Call for Papers

Conference aim

The Joint Conference Serious Games (JCSG) is dedicated to serious games and its multifaceted characteristics combining game design and game technology with further concepts as well as concepts required in the different serious games application domains.

Over the last two decades, the use of serious games in several fields like learning, simulation, training, health, well-being, management, assessment or marketing exploded. We have gained a deeper knowledge on their efficiency and effectiveness, in particular taking into consideration the needs of the digital natives’ generation, and the single or combined use of scientific and creative fields has grown in acceptance. However, there are still several barriers in large-scale adoption of serious games. How can these fields be combined to achieve the best possible results? How may the quality of serious games increased taking into account the latest emerging technologies, concepts and trends of entertainment games? How may the capacity of serious games as valuable learning and training tools be ensured and maintained over time?

The JCSG portal provides an overview about the previous conferences including all proceedings.

What to submit

The Joint Conference aims to bring together scientists and practitioners, i.e. researchers in game design, game technology, contributing disciplines for the creation, control and evaluation of serious games as well as serious games users such as educators, trainers and moderators in the educational sector or doctors and therapists settled in the healthcare arena.

Scientists and practitioners are cordially invited to present their latest research achievements and best-practice at JCSG 2022. Submission are possible in the form of full papers (e.g. new methods and concepts, technologies, tools, algorithms, studies and surveys), short papers and demo papers (e.g. best-practice results or new ideas and concepts, experiments, demo of serious games, products/titles and prototypes) and poster contributions (new ideas, approaches, and work in progress).

Topics include but are not limited to:

Theory and technology: Scientific methods and concepts for

  • design and development of serious games
  • use of games technology in serious games (virtual and augmented reality, game engines, cross-platform, network and communication)
  • cost-effective production of serious games (authoring tools, collaborative authoring, procedural content generation, middleware)
  • personalized, adaptive serious games (user characteristics, player and gamer types, context models, personalization, adaptive serious games)
  • collaborative learning and training environments (multiplayer serious games, game mastering, games and social networks, collaboration, competition)
  • interfaces and sensor technology in serious games (game consoles and interfaces, vital sensors and parameters; virtual and augmented reality, mobile games, location-based and ubiquitous technology)
  • evaluation studies (evaluation methodologies and evaluation design, models and metrics, evaluation tools, effectiveness, efficiency)
  • Serious Games Studies measuring the quality of particular Serious Games and/or Serious Games application areas
  • surveys (serious games studies and outcomes, serious games effects, use of technologies)

Business: Market studies, potentials and barriers

  • business models and market studies for serious games or serious games technologies
  • grand challenges and obstacles for game developers and publishers, e.g. expectations and acceptance or ethic-legal issues and privacy

 Best practice and application domains

  • field reports, demonstrations and evaluation studies of Serious Games
  • research prototypes and commercial games 'more than fun'
  • games for health (personalized exergames, prevention, rehabilitation, cognition, movement)
  • games for behaviour change (nutrition, lifestyle, environment-friendly mobility behaviour)
  • social awareness games (security, gender-based violence, religion, climate, energy)
  • educational games (from kindergarten to higher education, vocational and workplace training) simulation and training (medical training, surgical simulation, disaster management, manufacturing, industrial applications)

Please prepare your paper submission in the Springer LNCS format and use EasyChair  for your submission.  

All submitted papers will undergo a thorough peer-review process by the JCSG program committee. Accepted papers will be published by Springer in their LNCS series. At least one author of an accepted submission has to register and present at JCSG 2022. Best papers will be invited to elaborate an extended version for the serious games section of the Elsevier Entertainment Computing Journal

Full papers

Full paper submissions should describe novel unpublished scientific work relating to one or more of the topics listed above. All full papers will be published in the official Springer LNCS proceedings. Full paper submissions should be 12-15 pages in length in the LNCS one-column page format.

Short papers and demo papers

The maximum length of short papers, posters and demo descriptions is 6 pages in Springer LNCS format. Accepted short papers and demo papers are presented in the regular sessions with oral presentations. Posters are presented in an open, interactive forum during poster sessions. Posters provide an opportunity to describe new work or work in progress.

All accepted papers (full papers, short papers, demo papers and poster contributions) will be included into the official Springer LNCS proceedings.

Important Dates

Abstract Submission
Optional (if feedback is wanted ahead of submission of a paper)

March 15th, 2022
Paper Submission

April 15th, 2022
May 3rd, 2022

Notification of Acceptance May 31st, 2022
Camera-Ready VersionJune 20th, 2022
ConferenceSeptember 22-23, 2022

Copyright form

All camera-ready papers must be supplemented with a signed copyright form. The form can be downloaded here.