Schedule

Conference Day 1

Conference Day 2

Conference Day 3

Conference Day 4

MAP

Registration in Lobby H is at Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé 53, 1434 Copenhagen.

Conference Day 1

Monday, August 10, 2026

Title	Time	Location
Registration + coffee	08:00-09:00	Lobby H
Industry Masterclass: Alexis Jolis Desautels (Rational game design) Note: Due to limited space it is necessary to sign up for this event	09:00 – 18:00	AUD 15
Industry Masterclass: Erwin Kho (Art direction) Note: Due to limited space it is necessary to sign up for this event	09:00 – 18:00	AUD 16
Industry Masterclass: Graham McAllister (Team vision alignment) Note: Due to limited space it is necessary to sign up for this event	09:00 – 12:00	AUD 17
Academic workshop: Procedural Content Generation	09:00 – 18:00	AUD 6
Academic workshop: Researching Game Making	10:45 – 18:00	AUD 10
Academic workshop: Games and Archaeological Play	09:00 – 18:00	AUD 14
Academic workshop: Game Research Software System Re-use	13:00 – 18:00	Deck Meeting Room
Academic workshop: Eudaimonia	13:00 – 18:00	AUD 17

Evening activities
LARP 1: The Clown without a Heart by PhD Omi-peah Note: Due to limited space it is necessary to sign up for this event	19:30 – 23:00	AUD 15
Analog Assassination: Translating the Systemic Sandbox of Hitman into a Board Game by Ole Steiness	19:30 – 23:00	AUD 17
LARP 2: New Voices in Art by Martin Ericsson Note: Due to limited space it is necessary to sign up for this event	19:30 – 23:00	AUD 6

General Schedule & Breaks

Time	Event	Location
08:00	Registration + coffee	Lobby H
10:30	Coffee Break	Lobby H
12:00	Lunch (self catered)
14:30	Coffee Break	Lobby H
18:00	Dinner (self catered)

