Games and NLP Workshop 2020

Welcome to the Games and Natural Language Processing Workshop at the 12th Edition of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2020).

Workshop date: 11 May 2020. Marseille, France. Workshop Canceled


UPDATE: Unfortunately, the Games and Natural Language Processing Workshop has been canceled. On behalf of the Games and NLP organising committee, we are sorry to be posting this message, as Games and NLP 2020 was to be the largest workshop in the series to date, covering a variety of critical and interesting research topics. We thank all authors and reviewers for the hard work they have done.

LREC 2020 has affirmed its commitment to publishing the proceedings, and therefore we are pleased to announce the workshop's accepted papers.


The Games and NLP workshop will examine the use of games and gamification for Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, as well as how NLP research can advance player engagement and communication within games. The workshop will have presentations of accepted papers (full, short, extended abstracts), an invited talk, and a poster and demo session. There will be a fishbowl session to explore topics emerging throughout the day, and a cocktail, cracker, & cheese reception will follow the workshop.


Important Dates:

  • *EXTENDED* 21 February 2020 11:59pm AOE (14th February 2020): Submission Deadline
  • 13th March 2020: Notification of Acceptance
  • *EXTENDED* 9 April 2020 11:59pm AOE (2 April 2020): Camera Ready Deadline
  • 11th May 2020: Workshop Date Workshop Canceled


Please see the full Call for Papers for more details.

Keynote: Designing Games with a Purpose with Purpose (Dr Richard A. Bartle)

Serious games aren’t intrinsically fun: designers have to use what they call “cheap, psychological tricks” to keep players engaged. Commercial games are intrinsically fun: designers use them to communicate with players as a form of artistic expression. Games with a purpose lie in between: they are intrinsically fun, but the fun is directed towards an activity which can be harnessed for ulterior effect. Such games draw on their designer’s craft rather than their art. This talk examines the implications of having to engineer the design of a game rather than shape it in pursuit of a creative vision.

Dr Richard A. Bartle is Honorary Professor of Computer Game Design at the University of Essex, UK. He is best known for having co-written in 1978 the first virtual world, MUD, and for his 1996 Player Types model which has seen widespread adoption by the MMO industry. His 2003 book, Designing Virtual Worlds, is the standard text on the subject, and he is an influential writer on all aspects of MMO design and development. In 2010, he was the first recipient of the prestigious GDC Online Game Legend award.


Questions? Please feel free to reach out to the workshop organizers: gamnlp2020@googlegroups.com