2009 Call for Research Proposals

Faculty and post-doc researchers from Singapore and MIT are invited to submit proposals for consideration to the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Funding is available for projects to be run between September 2010 to September 2011, inclusive.

Researchers participating in GAMBIT-funded projects will be expected to encapsulate and present their work within an academic context, such as presenting at conferences or publishing in respected journals, websites, or magazines. Research projects must also include an applied component to be used in game development during the GAMBIT summer program in 2010 or 2011. This requirement is explained in more detail in the next section.

GAMBIT supports a wide variety of research fields, including science, engineering, humanities, social sciences, and arts. Stronger proposals will address one or more of the research interests described in the GAMBIT name:

• 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 also involve other faculty, post-doc, graduate, and undergraduate students. To aid in finding potential collaborators from other institutions, researchers may also send preliminary abstracts to gambit-proposal@mit.edu.

Once researchers at 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-proposal@mit.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 in their respective countries to clarify points and details. The directors are Teo Chor Guan (Singapore) and Philip Tan (US).

Projects will be evaluated on the inventiveness of their approach, the practical demonstrability of the concepts in situations such as the GAMBIT Summer program, 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. Interns from the Boston area and from Singapore will collaborate on development teams each summer to create prototype games which demonstrate concepts from GAMBIT-supported research. Each team is required to create a 5-30 minute polished gameplay experience which demonstrates or explores a research topic. In addition, the game must target the production values of commercial casual games and be distributed online.

Each development team will need an expert who can explain the core research and assess whether the game is effectively exploring it. 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. The selected researcher will be required to visit Boston for at least the first two weeks of the summer program at a minimum.

Research Proposal Format

Proposals should include clear and concise details 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. Do not propose game designs*, but suggest how this research might be integrated into the GAMBIT Summer Game Development Program.
• Timeline: Outline the expected length of the project.
• 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. Proposed Singapore budgets may be up to S$100,000 per full year of funding. Proposed US budgets may be between US$50,000 to US$150,000 per full year of funding.
• Travel: Travel for all investigators to or from Singapore should be in the Singapore budget and must be managed by the Singapore institution. Domestic US travel for MIT investigators should be in the MIT budget and must be managed by MIT. Include travel and lodging expenses for researchers supporting the GAMBIT Summer Game Development Program if the researcher does not live near Boston.
• 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 outside of the summer program. The summer development teams in particular need to have full intellectual property rights over their games, which cannot be ensured if research proposals also include specific game designs. However, API and tech demo development are acceptable, and research that can be explored through the creation of games is highly encouraged. Researchers concerned that their proposal violates this requirement should contact gambit-proposal@mit.edu for guidance.

Deadline: 30 November 2009

PDF submissions for research collaborations seeking funding through the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab must be sent to gambit-proposal@mit.edu by 30 November 2009 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 February 2010 to begin funded research in Fall 2010 at the latest. Approved projects may be able to get an early start by nominating a Singaporean researcher to participate in the GAMBIT Summer Game Development Program in 2010, allowing collaborators to meet regularly at MIT for the summer.