Conference Day 2

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Time	Track 1	Track 2	Parallel Events
08:00 – 09:00	Registration + Coffee Location: Lobby H
09:00 – 09:30	Opening Remarks Location: AUD 6
09:30 – 10:30	Keynote: Valentina Nisi Location: AUD 6
10:30 – 11:00	Coffee Break Location: Lobby H
11:00 – 12:30	Session 1: Game Criticism and Analysis (Narration and Rhetoric) Location: AUD 15 • Gender Division and the Reproduction of Identity Discourse in the Game Companion Industry Han and Fuller • Narrative Game Mechanics: An analysis of Undertale Tate • Playing the Model: Ideology, Bias, and the Rhetoric of LLM Games Kelly, Wardrip-Fruin and Carstensdottir • The Rhetorical Situation of Video Games Kennedy • Complicit by Design: Convergence and Alienation in Interactive Fourth Wall Breaks Pinto and Luz	Session 2: Game Analytics and Visualization Location: AUD 6 • “No Way, Did You See That Move?”: Constructing the Entertaining Spectacle in Game Live Streaming Ding and Mao • Playing with Data: A Systematic Review of Games for Visualization Literacy Kejstová and Kriglstein • “What’s the point?”: How Players Use And Perceive Commendation Systems in Online Multiplayer Games Ioannou, Frommel, Sevinçli and Poeller • A Time Series Causal Analysis of Engagement Factors in Live Streaming Using Continuous-Time Structural Equation Modeling Uemura and Saga • Exploring Player Behaviour in Counter-Strike Global Offensive as a Mobility Problem Drucker, Stanley and Fitsner
12:30 – 14:00	Lunch (self-organized)
14:00 – 15:30	Session 3: Game Design 1 Location: AUD 15 • Queer Failure and the Politics of Emotion in Chinese Visual Novel Games: A Case Study of Sweet Home Han • The Queer Art of Interpellation: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley and Gabriel Massan’s Video Games Pacheco • Angry Men, Pretty Women: Gendered Emotional Design in MOBA and Hero-Shooter Games Giusti, Sevinçli, Masthoff and Poeller • Game Development for Diverse Academic Backgrounds: Designing an Inclusive Pedagogy Fowler, Dodd, Zaini, Bai, Mai and Khosmood • Transdiegetic Sound in Narrative-Driven Strategy Games Cai and Carstensdottir • How Diegetic Maps Shape Wayfinding, Storytelling, and Immersion Dormann and Wallner	Session 4: Gen AI (Maps, Levels, and Behaviour) Location: AUD 6 • Choice Aesthetics: Decision Trees and Political Possibility in Detroit: Become Human Maycock • With the Stroke of a Brush: A Generative-AI Smart Brush for Instant Game Map Editing Gnatyuk, Koriukina, Levoshevich, Nurminskiy and Wallner • Ctrl + Create: Empowering Creative Control in AI-Driven Rapid Level Design Baars, Akker, Chatzimparmpas and Pfau • Group-Supervised Contrastive Learning for Semantic PCG Map Representations Xie and Won • Large Language Models for Behavior Trees Generation in Unreal Engine Gerbeaud, Lorcet, Campan, Dockhorn, Wolf, Lherbier and Addoum
15:30 – 16:00	Break Location: Lobby H
16:00 – 17:30	Session 5: Games Beyond Entertainment (Serious Games) Location: AUD 15 (Withdrawn: Towards an Interactive Criticism: Language Games and Parser-based Scholarship Miller) • Designing Serious Games on Contemporary Music: A Case Study on Poème Électronique Murtas, Rodas and Lombardo • Communicating STEM Teaching Careers Through Persuasive Game Design: A Focus Group Study Saiger, Cutting, Snell, Thompson-Lee, Slawson and Klassen • A Theory-Informed Narrative-Centered Model to Foster AI Literacy and Biomedical Career Interest Mott, Vandenberg, Penilla, Lester and Ozer • AI-Supported and Socially-Augmented Gamification to Overcome Behavioral Barriers in Sustainable Cooking Ghotbabadi, Seif El-Nasr and Hodel	Session 6: Game Development Location: AUD 6 • Interactive Animation: Affective Involvement at the Convergence of Games and Animation Caravello • Adaptive Time Delay for Improving Player Experience and Fairness in First-Person Shooter Games with Network Latency Tokey, Boudaoud, Spjut and Claypool • Impact of Frametime Spikes on Performance and Quality of Experience in Platformer Games Tokey, Boudaoud, Spjut and Claypool • Pedalling Without Penalty: Investigating the Effects of Exercise Intensity on Cybersickness in VR Cycling Tan, Li, Lange-Nawka, Wünsche and Wen • LLMs are the Ideal Candidate for Mixed-Initiative Game Design Pillar Workflows Geheeb, Schwarz, Dyrda and Groh	DJ + Snacks Location: Foyer Games + Demos Location: AUD 16, AUD 17 List of games and demos. Posters Location: AUD 15, Foyer Read the posters here.
17:30 – 19:00	Games + Demos + Drinks + DJ Games and Demos: AUD 16 & AUD 17 DJ and drinks: Foyer and AUD 15
19:00	Dinner (self-organized)

