 | 3GGS: 3rd Geogames Symposium: Games and Play for a Better World! Iowa State University Ames, IA, United States, May 3-6, 2026 |
| Conference website | https://geogameslab.net/ |
| Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=3ggs |
| Abstract registration deadline | December 19, 2025 |
| Submission deadline | December 19, 2025 |
| First submission for peer-review | January 5, 2026 |
| Reviews completed | January 30, 2026 |
| Acceptance letters sent to the authors | February 15, 2026 |
| Upload the final contributions | March 16, 2026 |
Feel invited to submit your contributions to the 3rd Geogames Symposium (3GGS) at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa!
The 3rd Geogames Symposium (3GGS) provides an international forum for researchers, developers, and game enthusiasts to present, exchange, and advance knowledge in the field of geogames. The symposium examines the potential of analogue and digital geogames as catalysts for understanding and transforming communities, environments, and societal practices. This year’s theme focuses on the role of geogames in fostering awareness, responsibility, and care for our planet. In particular, the symposium highlights how geogames can be employed to explore Earth as a complex, living system of interdependent actors and self-regulating processes, thereby inspiring more sustainable ways of living and informing the reshaping of human–environment interactions.
3GGS symposium uses the following definition of geogames: Geogames are digital, analogue, or hybrid games that center on Gaia as Earth’s interconnected system of the physical environment, living organisms and its non-physical elements. They create playful experiences grounded in the use of real-world geographic data, locational knowledge, and spatial reasoning. Geogames are purposefully designed to foster systems thinking, problem-solving, and environmental awareness, with the aim of contributing to the resilience and well-being of Earth’s systems. They are distinguished by their integration of location-based features, real-world data, and interactive, often collaborative, gameplay that reflects the complexity of environmental and societal interconnections.
Let’s explore how geogames can:
- Strengthen community engagement and social cohesion
- Contribute meaningfully to a just, resilient, and regenerative world
- Inspire creative, playful solutions for local and global challenges
- Raise environmental awareness and encourage positive changes
- Enable to visualize and interact with real-world data integrated in games
We warmly invite everyone working on theories, methods, and application areas of geogames to join the symposium. Contributions on game design thinking and philosophies are welcome. Application areas may include urban planning and design, community engagement, placemaking, history, religion, cybersecurity, architecture, cultural heritage preservation, geography, geospatial science and engineering, digital twins, climate resilience, disaster preparedness, geotechnical engineering, psychology, anthropology, health, well-being and more.
Submission Guidelines
Submissions
All submissions should include the title, names of the author(s), their affiliation(s), and their emails.
- Short papers. Between 750-1000 words. Please include introduction with a problem statement and theoretical framework, research focus and methodology, results and discussio, and conclusions.
- Geogame demonstrations and game play. Around 300 words. Propose a demonstration or testing of your game or game prototype.
- Geogame workshops. Around 300 words. You may submit a suggestion for a 2 to 3-hour workshop.
- Student forum. Dedicated to students to foster their career. Submit around 500 words. Created games, graduate or PhD thesis, class work or research in progress.
Deadlines
- Extended abstract submission: December 19
- Reviews completed: January 30
- Acceptance letters sent to the authors: February 15
- Upload of the final contributions: March 16
Submission platform
The submission Web page for 3GGS is https://easychair.org/conferences?conf=3ggs
List of Research Topics
Key 3GGSymposium topics include and are not limited to:
- Geogames and community engagement - Showcase how geogames facilitate residents’ participation in urban planning, co-creation of living environments, and citizen science through digital data collection and visualization.
- Envisioning the future with geogames – Explore how geogames can be used to enable simulating, visualizing and exploring multi-species co-habitation and possible futures, contributing to more resilient and inclusive solutions.
- Geogames applications - Share about learning, exploration, and experimentation in and with geogames addressing domains such as planning, architecture, cultural values, disaster management, health, history, religion, cybersecurity.
- Emerging technologies and geogames - Demonstrate the use of novel technologies including augmented -, virtual – or mixed-reality, artificial intelligence, digital twins and geospatial science in geogames to create immersive, responsive, and data-rich interactive environments.
- Geogame design and evaluation - Discuss geogames’ development, prototyping, testing, evaluating and optimization to investigate their purpose and impact towards a better world.
Journal contributions of your work can be submitted to the Special issue on Geogames titled Can Geogames make the World a better Place? in the Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and Citizen Science journal co-edited by Alenka Poplin and Ítalo de Sena: https://journals.sagepub.com/page/epb/collections/special-issues
Feel invited to check accepted and published contributions of the 2nd Geogames Symposium from the following repository: https://geogameslab.net/2nd-geogames-symposium-proceedings/
Committees
Program committee
- Alenka Poplin, Iowa State University, USA
- Ítalo Sousa de Sena, University College Dublin, Ireland
- Arghavan Akbarieh, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
- David Schwartz, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
Scientific committee
- Ola Ahlqvist, The Ohio State University, USA
- Mónica Alcindor, Portucalense University, Portugal
- Arghavan Akbarieh, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
- Bruno Amaral de Andrade, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil
- Jeremy Best, Iowa State University, USA
- Stefan Göbel, Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany
- Anson Call, Iowa State University, USA
- Marta Brković Dodig, Singidunum University, Serbia
- Joanna Kocsis, Cornell University, USA
- Deepak Marhatt, Tribhuvan University, Nepal
- Konstantinos Papangelis, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
- Alenka Poplin, Iowa State University, USA
- Christoph Schlieder, University of Bamberg, Germany
- Ben Schouten, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
- David Schwartz, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
- Ítalo Sousa de Sena, University College Dublin, Ireland
- Micael Sousa, Center for Advanced Preparedness and Threat Response Simulation, USA
- Brian Tomaszewski, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
- Eszter Tóth, University of applied sciences Darmstadt, Germany
- Jeffrey Wheatley, Iowa State University, USA
- Aaron Yang, Iowa State University, USA
Local organizing committee
- Alenka Poplin, Iowa State University, USA
- Aaron Yang, Iowa State University, USA
- Jared Hansen, Iowa State University
- Aidan Flagel, Iowa State University
Invited Speakers
- t.b.d.
Publication
3GGS proceedings will be published by Iowa State University library repository.
Venue
The conference will be held at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, USA.
Contact
All questions about submissions should be emailed to Alenka Poplin (apoplin@iastate.edu) or geogameslab@outlook.com and cc-ed to apoplin@iastate.edu.