.