Aspects of Play in Academia: The History of CHI PLAY and how to Nurture Interdisciplinary Scholarship

If you were to ask any Games Institute (GI) member to generally state what their area of expertise is, almost a third would identify themselves as an “HCI researcher”. Human-computer interaction (HCI) is a multidisciplinary and intersectoral field where researchers investigate information technology design in various, intersectional ways. From improving the usability of interactive devices, understanding user behaviour, to broadly, and ubiquitously, understanding human experiences with technology, the field is constantly evolving and expanding the spectrum of what is considered “HCI research”.

As such, large global conferences like the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (otherwise known as ACM SIGCHI, and colloquial abbreviated to “CHI”), and its specialized edition CHI PLAY. CHI PLAY arose from increased interest in games and play related research, a frustration with the siloed and elitist nature of traditional academic conferences, and a desire to continue supporting mixed research in the realm of games and interaction design. It’s structured differently from other academic conferences, supporting various research methodologies and conference norms, and has been associated as a safe space for publishing and experimenting with ideas that larger conferences, such as CHI, lack. It gives young scholars a venue to receive feedback from globally recognized researchers and supports the exploration of unconventional research crossovers, from humanities students studying how game mechanics enhance narrative storytelling, to engineers employing ethnographic research methods examining technology designed for small spaces. What started as a space to support novel, multidisciplinary approaches have slowly grown into an increasingly interdisciplinary ecosystem, welcoming scholarship at all levels and from different approaches.

CHI PLAY is heavily attended by GI members and is integral to the interdisciplinary nature of their work. In 2023, 20 GI members attended CHI PLAY hosted at UW’s Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business. 9 were part of the conference committee, and the entire conference was co-chaired by 2 GI faculty members. This edition of CHI PLAY became the largest presentation of GI members.

The GI is referred to as an “Island of Misfits” for interdisciplinary researchers who don’t quite fit into prescribed faculty structures or disciplinary silos. One of the best examples of interdisciplinary research is Dr. Lennart Nacke (Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business), a trained computer scientist approaching HCI from the perspective of a psychologist. A pioneer of gamification research, Nacke now teaches HCI, user experience (UX), and user interaction (UI) design at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business.

During the early 2000s, games related research was either rooted in the humanities, with the study of narratives, and game mechanics or within computer science and programming. There was very little to do with merging those perspectives or design considerations. Nacke had tried to publish through CHI, the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA), and even the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) and had some success with papers but also realized very clear struggles. Different academic communities are accustomed to different norms for conference publishing, or what type of material should be accepted in the first place. For instance, in humanities research, it’s not uncommon to only submit an abstract and workshop your idea at a conference, while more technical approaches such as computer science, fully publish papers via conference proceedings. Nacke had troubles with conference paper reviewers not understanding what physiological measures were, even if there were psychologists publishing in these spaces. Nacke had a vision to converge all these various conference foci into one inclusive, interdisciplinary conference.

With the support of SIGCHI, the first CHI PLAY was hosted in 2014 at the Radisson Admiral Hotel in Toronto with roaring success. While budgeting for less than 100 participants, over 120 researchers attended. Nacke has since served as conference chair in 2014, and later in 2019, and has also chaired its steering committee from 2014-2018 and although the conference remains on the smaller, intimate end with an average of 150 participants attending yearly, Nacke continues working hard to keep its intimate size and make everyone, regardless of status, feel welcome. He and the other co-founders to this day remain easily accessible during the annual conference and make sure to chat and connect with newcomers. In fact, many of the students Nacke hires as interns to work at the GI, he met during CHI PLAY.

As more GI members became part of the UW HCI community, it became more common for watercooler and cubicle conversations about what GI members were submitting, which venues are appropriate for their work and how they can support each other with their research endeavours. Over the years CHI PLAY has introduced different research and conference tracks to accommodate game scholars of various disciplines via journal publishing and full papers, works-in-progress, workshops, panel discussions, and even student game design competitions. Nacke recalls when a humanities student was chatting with one of his computer science students, which then resulted in the humanities student submitting a game design paper to the conference; a very unusual activity for most humanities researchers.

Nacke explained that “when I was younger, I really felt intimidated and had a hard time making connections because I always felt like an outsider to the games studies community, and I never wanted anyone to feel like an outsider when it came to CHI PLAY.”

