Welcome to the Games Institute
The Games Institute (GI) is a multidisciplinary research centre at the University of Waterloo focused on the study of games, gamification, interactive technologies and immersive environments (AR/VR).
The future of games will rely on new technologies and new ways of interacting with those technologies, but it will also rely heavily on psychological and sociological understandings of what we do when we play, on stories and narratives that reach far beyond what today’s games offer, and on extensive work in a wide range of fields, from health to education, into how games can guide us, change us, and help us.
- Dr. Neil Randall, Director of the Games Institute
News
- Mar. 6, 2020John Muñoz demonstrates VR at THEMUSEUM's family day Hackjam
John Muñoz attended the Family day Hackjam at THEMUSEUM in Kitchener to demonstrate virtual reality (VR) tools and techniques for prototyping content and create cardboard headsets.
- Mar. 4, 2020Prof Lennart Nacke co-authors the Player Experience Inventory in the International Journal for Human-Computer Interaction
Waterloo News shared a summary of "Development and validation of the player experience inventory", co-developed by Professor Lennart Nacke as part of an international collaboration, led by Prof. Dr. Vero Vanden Abeele, KU Leuven, Belgium, and also including Prof. dr. Kathrin Gerling of KU Leuven, Belgium, Prof. Dr. Daniel Johnson of Queensland University of Technology, Australia and Dr.
- Feb. 27, 2020Tina Chan and Jim Wallace present at the Hallman Lecture Series
Tina Chan, MSc alum and PASS inc. founder, and Prof Jim Wallace, GI faculty member from the School of Public Health and Health Systems, are presenting at the Hallman Lecture Series, featuring Jane Philpott, former Health Minister of Canada.
Blog
- Feb. 25, 2020The GI Jam inspires new research directions for Prof Oliver Schneider
“I wasn’t really planning any game in particular,” says Oliver Schneider, Assistant Professor in the Department of Management Sciences, “I just knew I wanted to check out the Game Jam since I’ve seen how important it is to the GI culture".
- Feb. 19, 2020We teamed up with Concept by Velocity to deliver a Knowledge Translation Workshop
Marisa Benjamin, the GI's Research Communications Officer, and Eric Blondeel, Co-Founder of ExVivo Labs, teamed up to design and deliver a Knowledge Translation Workshop for the Concept by Velocity Graduate Student S
- Feb. 13, 2020Enriched narratives reduce cybersickness in virtual reality depending on video game experience
Enriched narratives can reduce cybersickness in virtual reality (VR) for people with little-to-no video game experience, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Waterloo’s Multisensory Brain and Cognition (MBC) Lab in the Department of Kinesiology and the Games Institute.
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Subscribe to our Research Participants Mailing List to hear about opportunities to be a study participant in the work done by The Games Institute researchers!First Person Scholar
Weekly critical essays, commentaries, and book reviews on games.
GI Jam
A thrice-annual, multi-day event hosted by The Games Institute (GI). Each of the events are open to the public and are designed to appeal to a wide variety of playful people.
Game Dev Club
Every Tuesday and Thursday from 6pm-9pm at the GI.
This is your opportunity to meet and collaborate with local game developers in a casual atmosphere.
Show off your latest projects, receive valuable play-testing feedback from like-minded peers, learn new tools and techniques, and network with potential collaborators.
Meet our people
Chrysanne Di Marco
Associate Professor, Artificial Intelligence Group (David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science) Cross Appointment, English Language and Literature *Retired*
Chrysanne Di Marco has been a member of the Artificial Intelligence Group since 1990. She is also project leader of the HealthDoc project, which works to develop natural language generation systems for producing multimedia health information tailored to medical conditions and patient characteristics.
