Introduction:
One of the most important challenges faced by contemporary museums and cultural heritage institutions is to attract and invite young people. Since the privilege of youth is not to look deeply in the past, young people do not rate highly visits to museums to become acquainted with their cultural heritage. Moreover, targeting the CNN and MTV generation ith cultural heritage content requires appropriate methods directly aimed at this audience.
Young people like playing games and are accustomed to 3D interactive environments. Also creation of social communities around particular multiplayer game titles is a normal behavior of contemporary youngsters. Therefore, providing them with games, where along with entertainment, educational values are taken into account, seems to be an appropriate method for cultural heritage education. Thus, the role of games in the cultural heritage sector become more and more important.
However, what at first sight may be perceived as an easy task, in real life applications may be quite difficult. Putting a 3D first person shooting game into medieval times is not enough. Injecting educational content into games requires consideration of didactic elements, psychological issues, and last but not least, technological advances. Modern cultural heritage games should teach by playing, exploit historical and cultural context, and fascinate a user with more intelligent and exciting scenarios than just
“run and shoot everything that moves”. Unlimited possibilities arise with the application of adventure game scenarios, ubiquitous games, AR technology, and many, many more. Of course, games should still preserve a high “playability” factor, otherwise they may not be accepted by users and therefore do not fulfill expectations of game creators.
This special session will be a forum for researchers to exchange novel ideas regarding the use of games in cultural heritage
Papers accepted to the special session on Cultural Heritage Games should address, but may not be limited to the following topics:
• virtual reality games,
• augmented reality games and scenarios,
• educational games scenarios,
• ubiquitous games,
• serious games,
• use of mobile devices for entertainment,
• network and multiplayer games.
Session Organizers:
Dr Wojciech R. Wiza, Poznan University of Economics, PL
Dr Jacek Chmielewski, Poznan University of Economics, PL
Program Committee:
Bas Bogaerts, Vzw Playing the Past, NL
Marcello Carrozino, IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies, IT
Wojciech Cellary, Poznan University of Economics, PL
Thomas Connolly, University of the West of Scotland, UK
Arjan Egges, Utrecht Univeristy, NL
Martin White, University of Sussex, UK
[still expanding]
Submission Guidelines:
All contributions must be original, unpublished work. Papers submitted to the Special Session should follow the same style as regular DIMEA papers. Instructions for submitting a paper are available on the conference website. Submission of papers for the Special Sessions will be conducted through the conference on-line system (www.dimea2008.org). At least one author for each accepted paper must register for the conference and present the paper during the Special Session.
Important Dates:
Submission: May 20, 2008 (EXTENDED)
Notification: June 20, 2008
Camera-ready: June 30, 2008
