ESEM

Welcome to the 4_th ACE Conference, the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology, which is held between June 13_th--15_th, 2007 in Salzburg, Austria. Computer entertainment and games have become an integral part of our everyday lives. The challenge to design new forms of entertainment and developing methods on how to evaluate games towards users needs, is addressed by the various researchers, practitioners and developers whose work is published within these conference proceedings. The main goal of the ACE conference is to share the latest results and developments in design, development and evaluation of new forms of entertainment technology.

The ACE Conference Series started in Singapore in 2004 and was followed by Valencia and Hollywood as subsequent locations in 2005 and 2006 respectively. We would like to thank all former Chairs for making this great conference series happen and supporting us in hosting this current conference.

ACE is continuously growing and this is demonstrated this year by receiving 44 long papers from which we accepted the best 18. We had 74 short paper/poster submissions out of which we accepted 21 for presentation and 25 as poster. To encourage broader and more active conference participation, we enriched the program by holding three workshops on June 12_th, 2007. To provide various forms of entertainment experiences we accepted 16 demonstrations including a late submission category for industrial case studies -- to show latest developments to the ACE community.

This year we invite participants not only to be contributors, but to be actively involved in this conference. Starting with a keynote speech, which actively involves participants in a social event, demonstrating historic ideas of new forms of playful user experiences, this year's conference theme active and playful participation in games will be highlighted throughout the whole conference. The theme is reflected in this year's conference topics, covering games in all kinds of environments, interaction techniques like tangible interaction, new kinds of entertainment and novel ways of addressing music, rounded up by evaluation of games.