Joseph Tu presenting his research at CHI PLAY.

Many CHI PLAY attendees were faced with this question during the conference’s opening gala. PhD student Joseph Tu (Systems Design Engineering), walked between attendees with an iPad, inviting them to draw a fish. While conference attendees were busy drawing, Tu would ask them about themselves and their research. Over the course of the night, Tu received 85 drawings from student, faculty, and industry participants ranging from goldfish crackers to a robot octopus.

Tu has been attending the CHI PLAY conference for some time—first, as a Master’s student. Now, his work oscillates between physiological measures, boardgames, and adaptive user interfaces. Tu views conferences as the perfect place to network and learn about potential job opportunities for after graduation, while also receiving expert feedback about his own studies, research projects, and dissertation work. As someone who describes themselves as having the “attention span of a goldfish” Tu is always looking for research that has a “cool factor.” When it came to networking and meeting new people at this year’s CHI PLAY, Tu came up with the icebreaker idea of drawing fish—and is now planning to turn the data collected into a research project about how to better approach in-person conference engagement.

While Tu’s approach was very casual and informal and related to his research, Alê Luz Lam (Management Science and Engineering) was one of the two Engagement co-Chairs who curated and formalized meaningful engagement at this year’s conference. Luz Lam’s PhD research, in the Cheriton School of Computer Science, looks at positive implementation of mobile games for improvement of children’s eye health.

Alê Luz Lam

As the co-Chair looking to increase engagement and interaction for in-person and remote attendees in hybrid meeting models, Luz Lam believes it is “paramount that attendees get the opportunity of meeting other people, both for expanding their network and for getting to know the different academics who are part of the community.” She and her co-chair, Anke Reinschluessel, worked hard to make community engagement feel like in-person and remote attendees could mingle with each other and be part of the crowds. They jointly designed asynchronous sessions (which had the highest success rates for participation) and an interaction token system (in which people would receive a token for interacting). Participants could later cash in the tokens and receive stickers in exchange.

Dr. Cayley MacArthur is an Assistant Professor in the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business focusing on inclusive technology who, like Nacke, classifies herself as an HCI researcher. MacArthur has been attending CHI PLAY since she was a graduate student at the GI. Her first CHI PLAY was in Australia in 2018 which was “pretty hard to top” while this year’s conference was the first time she attended as a faculty member.

As a student attendee, MacArthur appreciated the chance to interact with professors to make connections with people outside of her academic discipline and Waterloo network; something she now encourages her own students to do. However, since graduating, MacArthur noticed a change in how students approached and spoke to her—they were nervous. MacArthur sought to rectify this by participating in as many socials and engagement opportunities as possible to make herself approachable. She also took the opportunity of this year’s conference system of interaction tokens receiving numerous stickers trying to meet as many students as possible in her effort to make herself accessible and approachable.

MacArthur is also keen on encouraging her students and younger colleagues to attend panels that don’t necessarily align with their research. As an interdisciplinary scholar, who’s scholarly background transverses environmental studies, English language and literature, and engineering, MacArthur understands the value of cross-disciplinary collaboration, learning from others, and exposure to new ideas.

While attending CHI PLAY has become a routine for MacArthur, she’s also been encouraging other faculty members, like Dr. Leah Zhang-Kennedy to also begin attending. Zhang-Kennedy is an HCI researcher, and MacArthur’s colleague from the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, focused on individual privacy during interactions with digital technologies. This was her first time attending CHI PLAY and she was surprised to find her research trajectory explored at the conference. She decided not only to attend, but also volunteer as a student mentor.

Her duties included meeting with graduate students, assisting in judging of the game design competition, offering encouragement to students in developing their own research and design skills. She was encouraging them to engage with different conference activities to network, find new colleagues, and understand the dynamics of the HCI community at large. Even though the growing interdisciplinary and intersectoral nature of the field might feel daunting for young scholars. “Everyone speaks a similar language through HCI.” 

