Gamification
within “Decision Analytics, Mobile Services, and Service Science” – track
50^th annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-50)
January 4-7, 2017 | Hilton Waikoloa Village, Big Island.

Important dates

June 15:  Submission deadline
August 16:  Notifications sent to authors
September 4:  Revision deadline
September 10:  Final acceptance notifications sent to authors
September 15:  Deadline for authors to submit the final manuscript (camera ready)
October 1: Registration deadline

Information

Venue & Location
About the conference
Submission instructions

During the last decade games have become an established vein of entertainment, and consumer culture, and essentially, a common part of people’s daily lives [19]. In the United States alone 59% of the population plays computer games while revenues of the computer games industry exceed US $15 billion (ESA, 2014). However, in addition to the increased penetration of games, also the ways in which people play and employ games have become more varied. The long-tail is getting longer: there are more different kinds of games available for a multitude of different platforms that cater for differing gaming needs [8,11,15,23,24] for widening audiences [1,2,3,12,13,14,16,19,21,22,23] and which use a wide variety of business models [5,7,10,17,20].

Perhaps the most prominent advancement stemming from these developments is “gamification” which generally refers to the increased convergence of games and everyday life. More particularly and practically, gamification commonly refers to the process of enhancing services and systems so that they increase enjoyable and intrinsically motivated use as well as support further behavioral change by employing elements characteristic of games – “Transforming Homo Economicus into Homo Ludens” [4,6,9,18,25].

The Gamification-minitrack was established to address this growing junction of interests of both scholars and practitioners where games, services and information systems meet and merge. Even though the gamification minitrack was featured at HICSS for the first time in 2016 and there were two other minitracks competing for game-related submission, this minitrack managed to cement itself as the largest game-related track as well as took its place among the largest minitracks in the conference.

We encourage a wide range of submissions: empirical and conceptual research papers, case studies, reviews as well as practitioner reports related to gamification, games, information systems, commerce and users/players as well as the area between them.

Accepted papers will be included in the Conference Proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society and maintained in the IEEE Digital Library. HiCSS publications account for the top 2% downloads of all IEEE conferences, and have been consistently ranked as the most cited papers in top journal publications.

Relevant topics include (not limited to):

• Impact of games and gamification

o   Individual impact

• Behaviour
• Psychological states
• Well-being

o   Organizational impacts

o   Business benefits

o   Societal impacts

• Conceptual improvements

o   Definitions

o   Frameworks

o   Affordances / mechanics

• Game business

o   Free-to-play

o   Virtual goods

o   Player retention

o   Game design as marketing

• Motivations and players

o   Player typologies

o   Player motivations

o   What needs games satisfy

o   Demographic differences

o   adoption and continued use

• Technology and design

o   Mobile and web applications

o   Gamification in enterprise systems and decision support systems

o   Health applications

o   Education technology (serious games)

o   Design philosophies

o   User modelling

o   (Action) Design research

Accepted papers will be included in the Conference Proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society and maintained in the IEEE Digital Library. HiCSS publications account for the top 2% downloads of all IEEE conferences, and have been consistently ranked as the most cited papers in top journal publications.

Track Chairs

Juho Hamari (Primary Contact)
University of Tampere
Email: juho.hamari { a } uta.fi

