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2008 Call for Research Proposals
Summer Game Development Program
Faculty and post-doc researchers from Singapore and MIT are invited to submit proposals for consideration and funding by the project steering committee. Researchers participating on GAMBIT-funded projects will be expected to submit articles, whitepapers, journal submissions, and conference presentations annually to encapsulate and present each year of work within an academic context. Research projects will also have to participate in the GAMBIT summer program for each year of funding.
Topics of scientific, engineering, arts and humanities research in the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab may include:
- Gamers - Player cultures and communities. Behavior, habits, and values.
- Aesthetics - Concepts of expression and representation to engage the senses.
- Mechanics - Rule design, constraints, system dynamics, and human nature.
- Business - Best practices for risk and project management, industry trends.
- Innovation - Novel and hybrid genres of gameplay and demographic appeal.
- Technology - Software and hardware interfaces, computation, and rendering.
Research projects sponsored by the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab must include faculty, post-docs, graduate students, or research staff from at least one MIT department and one Singapore institution of higher learning, game company, or research institution. Projects may involve faculty, post-doc, graduate and undergraduate students. Investigators may also send preliminary abstracts to the executive directors at gambit-exec AT mit DOT edu to aid them in locating and introducing potential collaborators from other institutions.
Once investigators in both MIT and in Singapore are ready to initiate collaborative work, they should submit short (5-7 page, with illustrations where necessary) project proposals in PDF format to gambit-exec AT mit DOT edu for review by the Projects Steering Committee. After the submission of a proposal, researchers should plan to have regular contact with the executive directors of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, Teo Chor Guan (Singapore) and Philip Tan (US), in their respective countries to clarify points and details.
Projects will be evaluated on the inventiveness of their approach, the practical demonstrability of the concepts, the awareness of existing game industry pressures and research efforts, the applicability and scalability for implementation in real-world digital game production, and their relevance to Singapore's cultural and industrial situation. Projects that are not supported in the short-term may be resubmitted in the near future with minor refinements.
Summer Game Development Program
A crucial component of the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab is an intensive summer program for game prototype development. Students from MIT and Singapore will collaborate each summer to develop prototype games to demonstrate a concept from the aforementioned research writing with a short (5-30 minute), polished gameplay experience, targeting the production values of commercial casual games and intended for online distribution.
Each development team will need a member who is familiar with the core research. Thus, funded research projects will be required to select a researcher to participate in the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab summer program for the entire duration of June to August for each year of funding.
Research Proposal Format
Proposals should include clear and concise detail on the following areas:
- Principal Investigators: List the faculty or post-doc leads from Singapore and MIT, their departmental affiliations, and their contact information.
- Problem: Assess the current state of the industry and research relevant to the topic under examination.
- Abstract: Describe the approach taken by the investigators in this project and its hypothesized merits.
- Desired outcomes: Propose goals and demonstrations that the investigators will keep in mind and work towards, understanding that unexpected outcomes also vital to research.
- Timeline: Outline the expected length of the project and chunk research work into annual stages that make sense for publishing or game demo development with external student teams.
- Collaboration structure: List the affiliation and biographical data of participants, and describe in detail how the collaboration necessary for the project will be conducted across two separate countries, including procedures to maintain regular communication and travel plans for visiting scholars and faculty.
- Budget and Resources: Estimate the manpower, resource and overhead requirements of the project, including institutional overhead. Each year of the project and in each institution should be listed in a separate column or sheet. MIT expenses should be listed in US dollars and Singapore expenses should be listed in Singapore dollars. Include all travel between MIT and Singapore in the Singapore budget.
- References: Bibliographic annotations to prior and background research relevant to the project.
Faculty-submitted research proposals should not include any game designs nor expect the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab to fund researcher-led game development. Because the summer development teams are given full responsibility and flexibility for conceiving and designing the game, and need to have full control over the intellectual property of the game design, we will not be able to accept research proposals that include game designs. However, API and tech demo development are acceptable, and the compilation of best practices into actionable guidelines is highly encouraged.
Deadline: 30 September 2008
PDF submissions for research collaborations seeking funding through the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab must be sent to gambit-exec AT mit DOT edu by 30 September 2008 for consideration by the Projects Steering Committee. Proposal submitters may be contacted after the deadline for revision requests and clarifications. Approved projects will be announced in January 2009 to begin funded research in Fall 2009 at the latest. Approved projects may be able to get an early start by nominating a researcher to be a Product Owner for a game development team at MIT during Summer 2009, allowing collaborators to meet consistently on the MIT campus for the Summer.
