Quick Facts
CHI 2024 will be a hybrid conference from May 11-16, 2024 in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, USA.
Important Dates
All times are in Anywhere on Earth (AoE) time zone. When the deadline is day D, the last time to submit is when D ends AoE. Check your local time in AoE.
- Submission deadline: Thursday, January 18th, 2024
- Notification: Thursday, February 8th, 2024
- e-rights completion deadline: Thursday, February 15th, 2024
- Publication-ready deadline: Thursday, February 29th, 2024
- TAPS Closes: Thursday, March 7th, 2024
Submission Details
- Online submission: PCS Submission System
- Template: ACM Master Article Submission Templates (single column)
- Student(s) must be currently enrolled in a university or college at the time of the initial submission deadline. For further details see the Eligibility and Guidelines section below.
- List of up to 2 supervisors/advisors with affiliation
Submission Format
- Extended abstract (maximum of 5 pages excluding references), video presentation, video preview, and proof of student status. Both poster and abstract submissions must meet SIGCHI accessibility requirements. See details in the Preparing Your Student Game Competition Submission section below.
- Submissions are not anonymous and should include all author names, affiliations, and contact information.
Selection Process
Message from the Student Game Competition Chairs
The Student Game Competition (SGC) is a forum for undergraduate and graduate students to showcase their game design and game development, and improve their communication skills while competing for prizes at CHI 2024. The competition provides the opportunity to showcase Innovative Interfaces, and Transformative & Transgressive Play.
The Student Game Competition has the following goals:
- to give undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to share their game ideas and insights at CHI in a special forum that provides visibility for their work
- to recognize and reward outstanding game design
- for students to receive feedback about their game design and presentation, from a panel of distinguished judges from industry and academia
- to give students the opportunity to meet with and interact with CHI attendees to share ideas, gain new insights, and understand possible practical applications
- to give students an opportunity to sharpen their communication skills
Eligibility and Guidelines
- Student(s) must be currently enrolled in a university or college at the time of the initial submission deadline.
- If the submission is selected, the designated presenter must have active ACM student membership and register to attend the CHI 2024 conference.
Funding
Students can apply for a Gary Marsden Travel Award. The application can be filed as early as 9th January, even before submitting the abstract.
Student Game Competition Submission
A submission to the Student Game Competition should present a recently developed student game project in any of the topic areas covered by CHI. Submissions should be original work that is neither in submission elsewhere nor already published in CHI or another conference or journal.
We invite submissions to the categories Innovation Interface and Transformation & Transgressive Play. Both categories will be judged individually.
- Innovative Interfaces invites games that push the boundaries of game design and game interface practice. For example by using gesture input, multi-touch, multi-screen or haptics; voice input; use of sensors such as breathing or heart rate; augmented reality games, mixed reality games, novel use of game AI and machine learning techniques; or explore novel, thought-provoking forms of interaction.
Games submitted to this category must include a section labeled “Interface Innovation” that clearly describes the novelty of the game and positions the within prior work from the CHI community at large, e.g., CHI, CHI PLAY, DIS, IMX, MM. - Transformative & Transgressive Play aims to extend the boundaries of play. We invite independent games, art games, and political games as well as gamified/playbourised systems that explore the role of play in non-gaming settings. For example, educational games, games for sustainability, games for health, safety, or urban planning, and other economic, cultural, and societal sectors. Games submitted to this category create innovative gameplay for non-gaming settings, and critically reflect on their role in an applied context.
Games submitted to this category must include a section labeled “Critical Reflection” that describes what challenges the game addresses and considers both the potential to help and/or cause harm.
We reserve the right to reject the submission should the respective sections not be included.
Please note that it is not mandatory to submit a completely playable game. We encourage submissions of innovative ideas, speculative/provocative game designs, and early prototypes. Submission of speculative and early prototypes should provide justification for the readiness level of their work. Speculative submissions require the simulation, e.g., following a Wizard-of-Oz approach, to demonstrate gameplay. The materials should enable the committee to clearly understand how the game is played.