Conference Day 3

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Time	Track 1	Track 2	Parallel Events
08:30 – 09:30	Registration + Coffee Location: Lobby H
09:30 – 10:30	Keynote: Miguel Sicart Location: AUD 6
10:30 – 11:00	Coffee Break Location: Lobby H
11:00 – 12:30	Session 7: Game Design (Virtual and Open Worlds) Location: AUD 15 • Playable folklore – Digital games and the representation of folklore and cultural heritage Springer • Playful Cultural Heritage: Exploring Embodied Interaction of Museum Artifacts Paulus and Pan • When Worlds Collide: How Real Collisions and Fear of Colliding Influence the User Experience in VR Ring, Pricken and Masuch • SpaceTimeCraft: A Strong Concept for Designing and Analyzing Embodied Movement in Virtual Environments Miltiadis • Transient Weapons, Ambivalent Play: A Case Study of Durability in Breath of the Wild Lankes and Geiger • Ludoforming strategies in small-scale open worlds. The design philosophy of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio Huang and Barroso	Session 8: Game Artificial Intelligence – Learning Location: AUD 6 • NeuroPatrol: Designing Inclusive BCI-VR Games for the Metastable Brain Dynamics Qiang and Hao • (Perlin) Noise as AI coordinator Xu and Verbrugge • Finite Automata Extraction: Low-data World Model Learning as Programs from Gameplay Video Goel, Guzdial and Sarkar • Improving Sample Efficiency in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Simulated Football Games via Exploration Baghi, Sjölund, Bergdahl, Gisslen and Sestini • Vanquish Your Past: Shifted Imitation Learning in Hades Lin, Bakkes and Pfau	Doctoral Consortium (DC) Location: AUD 17 Schedule.
12:30 – 14:00	Lunch (self-organized)
14:00 – 15:30	Session 9: Game Criticism and Analysis (Through History and Back) Location: AUD 15 • The Partial Truth about Virtual Objects: How Users Reason About and Explore Intentionally Simplified Environments Juul, Hammar, Murphy and Canossa • Thrown into Dreams: The Ontology of Oneiric Worlds in Video Games Li and Li • Christianity in Horror Videogames: A Qualitative Content Analysis Zolnierski, Jonsson and Lankoski • The Unbearable Vacuity of Game Mechanics Horn, Holopainen, Aarseth, Grabarczyk and Xiao • Bending the Arc of (Ludo)History: Discursive Contestations Within the (Hi)Story-Design-Space of Crusader Kings III Lundblade	Session 10: Toxicity Location: AUD 6 • Digital Museums in games as Hybrid Spaces: Evolutionary Narratives and Player Participation in Animal Crossing: New Horizons Huang • De-Normalizing Toxic Behaviour in Competitive Online Games: Players’ Perceptions of Communication, Unsolicited Advice, and Bystander Intervention in League of Legends Kukshinov and Poeller • Toxic Behavior in League of Legends Through the Lens of Psychological Reactance Theory Sevinçli, Ioannou and Poeller • Toxic Pings: An Interview Study on Hostile Nonverbal Communication Among Teammates in DotA 2 and League of Legends Zheng, Healy, Wang and Farzan • Prometheas: A System for Promoting Prosocial Behavior in Online Multiplayer Games Vrettis, Pfau and Frommel	Doctoral Consortium (DC) Location: AUD 17
15:30 – 16:00	Break Location: Lobby H
16:00 – 17:30	Session 11: Games Beyond Entertainment (Movement Games) Location: AUD 15 • Playing with Reality: Game-Like Structures in Reality Television Chang, Yan, Zhang and Lee • BeatWeights: A VR Dumbbell Exergame on Music, Rhythm, and Motivation in Strength Training Qian, Arachchige, Zhou, Lianto, Wang and Wünsche • Rhythm Walker: The Effect of Music Choice and Rhythm in Game-music Integration for Exergames Creed, Shu, Guo, Wang, Lange-Nawka and Wuensche • Designing for Deferral: A New Lens on Gamification Zhou, Li and Zhang • Experiencing the environmental impact of AI with the VR serious game Outsourced Holland, Maksymchuk, Saxena, Munir, Liutkus, Hsieh, Zaidi, Kegeleers and Bidarra	Session 12: Gen AI (Generate Content, Behaviour, and Experience) Location: AUD 6 • Interpretability of Design Fusion: Framework Construction to Improve Semi-autonomous AI-NPC Interactive Experience Xu • High-quality generation of dynamic game content via small language models: A proof of concept Munk, Valdivia and Burelli • Generating Clue-Driven Investigative Game Narratives with Large Language Models Kumaran, Smith, Min, Spain, Mott and Lester • Performance Of Large Language Models As Hearthstone Agents Poglitsch, Bardakji and Pirker • Quest of Aivengarde: Comparative Study of Player Experience Across LLM Dialogue Systems Rimer, Petersen, Ploug and Scirea	Doctoral Consortium (DC) Location: AUD 17
18:30 – 23:00	Gala Dinner at Aamann’s Køkken ➔ Concert GOTO80 ➔ Drinks Werkstatt Address: Aamann’s Refshalevej 163A, 1432 København Note: Contact Christiane Thomsen before August 1st in case of dietary constrains.

