Dear Augusto,
thank you very much for the document on "Entertainment Computing" which will be discussed at IFIP GA in Montreal. Obviously this was an outcome of IWC 2002 where TC6 members including myself) had been nominated for the steering committee. However, I was not contacted at all by the organisors. Maybe this was due to the belief (see minutes of their meeting) that Europe where IFIP has a rather strong hold has not much activities in computer games and thus might be reluctant to go into that area.
I append some comments below.
Best regards Otto
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Comments on the proposal for a new IFIP TC 14 on "Entertainment Computing"
1. There is another discussion on IT & Sports which will also be discussed in Montreal. It is recommended to combine both of them since they fit very well together - and a concentration of "sports" or "entertainment" alone would fall short.
2. There were some overlaps mentioned: with TC3, TC5, TC9, TC12, and with TC13. Interestingly enough, TC6 was not included in that list but the topics "network based entertainment" (i.e. distributed games), "mobile entertainment", "location-based entertainment" and some others have a clear relation to aspects which are treated byIFIP TC6. I don't propose to stop any new activities but a strong cooperation with TC6 is recommended.
3. The concentration on "entertainment" (i.e. on "algorithmic research on board and on card games", "hardware technology research for implementing enter- tainment systems", "haptic and other human interface technologies for enter- tainment; see: Aims of the new TC) misses a lot of other aspects which or of equal and even bigger importance for the society: Namely: "Planning of Leisure activities", "Health improvement by IT methods for an ageing society (e.g. by robot assistance)", "Management and Organisation of Large Sport Events", "Networks for Efficient Drug Monitoring", to name just a few topics which deserve to be included in the new TC.