Preparing Your Student Game Competition Submission
Student Game Competition submissions must be submitted via the PCS submission system by the deadline. The submission must have the following four components, and meet the accessibility requirements at CHI. If you have any questions or concerns about creating accessible submissions, please contact the Accessibility Chairs at accessibility@chi2024.acm.org.
To participate in the Student Game Competition, submit an extended abstract, a video preview, and video teaser to the Student Game Competition category via the Precision conference submission system:
The submission must be a maximum length of 5 pages. References are not included in this page limit. Please include
- An overview of the game, including motivation, background, description of the game and the expected experience, with possibly screenshots/images of play.
- A section on Interface Innovation or Critical Reflection (see above).
- Acknowledgement of any assistance drawn from outside the student team (e.g., advisors, domain experts, existing solutions, users)
- The initial submission for this venue is *not* anonymized. Please include the name of the author(s) and the acknowledgment section as they will appear in the camera-ready version of the abstract.
The video presentation should show a maximum of 4-minutes of gameplay video displaying both the screen (if applicable) and the player interacting with the game. For speculative submissions, a Wizard-of-Oz implementation of the game including a written justification can also be submitted. Guidelines for creating video submissions can be found at in the Technical Requirements and Guidelines for Videos at CHI.
The video preview is expected to give an overview of the game in 1-2 minutes. We expect a teaser highlighting the motivation of the game within the respective category, i.e., Innovative Interface or Transformative & Transgressive Play.
Submit proof of student status by sending a note signed by your academic supervisor verifying all of the following information:
- your university
- whether you were a graduate (i.e., Masters or Doctoral level) or undergraduate (i.e., Bachelor level) when the work was done
- confirm that you are either currently registered in an academic program full-time, or will return to be a student in the upcoming 180 days (starting submission deadline).
For examples of extended abstracts, we recommend checking accepted submissions from previous years. You can find them in the past CHI proceedings on the ACM Digital Library or on SIGCHI.org (open access). Select “Extended Abstract” and look for “Student Game Competition” session. Videos of finalist submissions can be found here: 2023, 2022, and 2021. You should watch these for inspiration on how to create a video of a game pitch.
(Optional) Apply for a Gary Marsden Travel Award
Students may apply for a Gary Marsden Travel Award at the Gary Marsden Travel Award page. Note that the Travel Award’s application deadline is on 9 January. It is possible to apply even before submitting the abstract.
Metadata Integrity
All submission metadata, including required fields in PCS like author names, affiliations, and order, must be complete and correct by the submission deadline. This information is crucial to the integrity of the review process and author representation. No changes to metadata after this deadline will be allowed.
Accessibility
Authors are strongly encouraged to work on improving the accessibility of their submissions before peer review begins, using recommendations found in the Guide to an Accessible Submission for their paper and in the technical requirements for video content for their video. For any questions or concerns about creating accessible submissions, please contact the Accessibility Chairs at accessibility@chi2024.acm.org.
Selection Process
Submissions will be evaluated by a minimum of three reviewers in a two stage process.
In stage one, all submissions will be reviewed and five finalists in each category will be invited to attend CHI 2024.
Scale for stage one:
- Motivation: 5 points
- Background and related work: 5 points
- Game design: 10 points
- Argumentation for player experience: 10 points
- Innovation/Critical Reflection: 10 points
- Oral presentation: 5 points
- Visual presentation: 5 points
In stage two, the finalists the finalists are expected to send at least one team member to attend the conference, present their work, take part in the final round, and the award ceremony. During a public session at CHI 2024, students will have the opportunity to present their work to a panel of judges (5 minutes) and engage in a brief conversation about their work (5 minutes).
The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.
There is no strict limit on team size. However, team size will be taken into consideration in the competition. Larger teams will be expected to present a more ambitious project. There is no limit to the number of teams that may compete from any given university or organization. However, one student cannot be part of multiple teams.
Confidentiality of submissions is maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference or the release of conference abstracts in the ACM Digital Library, with the exception of title and author information which will be published on the website prior to the conference. Submissions should not contain sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at publication time.
Up to twenty-five submissions in total will be chosen to participate in the competition at CHI 2024.
