Call for Papers

EXAG 2025 will be accepting papers to two different tracks:

Full papers -- Regular papers submitted for oral presentation (10-15 pages). These papers will (optionally) be incorporated into the proceedings and will be presented as 10-minute talks with 5 minutes of Q&A.
Short papers -- Short papers (5-9 pages) describing a position, project, or proposal related to any topic of interest to the workshop. These papers will (optionally) be incorporated into the proceedings and will be presented as 5-minute talks with 3 minutes of Q&A.

Papers will be presented in groups based on their topics. The ordering of topics may depend on speaker availability, especially when accommodating remote presenters.

Submission Instructions

Research Papers

Full and short papers should be submitted on EasyChair. Please select the Experimental AI in Games track (once available).

What to Submit

Papers describe AI research results that establish new challenges in entertainment AI, make advances on existing problems, enable new forms of interactive digital entertainment, and/or use AI to improve the game design and development process. Papers are held to the highest standards of academic rigor. In general:

Results should be validated in a prototype or test-bed system (e.g., game, robot, generative algorithm), but need not be tested in a commercial environment.
The contribution of the paper should be clearly articulated, usually in the introduction.
The title and claims made in the paper should match the evaluation carried out and the results obtained. Overly broad titles are discouraged.
The paper should demonstrate knowledge of related systems and other approaches to solving similar problems, usually in a Related Work section.

Format

Papers should be formatted in CEUR one-column, camera-ready style and should be anonymized for double-blind review. There are one-column templates available for various platforms. Overleaf users can use the available template. If you prefer to use Microsoft Word, ODT, or an different LaTeX variant, please use these templates from CEUR.

Length

Authors are allotted 10-15 pages of content for full papers and 5-9 pages of content for short papers, including references and appendices. Thus, authors are encouraged to submit a paper of length proportional to its contribution. Note, reviewers may, but are not required to, read the appendices, and therefore the paper’s central thesis should be understandable without them.

Submissions longer or shorter than the alloted page counts will be considered for desk rejection. Papers whose lengths are incommensurate with their contributions will be rejected.

Evaluation Criteria

Submissions will be peer reviewed. Abstracts and other submitted materials will be judged on technical merit, accessibility to developers and researchers, originality, presentation, impact, and significance. Submissions do not need to score well in all of these categories.

Publication

All accepted authors will be given the option of publication in the CEUR-WS proceedings for EXAG 2025. Papers that are not for publication will be subject to the same review process as all papers.

Important Dates

Deadline for paper submissions: August 22th, 2025

Notification for accepted papers: September 16th, 2025

Publication-ready submission due: October 7th, 2025

Workshop dates: November 10th and 11th, 2025

Topics

EXAG is interested in the presentation and discussion of applications of AI that present interesting ideas for developers, critics, players, and designers. We aim to foster and celebrate innovative applications of AI to all aspects of games and game development, for example:

The development of new games or game-related systems made possible by AI, for example roguelike Unexplored (2017)'s procedurally-generated dungeons and puzzles, stealth game Third Eye Crime (2013)'s visualization of AI logic, diorama-builder Tiny Glade (2024)'s fluid creative support, and shopping aid We Love Every Game (2024)'s game guide generator.
Traditional AI techniques applied in new ways that break genre conventions, for example Alien: Isolation (2014)'s behavior system or Black And White (2001)'s learning creatures.
Augmenting game development and design through new and interesting applications of AI, from intelligent design tools to automated QA, including cross-pollination from AI subfields not typically used in games, like computational linguistics, computer vision, and procedural music.
Human-centered evaluation of AI in games, including mixed-initiative and co-creative systems.
Critical analysis of AI tools, technology, and practices in game development environments.
Experimental AI technologies used in games and play environments with physical or embodied environments, for example AI in games that involve tangible user interfaces, interactive play spaces like museums, or embodied gameplay in virtual or augmented reality environments.
The use of AI in support of mixed-initiative co-creative play experiences, including collaborative storytelling games like Bad News (2016).
Discussion of interesting but relatively unknown historical examples of experimental AI in games, for example Captain Blood (1988) and Intellivision World Series Baseball (1983).
Reports on failed experiments related to any topic in our purview, with insight into what went wrong and how others can learn from the failure.
Industry case studies in which non-academic developers present their applications of experimental game AI in commercial game contexts.

Previous work presented at the workshop includes dynamic NPC knowledge modeling, blending or inventing game designs, intelligent design tools, hybrid generative algorithms, formal logics for games, procedural generation of game elements, player modeling, and more. We are pleased to be a broad workshop with a large range of topics covered, and we aim to continue to expand our scope this year.

Not sure if your topic is a fit? Drop us a line!

Community Demo Session

This will be an informal, interactive session for members of the community to share works and get feedback. This is intended for any works of progress that have an interactive component, and demos will not be included in the proceedings.

Registration TBD