We want to provide some transparency about the submission and review processes.

When we decided to create Playing Futures, we made many decisions as the conference idea evolved. We knew we wanted to do a community-first event, mixing academics and creators, and with keynotes from fields outside of game studies. We also wanted it to be as independent as possible, both from platforms in the USA and from funding partnerships we could not agree with. Playing Futures wanted to be, and is, furiously independent - supported by the IT University, a support that has always been unconditional.

Our drive also led us to make some decisions that we will improve upon in future editions of the conference. For example, we wanted to give the authors the option to receive peer-review feedback, which would also inform our selection of works to be presented. While this aligns with the academic tradition of conference organisation, it may not be the best fit for Playing Futures.

We received a very large number of proposals for the conference, and this makes us very happy. There is a community of people who believe in this work and want to share it with others. Unfortunately, the realities of academic overwork make it difficult to secure enough reviewers. And this is not a critique of anybody - quite the opposite, we feel immense gratitude to those who reviewed, and to those who turned down our invitation. In a perfect world, we would all have time to help with reviews. But academic life is not what it should be, and that’s why finding the time to do good reviews is really scarce.

Speaking now as conference organizer: I (Miguel Sicart) think the authors who submitted work to Playing Futures will be happy with the feedback to their work, even if it is only by a couple of reviewers. The reviews are of high quality and will be useful for improving the submitted works. Future Playing Futures will work on a different model for accepting presentations and interactive works.

Regarding the program, we have used the reviews as the main guideline for setting it up. The final curatorial decision has fallen on me, Miguel Sicart. So I’m the one to blame for the final selection of accepted works. The reviews were the central argument for accepting works, but given the high quality of the submissions, the final program is driven by a curatorial spirit: mixing game designers and game scholars, junior and senior researchers, from as many places in the world as possible.

This will be the first Playing Futures. We have now learnt a bit more about which conference we want to arrange and how to arrange it. And we can’t wait to show you what we have prepared for you in May in Copenhagen.