Conferences

CGAMES, 22nd-24th November, DIT Aungier Street, Dublin 2. Heading to my third conference this week, not on the back of any effort or work this time but as a volunteer. Gonna slide in and network for all I'm worth with the minimum of effort expended. Tie up a pretty good year on the self-promotion of my research front...

First off I wrote a paper, User-System-Experience Model for User Centred Design in Computer Games, expressing my understanding of gameplay, adaptivity, and the play experience as it stood. Quite a lot to squeeze into a little 5 page piece - took me longer to edit down than to write up! Accepted to Adaptive Hypermedia 2006, a pretty shit-hot conference even if I was only part of the Doctorial Consortium stream. Nice freebies, anyway :D
Next the reading I was doing led me to look at Information theory and eventually do some experiments on player modelling in Pacman using predictive methods - Using Decision Theory for Player Analysis in Pacman. Wrote that up for a promising-looking workshop in Roma (a favoured place, although more for the people than the locale), organised by the right honourable Yannkakis.
Then in swift succesion, writing up the 1 year confirmation report, attending AH'06 and back again for my confirmation hearing.
A summer of - not very much at all, but solidified my ideas on games, players and experience as information systems. Now it has all been turned into a journal paper (link when i get published!) and seminar. This will form the theoretical underpinning to my practical work, and there is a much clearer idea behind the point of it all than there was when
Thereafter, attended the workshop in Roma (proceedings here), then had myself a holiday in Venice (che bellissimo!). Formed some resolutions with the other delegates about the value of the workshop (it was the inaugural year, the form of its future was under question), leading to the formation of the 'Optimising Player Satisfaction in Computer Games' mailing list. Also I wrote a review on the C^3 blog.
Now that the journal and seminar are nearly done with, its almost time to begin a new phase of the PhD, with practical overtaking theoretical and coding trumping reading. I hope! I could wallow in papers and books forever, its a steep-sided slops pit of knowledge and I do manage to be productive within it.
But the little gods of computing demand a sacrificial offering, and I am not yet wont to follow the Lightbringer and carve out my own domain. So next up - Pacman!

Pacman HOOOOOOOO!