Category: games

Foundations of Digital Games 2026 Call for Papers

No, not the final logo!We will be hosting the ACM conference Foundations of Digital Games 2026 conference here at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen August 10-13 2026.

And the call for papers is out now: https://fdg2026.org/call-for-papers/

Hope to see you (and your paper) at FDG’26.

 

Important Dates

All deadlines are at 11:59pm (23:59) Anywhere on Earth (AoE).
Note that due to proximity to the holidays, there will be no extensions!

• Workshop, Competition, and Panel Proposal Submissions: 21 November 2025

• Abstract Deadline (for Regular Papers): 5 December 2025

• Regular Paper Submission Deadline: 15 December 2025

• Regular Paper Notifications: 1 February 2026

• Late-Breaking Short Papers & Games/Demos Deadline: 30 March 2026

• Doctoral Consortium Deadline: 30 March 2026

Will AI Destroy Consulting?

AI Rule no. 1: Cynical writers use AI.

Will AI destroy consulting firms? I enjoy this story where Deloitte have admitted that their report on “Targeted Compliance Framework Assurance Review” for the Australian government was written partly by AI.

Long consulting reports are likely the most cynical and vacuous writing there is, so of course AI will be used.

But I sincerely wonder what this will do to consulting? Will it mean that CEOs will just use AIs for their reporting? Why would anyone pay millions for work/AI slop?

Or is it, just as likely, that consulting firms will charge even higher fees for their special human touch (still written by AI)?

For Svend Juul, 1940-2025

Svend Juul, 1940-2025My father at 20 years old

My father died this summer. He lived a long life, leaving four children and five grandchildren whom he loved dearly. He was active to the very end, updating his epidemiology textbook this spring.

My father caught a long period of history, born a month after the beginning of World War II in Denmark, seeing the German troops leave when he was five, studying medicine, becoming the first employee at the new institute of Social Medicine at the University of Aarhus in 1970, and being part of the development of the field of public health, and indeed of the Danish health care system. His most popular book is the introduction to epidemiology, now in its fourth edition.

I once asked my father why he had chosen the field of medicine? “To save the people.” He became a researcher, with a skill in study setups and statistical analysis, at first programmed on punch cards and mainframes, but always interested in how to solve problems, gather data, and gain new knowledge.

With my sister and me, 1976I think I picked up two main things from him. First, that changing the world, such as by saving and helping people become healthier, requires genuine humility and curiosity: Even if you have a strong idea of how the world works – a hypothesis – you must set up a test that can prove you wrong, and you must accept the results. Though I work in a different and less immediately important field, I think about how to genuinely ask questions and how to truly take in what the world is telling me in return.

Second, my father was funny, allergic to pompousness and sensitive to the ironies of life, openly annoyed by bad manuals, and he would sometimes write the new improved manual himself. I learned that it is OK to be serious and lighthearted at the same time, and that you can use your annoyance to make things better.

He was also a modest man who would contribute his statistical expertise to the work of others and worry less about citations and web presence. I have set up a page with his publications at jesperjuul.net/svendjuul

My father at 84 years old

It is disorienting not being able to call my father, not being able to discuss a recent event, not being able to run a back-of-the-envelope calculation of energy efficiency,  planning, or especially health by him. Part of me can simulate some of what he would say, but it really is not the same.

At the end, my father suffered from an interminable list of ailments, but he was proud when doctors confessed to having read his epidemiology textbook in class, and proud that he had taught doctors and nurses, gathered and analyzed the data, and helped build the Danish public health system that was now treating him.

Thank you

Open call for PhD projects

At the Royal Danish Academy we have an open call for PhD projects, and yes, it could be game and design-related.

The Royal Danish Academy hereby invites pre-qualification proposals for the 2025 call “PhD education outside the universities” (DFF – The Danish Independent Research Fund).

The 2025-call will be announced by DFF in June. We expect to be allowed to support up to three proposals. Only proposals for academic research within architecture, design or conservation will be taken into consideration.

The deadline for pre-qualification applications is May 15 2025 at noon.

Selected applicants are expected to engage in collaboration with a supervisor and the administration of the Royal Danish Academy when preparing the full proposal for DFF.

There is an online information session on April 22nd. Read more here: https://candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationInit.aspx/?cid=5001&departmentId=7810&ProjectId=187913

 

Interviewed in The American Journal of Play

The American Journal of Play has kindly interviewed me for their latest issue.

If you are interested in my thoughts on the field, and in me summarizing my own history, this is a great piece.

It is an honor but also disorienting to have reached the advanced stage of looking back on my career. Didn’t I just start (checks watch)?

Here is the direct link to the interview.

The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully by Matthew Farber and Tracy Fullerton

The Well-read game book coverI am happy to welcome Matthew Farber and Tracy Fullerton’s wonderful new book The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully to the Playful Thinking series!

How players evoke personal and subjective meanings through a new theory of player response.

In The Well-Read Game, Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber explore the experiences we have when we play games: not the outcomes of play or the aesthetics of formal game structures but the ephemeral and emotional experiences of being in play. These are the private stories we tell ourselves as we play, the questions we ask, and our reactions to the game’s intent. These experiences are called “readings” because they involve so many of the aspects of engaging with literary, cinematic, and other expressive texts. A game that is experienced in such a way can be called “well-read,” rather than, or as well as, “well-played,” because of the personal, interpretive nature of that experience and the way in which it relates to our reading of texts of all kinds.

The concept of the “well-read game” exists at the convergence of literary, media, and play theories—specifically, the works of Louise Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory, Brian Upton’s situational game theory, Tracy Fullerton’s playcentric design theory, and Bernie DeKoven’s well-played game philosophy. Each of these theories, from their own perspective, challenges notions of a separate, objective, or authorial meaning in a text and underscores the richness that arises from the varied responses of readers, who coauthor the meaning of each text through their active engagement with it. When taken together, these theories point to a richer understanding of what a game is and how we might better value our experiences with games to become more thoughtful readers of their essential meanings.