The GALA conf 2015 took place from December 9 to December 11 in the beautiful setting of the Faculty of Engineering, La Sapienza University, Rome. The growing interest in the field of Serious Games was certified by the over 70 participants who contributed to the success of the conference with their high-quality papers, posters and lively discussions.
The first day of the conference was dedicated to four interesting workshops:
- – Pergamon Pervasive Game
- – Proto World Tutorial
- – Games for Mobility
- – Games for Health
After a great start on Wednesday, day two of the conference started with the greetings of the chairs of the conference: Remco Veltkamp (University of Utrecht) and Alessandro De Gloria (University of Genoa). The keynote speaker of the day was Marco Marsella, Deputy Head of the Univt Inclusion, Skills and Youth (G4) of the CONNECT Directorate-General of the European Commission. In his talk, he illustrated the engagement of the UE in the field of SGs, introducing winning financed projects and future calls.
The first session of the main conference (chair: Matthew Dagget, MIT – USA) was focused on game design, followed by a session on Curricular Games introduced by Wim Westera (Open University – NL). After the lunch break, a second session dedicated to Serious Game Design was presented by Sylvester Arnab (DMLL Coventry – GB), followed by “Games for Rehabilitation” (chair Francesco Bellotti – University of Genoa –IT) and the last session of the day on Pedagogy for SGs. During lunch and coffee breaks, there was time to enjoy the poster session.
The highlight of the second day of the GALA conference was the SG Awards ceremony. We had the honor to present the winners in the categories Business (1st place: Totem Learning for Unlock: Leadership; 2nd place: Interactive 4D for Ecalling-game) and Academy (1st place: Charles University Prague for Czechoslovakia 38-89; 2nd place Zippyware for Rififi at Daisy Town) and enjoyed the presence of Alexis Lacapelle from Interactive 4D and Lukas Kolek from the Charles University Prague).
Afterwards, the participants concluded the intense day with a delicious dinner.The third and last day of GALA conf 2015 started with the keynote of Jung Hyun Han (Korea University – South Korea) who illustrated the state-of-the-art of Serious Games in Asia. The first session of the day on “Analytics and Decision Making” in Serious Games was chaired by Helmut Hlavacs (University of Vienna, AUT), followed by several papers on “Serious Games for disadvantaged children, presented by Margarida Romero (University Laval, Canada). The afternoon sessions were dedicated to “Serious Games Tools” (chair: Jannicke Baalsrud-Hauge – BIBA Bremen, GER), “Serious Game design” (chair: Harald Warmelink, HTK University of the Arts Utrecht – NL) and “Games for Elderlies” (chair: Riccardo Berta, University of Genoa – IT).
For more details and the complete program see the conference homepageThe proceedings of the conference will be published as soon as possible by Springer LNCS series; selected papers will be published in the IJSG.