Reviewers
- Katja Rogers, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Rilla Khaled, Concordia University, Canada
- Melissa Rogerson, University of Melbourne, Australia
- Esteban Clua, Fluminense Federal University, Brazil
- Lanie Dixon, Ubisoft, Canada
- Madison Klarkowski, University of Queensland, Australia
- Young Yim Doh, KAIST, Korea
- Guo Freeman, Clemson University, USA
- Oğuz ‘Oz’ Buruk, Tampere University, Finland
- Mirjam Vosmeer, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands
Upon Acceptance of Your Submission
Student Game Competition abstracts will be archived in the ACM Digital Library. Publishing in the Student Game Competition will not constrain future submissions (e.g., as a conference paper or a journal article). Authors of all accepted submissions will receive instructions on how to submit the publication-ready copy of their abstract. Deadline and instructions regarding publication-ready submissions are emailed to accepted authors. This email will also contain instructions of how to notify the Student Game Competition and Accessibility Chairs of any necessary accommodations.
Contact authors of accepted papers will receive instructions on how to prepare and submit a final version by the Publication-Ready Deadline. If the authors are unable to meet these requirements by the Publication-Ready deadline, the venue Chairs will be notified and may be required to remove the paper from the program.
The publication-ready version has to follow the LaTeX and Word templates from ACM. Should you need technical assistance, please direct your technical query to: publications@chi2024.acm.org.
At the Conference
The team will present their work, take part in the second stage of the competition, and the award ceremony. During a public session at CHI 2024, students will have the opportunity to present their work to a panel of judges (5 minutes) and engage in a brief conversation about their work (5 minutes).
In addition to the scale used in stage one, the scale for evaluating the conference presentation of the research includes:
- Knowledge of innovation/critical area: 15 points
- Perceived player experience: 10 points
- Presentation: 10 points
All finalists will receive a Certificate of Recognition. The winning entry in each of the two categories will be recognized at the closing plenary session of the CHI 2024 conference. All teams will be mentioned on the conference website.
In-person attendance
The CHI 2024 Student Game Competition relies on in-person attendance, so that all students can benefit most from the experience. Accepted submissions are expected to attend CHI 2024 to participate in the Student Game Competition. If you have an exceptional circumstance which prevents your in-person attendance, please contact the Chairs.
Competition Judges
A distinguished panel of judges from across the CHI community will be convened to discuss finalists’ presentations and select the finalist.
After the Conference
Accepted Student Game Competition abstracts will be distributed in the CHI Conference Extended Abstracts. They will be placed in the ACM Digital Library, where they will remain accessible to thousands of researchers and practitioners worldwide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I submit to the Student Game Competition and submit the same work in parallel with other tracks (e.g., Late-breaking work)?
For each work, authors must choose only one track and submit their submissions to a single track. Any concurrent submissions must be declared and should follow ACM policies on Redundant Publication or Self-Plagiarism. Any duplicate submissions across tracks will be rejected.
Can high school students submit to Student Game Competition?
Unfortunately, no. The CHI Student Game Competition limits participation to undergraduate and graduate students.
Can I reuse the content of my Student Game Competition paper in my future paper?
The copyright of the content in the Extended Abstracts is typically retained by the authors, not assigned to the ACM. Thus, the authors may reuse their content.
Suppose the authors plan to reuse the content as a part of their future paper. In that case, we recommend reaching out to the paper chairs or editors of the target venue to clarify the re-publishability early on. Their decision will depend on the policies at the time of your future submission. For the CHI conferences, relevant policies are the ACM policies on Prior Publication and Simultaneous Submissions, Guidelines and Criteria for Evaluation of Submissions for ACM Publications, and Policy on Plagiarism, Misrepresentation, and Falsification.
According to these policies, as of 2024, material published in a semi-archival, widely disseminated publication, such as the CHI Extended Abstracts, should not be republished unless the work has been “significantly” revised. A significant revision would contain at least 25% unpublished material and amplify or clarify the original material. These are subjective measures left to the interpretation of the reviewers and committee members – authors are wise to revise well beyond the Policy guidelines. Whenever submitting material that has partially appeared in a widely disseminated publication, it is good practice to cite the prior publication and explicitly state the differences between the new and prior material.