Petri Parvinen
University of Helsinki
Email: petri.parvinen { a } helsinki.fi

References

1. Greenberg, B. S., Sherry, J., Lachlan, K., Lucas, K. & Holmstrom, A., 2010. Orientations to video games among gender and age groups. Simulation and Gaming, 41(2), 238-259.
2. Griffiths, M. D., Davies, M. N. O. & Chappell, D., 2003. Breaking the stereotype: The case of online gaming. CyberPsychology and Behavior, 6(1), 81-91.
3. Griffiths, M. D., Davies, M. N. O. & Chappell, D., 2004. Demographic factors and playing variables in online computer gaming. Cyberpsychology and Behavior, 7(4), 479-487.
4. Hamari, J., 2013. Transforming Homo Economicus into Homo Ludens: A Field Experiment on Gamification in a Utilitarian Peer-To-Peer Trading Service. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 12(4), 236-245.
5. Hamari, J., 2015. Why Do People Buy Virtual Goods? Attitude towards Virtual Good Purchases versus Game Enjoyment. International Journal of Information Management, 35 (3), 299-308.
6. Hamari, J., Huotari, K. & Tolvanen, J., 2015. Gamification and Economics. In S. P. Walz & S. Deterding (Eds.), The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications (pp. 139-161). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
7. Hamari, J. & Järvinen, A., 2011. Building Customer Relationship through Game Mechanics in Social Games. in M. Cruz-Cunha, V. Carvalho, and P. Tavares (Eds.) Business, Technological and Social Dimensions of Computer Games: Multidisciplinary Developments Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 348-365.
8. Hamari, J., Keronen, L. & Alha, K., 2015. Why Do People Play Games? A Review of Studies on Adoption and Use. In proceedings of the 48th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii, USA, January 5-8, 2015.
9. Hamari, J., Koivisto, J. & Sarsa, H., 2014. Does Gamification Work? – A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. In proceedings of the 47th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Hawaii, USA, January 6-9, 2014.
10. Hamari, J. & Lehdonvirta, V., 2010. Game Design as Marketing: How Game Mechanics Create Demand for Virtual Goods. International Journal of Business Science & Applied Management, 5(1), 14-29.
11. Hamari, J. & Tuunanen, J., 2014. Player types: A meta-synthesis. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 1(2), 29-53.
12. Hartmann, T. & Klimmt, C., 2006. Gender and computer games: Exploring females’ dislikes. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(4), 910-931.
13. Ijsselsteijn, W., Nap, H. H., de Kort, Y. & Poels, K., 2007. Digital game design for elderly users. In Proceedings of the 2007 conference on Future Play, Toronto, Canada, November 15-17, 17-22.
14. Jansz, J., Avis, C. & Vosmeer, M., 2010. Playing The Sims2: An exploration of gender differences in players’ motivations and patterns of play. New Media & Society, 12(2), 235-251.
15. Kallio, K. P., Mäyrä, F. & Kaipainen, K., 2011. At Least Nine Ways to Play: Approaching Gamer Mentalities. Games and Culture, 6(4), 327-353.
16. Koivisto, J. & Hamari, J., 2014. Demographic differences in perceived benefits from gamification. Computers in Human Behavior, 35, 179-188.
17. Lin, H. & Sun, C. T., 2011. Cash trade in free-to-play online games. Games and Culture, 6(3), 270-287.
18. McGonigal, J., 2011. Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world. Penguin Press.
19. Mäyrä, F. & Ermi, L., 2014. Pelaajabarometri 2013. Mobiilipelaamisen Nousu. TRIM Research Reports: 11, University of Tampere.
20. Paavilainen, J., Hamari, J., Stenros, J. & Kinnunen, J., 2013. Social Network Games: Players’ Perspectives. Simulation & Gaming, 44(6), 794-820.
21. Williams, D., Consalvo, M., Caplan, S. & Yee, N., 2009. Looking for gender: Gender roles and behaviors among online gamers. Journal of Communication, 59(4), 700-725.
22. Williams, D., Yee, N. & Caplan, S. E., 2008. Who Plays, How Much, and Why? Debunking the Stereotypical Gamer Profile. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 13(4), 993-1018.
23. Yee, N., 2006. The demographics, motivations and derived experiences of users of massively-multiuser online graphical environments. PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 15, 309-329.
24. Yee, N., 2007. Motivations for play in online games. CyberPsychology and Behavior, 9(6), 772-775.
25. Walz, S. & Deterding, S., (Eds.)., 2015. The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.