Dr. Jennifer Whitson (Sociology and Legal Studies) co-chaired this year’s CHI PLAY alongside fellow GI faculty member, Dr. Jim Wallace (Public Health Sciences). While Wallace considers himself an HCI researcher and is an active member of the GI’s HCI community, Whitson, does not. Whitson had crossed paths before with HCI research, having attended the computer science-focused Future Play conference as a graduate student in social sciences. Whitson noticed during that time how the topics that games scholars in the humanities and social sciences engaged with were quite similar to what games researchers in computer science were examining using different methodologies: games affect, representation in games, and matters of privacy. Now, more than a decade later, Whitson’s research looks at the games industry itself, including how companies function, what the barriers to entry are, and how education in games often fails.

Over the years, CHI PLAY has curated a strong sense of community, culture, and traditions. Attendees give standing ovations after every presentation and there is always at least one night of karaoke. For Whiston, it’s these small moments that make the community a wonderful place to be part of, and as co-Chair, it was important for her to assist in maintaining that sense of community.

During CHI PLAY, Whitson enjoyed the blend of academic and industry panels and presentation, viewing this as a valuable opportunity for academia and industry to learn from one another. It’s one of the reasons why GI alumni who enter the industry, such as Dr. Stuart Hallifax (A), continue to attend these conferences. Hallifax, a former summer intern for Nacke and – later – one of his post-doctoral fellows, working on gamification, education, and player preferences during his time at the GI. His first CHI PLAY was in 2020, where he attended as a virtual participant, and having attended every year since, he still feels a part of the community, despite having exited the academia altogether. Hallifax now works at Ubisoft Montréal as a User Researcher specializing in player engagement and motivation. He sees excellent value in attending conferences like CHI PLAY, given that industry professionals, and those outside of academic institutions, are often the ones who put into practice the theories and methods developed by academics.

This year, Hallifax was invited to participate in the “Inside Industry: Games Makers Panel” which brought together designers, producers, and researchers from the industry to discuss how to mobilize the research produced by games scholars. As someone with experience in both worlds, Hallifax is of the mind that the games industry and academia can help each other in very dynamic ways. For instance, at Ubisoft, “if we do research or develop frameworks, we’re not going to publish papers on it,” instead that work would be used for internal purposes, despite the fact that this research may have the potential to innovate active research in academia and avoid replicability. Meanwhile, if published academic frameworks were used by game developers in the industry, there should be a way to credit these academic researchers in video game credits.

Nacke’s vision of CHI PLAY being an open, welcoming, fun space has been fulfilled. In the future, the organizers plan to continue opening it up to more newcomers, hopefully getting more humanities and social science scholars involved. Above all else, Nacke says the most important thing is to avoid gatekeeping so that they are continually “making room for new voices” and nurturing the community. Nacke for instance, encourages all his students to be involved and volunteer not just for the experience, but so that they can share their diverse perspectives. “I want my postdocs and grad students to do that work,” he stressed, “I don’t need to take up that space.”

Nacke is mindful that to encourage scholars beyond HCI proper into the fold, senior researchers need to be invited into the community to encourage their students to attend. Whitson is a great example of that. “For academic game work,” Whitson noted, “regardless of your discipline, CHI PLAY is—right now—the hub (…) of the largest collection of games related research.”

From its visionary inception to its current success, CHI PLAY’s impact on interdisciplinary research, GI members, and the larger HCI community is impossible to overstate. It's symbiotic relationship with the GI ecosystem allows for our own community to continue growing and thriving. It’s not uncommon to find GI students working very closely together as they run studies, write papers, and co-edit submissions while preparing for these conferences. Faculty often join them in solidarity, running writing sessions, encouraging students to practice their presentations in front of the group to receive feedback.

The yearly submission deadlines for CHI and CHI PLAY have even reconfigured how GI administrative staff structure their support during these periods of higher activity. The conferences’ impact is so great, that even the physical space of the Institute changes with the ebb and flow of conference seasons—morphing from a bright, vibrant, and boisterous space during submissions into eerie, quiet and calm when so members submit and rest. The importance of CHI and CHI PLAY has bled into GI structures and became an important aspect of the GI “lore”.

CHI PLAY provides junior interdisciplinary scholars an excellent experience of conference organizing, community creation, mentorship, networking as well as expanding their research trajectories and sharing their work. It’s a safe space to explore research creation, mixing methodologies, and sharing new ideas. At its core, it is not the research that made CHI PLAY what it is today, but the dedication to a safe, inclusive, and welcoming interdisciplinary community, dedicated to fostering new connections, that lead to its great success.