Conference Day 4

Thursday, August 13, 2026

Time	Track 1	Track 2	Parallel Events
08:30 – 09:30	Registration + Coffee Location: Lobby H
09:30 – 10:30	Keynote: Tim Garbos Location: AUD 6
10:30 – 11:00	Coffee Break Location: Lobby H
11:00 – 12:30	Session 13: Game Criticism and Analysis (Ecosystems and Libraries) Location: AUD 15 • The meaning of games is felt not inferred: Stop interpreting games as arguments Jorgensen and Halstrøm • Not a Game, Yet on Steam: Reception of a Game Art Project in a Mainstream Gaming Ecosystem Vasquez • Building and Burning Fandom Libraries: Maintenance in Transnational Media Ecologies through English-speaking Ensemble Stars!! Fans Wu, Nguyen, Parent and Ramos • Materializing Design Knowledge with the Method for Design Materialization Khaled and Bethancourt • LAVA: Large-scale Archaeological Videogame Analysis Aycock, Biittner, Olguin and Asad	Session 14: Game Artificial Intelligence – Generating Location: AUD 6 • Play as Interface, Evolving HCI Through Game Verbs Grace • Representing and Generating Levels Over Time through Playtrace Reconstructive Partitioning Halina and Guzdial • High Dimensional Procedural Content Generation Xu and Verbrugge • An Exploration of Collision-based Enemy Morphology Generation Gonzalez and Guzdial • How Far Can We Go with Pixels Alone? A Pilot Study on Screen-Only Navigation in Commercial 3D ARPGs Xu, Bugti and Verbrugge	How Industry and Academia Can Co-Author the Future of Play Location: AUD 16 • Kim Krogh (Avalanche Studios) • Henrique Galvan (Flashbulb Games) • Cecilie Mosfeldt (Raw Power Labs) • Annakaisa Kultima (Aalto University) • Johannes Pfau (Utrecht University) • Anders Drachen (University of Southern Denmark)
12:30 – 14:00	Townhall – The Future of FDG (Lunch bags) Location: AUD 6
14:00 – 15:30	Session 15: Games Beyond Entertainment Location: AUD 15 • Waiting, Failing, Caring: Chronic Illness as Play in “you’re just imagining it” (npckc 2025) Touzos • Between Player Experience and Experimental Control: Designing a Research Game for Cognitive Psychology Yeung, Friehs, Kuhnke, Hartwigsen, Kiefer and Gómez-Maureira • Games for Children with Disabilities in Educational Contexts: A Scoping Review Liu and Fowler • AURA: Automated Analysis and Reporting of Therapeutically Applied Table-top Role-Playing Games Melhart, Dockhorn and Drachen • Talking Wildfire: How Discourse in Serious Games Shapes Collaborative Learning and Preparedness Escarce Junior, Johns, Shukla, Lee, Hendawy, Jul, Isbister and Seif El-Nasr	Session 16: Game Design 2 Location: AUD 6 • Cashing In on More Than Learning: Digital Games and Audience Experience in a Cultural History Money Exhibition Willumsen • Behavior Ranking Systems in Online Multiplayer Video Games: An Analysis & Design Space Vrettis, Pfau and Frommel • Designed to Fail: Puzzle Game Developers’ Perspectives on Designing Challenge and Failure Anderson, Eshgarf, Carpenter and DeLiema • Actions And Activities As Game Design Building Blocks For Varied Theme-Centric Gameplay Junnila • “Several Hundred Freaks and No One Else”: Practitioner Perspectives on Alternative Controller Design and Development in the MAGFest Indie Arcade Community Truesdell and Faas
15:30 – 16:00	Closing Remarks Location: AUD 6