Working with communities that center around content creation has shown Caryl that given the chance users will make creative choices that push the original game design into new and interesting directions. And that game developers can apply the learnings from those emergent behaviors to make better games.

John Passfield: John is currently the Creative Director of Pandemic Studios Australia and was co-founder of Krome Studios. He was co-lead designer in the creation of Krome’s TY the Tasmanian Tiger franchise and has also played a significant role in the development of casual games with the creation of titles such as Halloween Harry.

Kenneth D. Forbus: Ken is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Education at the US Northwestern University. His research interests relate to artificial intelligence in such areas as: in computer game design, the roles AI, and especially articulate software, can play in creating better game engines and synthetic characters; in human-computer interaction, the use of sketching as an interface modality to knowledge-rich systems; and in cognitive science, understanding how analogy and similarity work, including the roles they play in cognitive and perceptual processes.

The Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment, in its fifth year, is a cross-disciplinary conference that brings together researchers from artificial intelligence, audio, cognitive science, cultural studies, drama, HCI, interactive media, media studies, psychology, computer graphics, as well as researchers from other disciplines working on new interactive entertainment specific technologies or providing critical analysis of games and interactive environments.

This years theme is “Resonating Experiences”.

Much attention is given to the relationships between media and audiences, games and players, cities and dwellers, writers and readers. This conference is concerned with how more resonating relationships are created, evaluated and sustained. What is resonance and who benefits? How do we design for it and how is it experienced by all of the intended and consequential participants?

The ie08 conference offers you the theme of resonating experiences in order to encourage you to look beyond the immediate much traveled terrain of engagement and immersion and into the kinds of futures of interactive entertainment where we design for experience which not only calls upon the real but which we also expect to have resonance beyond the instance of the interaction

The Australasian Computer-Human Interaction Conference, is Australia and New Zealand’s leading forum for work in all areas of human-computer interaction. This year’s conference is to be held at James Cook University’s Tropical campus just north of Cairns in Far North Queensland, Australia, the only place on the planet where two World Heritage listed areas, the Great Barrier Reef and Wet Tropical Rainforest, are side-by-side.

Be carbon neutral. Come to IE2008 and then travel, by Tilt Train to Cairns for OZCHI 2008