Playful by Design International Symposium 2024 

Call for Participation – Presentations, Papers, Posters

Submit your proposal here: https://go.illinois.edu/PBD2024

Playful by Design is a local and global academic community of practice with shared and overlapping interests in game-relevant research, design, pedagogy, and technology. As a network, it welcomes multidisciplinary activities pursued by teachers, scholars, artists, designers, and 3rd space professionals, within their own disciplines and in their own ways. Through creative collaborations, the sharing of resources, the development of team-based studio work and other experiential learning, this approach facilitates the emergence of transdisciplinary and glocal aspirations among students and faculty. These include shared values of accessibility and inclusion, which are reflected in how we teach and conduct research, and in the design and creation of games, simulations, and other interactive and immersive experiences that address the critical shared challenges of our times.

The 2024 Symposium theme is GLOCAL – local communities of practices with global impact – and we’re calling for talks that illuminate the ways in which games, gaming, and gameful learning are becoming integrated into teaching, research, and design practices, and how they are being with applications that  across our campus. We’d like to invite you to share and showcase what’s happening in your departments, courses, studios, and labs right now, as well as what you imagine your work and the campus of the future may look like.

We are particularly interested in presentations that address issues related to the following (but other topics are also welcome):

  • How AI tools are changing game design practices
  • Gameful pedagogies and classroom practices
  • Immersive storytelling across media and culture
  • Accessibility and inclusion in game-adjacent technologies
  • – The role of maker-spaces in addressing gender issues in gaming
  • – Design and evaluation of socially transformative games in areas of global concern (inequality, conflict, sustainability) 


Submit a proposal to share an individual or panel presentation, poster, demo, or workshop (one proposal per submission please).

Proposals will be accepted until June 15, 2024

Submit your proposal here: https://go.illinois.edu/PBD2024