10th International Workshop on Games and Software EngineeringGAS 2026

The growing adoption of gameful experiences make their development increasingly complex due to, for example, the number and variety of users, goals, potential mission criticality, and their inherent interdisciplinary nature. This complexity is exasperated by current limitations in theoretical grounding and methodologies to engineer the intended solutions. To help address this complexity, the ICSE 10th International Workshop on Games and Software Engineering (GAS 2026) seeks to highlight the opportunities and challenges involved in emerging trends and issues related to the development of gameful systems (entertainment games, serious games, and gamified applications). The workshop provides a forum to explore issues that crosscut the software engineering and game engineering communities. This on-going workshop series is co-hosted with the premier conference series on Software Engineering research: the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering.

Goals

The goals of GAS 2026 are to:

• Bring together the greater communities of Software Engineering and Game Engineering in a highly interactive programme that encourages discussion and scholarly debate from interdisciplinary perspectives. The programme includes keynotes, research presentations, and a lively panel discussion.
• Identify and explore emerging opportunities, research challenges, costs, and benefits for entertainment games, serious games, and the gamification of traditional (non-game) applications and activities.
• Explore advanced technologies (e.g., AI, HCI/CHI, UX, assessment, automation) that are essential in the development of gameful applications.
• Generate a new research agenda, identify topics of interest for this community, and how future workshops and social media groups may explore these topics.

Topics of Interest

The GAS 2026 workshop welcomes submissions addressing topics at the intersection of software engineering and entertainment games, serious games, and gamification such as:

• engineering activities (requirements engineering, architecture, design, testing, playtesting) tailored for gameful systems.
• umbrella activities (adherence to standards (e.g., Code of Ethics), build management, configuration management, lifecycle processes (e.g., Agile, DevOps), traceability) tailored for gameful systems.
• AI in game development and game play.
• automated, adaptable game development and game play.
• competitions (e.g., game jams).
• data analytics and visualisations.
• domain specific languages and formal methods for games.
• emerging approaches for testing games.
• games in the metaverse and virtual environments.
• HCI/CHI methods and technologies (AR/VR/MR, wearable computing for games).
• maintenance and evolution of games.
• metrics, biometrics for game development and game play.
• model based representations, analyses, and transformations.
• procedural content generation.
• QoS properties (e.g., accessibility, privacy, usability, user experience).
• qualitative and quantitative impact evaluation methods for games.
• re-use in games (e.g., franchises, modding, product lines).
• software engineering education and training.
• tools, infrastructure, and services.

Accepted Papers

	Title
	Are we there, yet? Top Challenges on the Road Ahead for Games and Software Engineering GAS C: Troy Costa Kohwalter, P: Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera, P: Paolo Ciancarini, P: Esteban Clua, P: Joseph C. Osborn
	CG-WFC: A Hybrid Cyclic-Graph & WFC Method for Designer-Guided and Replayable Procedural Content Generation GAS Laurent Voisard, Cristiano Politowski, Fabio Petrillo, Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc
	Characterizing Open-Source Video Games from a Software Engineering Perspective GAS Henrique Mandelli Canella, Yohan Duarte, Cristiano Politowski, Vinicius Durelli, Andre Takeshi Endo
	Creativity Beyond Functionality: An Observational Study of Easter Eggs in Video Games GAS Cristiano Politowski, Claudio Di Sipio, Benoit Baudry, Michalis Famelis, Houari Sahraoui
	Enhancing Automated Video Game Regression Testing through Behavior-Driven Development and Imitation Learning GAS Vincent Mastain, Fabio Petrillo
	Evaluating the Effect of Generative AI Content in Common Game Development Software Architectures GAS Ashish Amresh, Siddharth Subramanian, Igor Steinmacher
	Exploiting Jump Point Search for Dealing with Sokoban Problems GAS Christopher McKie, Zheng Li
	Identifying Video Game Debugging Bottlenecks: An Industry Perspective GAS Carlos Pinto, Fabio Petrillo
	Multilingual Game Dialogue Translation using Large Language Models: A Performance Survey GAS Quang Phuoc Nguyen, Cristiano Politowski, Labib Rahman, En-Shiun Annie Lee
	Serious Game Mechanisms for Cognitive Distortion Assessment: Analyzing the Effects of Game Environment and Control GAS Rifat Ara Tasnim, Farjana Eishita Media Attached
	Software Architecture Sherlock: An Educational Game for Software Architecture Exploration and Problem-solving GAS Simon Gschnell, Joao Daniel, Phyllipe de Souza Lima Francisco, Paulo Queiroz, Eduardo Guerra
	Using Digital Games for Simulating Self-Adaptive Systems: A Case Study of Drone Missions in Minecraft GAS Matheus Chagas, Gabryella Rodrigues, Kalil Rodrigues, Lucas Holanda, Vinícius dos Santos Alves, Luis Benevides, Lucas Vieira, Paulo Maia
	Using Hypothesis Engineering to Manage Architectural Uncertainties in Unity DOTS Game Development: A Case Study GAS Antonio Coppe, Fabio Fagundes Silveira, Eduardo Guerra

Call for Papers

Games now go beyond entertainment, serving as tools for engagement, learning, and impact. This includes serious games for education, health, and sustainability, and gamification, which applies game elements to influence behavior in areas like business and mobility.

The rise of gameful systems in critical domains brings challenges in scalability, usability, interoperability, and security, alongside the need for engaging experiences—further compounded by fragmented practices and diverse stakeholder needs.

Advances in Software Engineering for Digital Games tackle these challenges via innovations in architecture, DevOps, testing, and AI-assisted design. Industry adoption of analytics and adaptive systems to enhance gameplay highlights the need for closer collaboration between academia and industry.

GAS 2026 aims to unite software engineering and game development communities to explore emerging trends, share practices, and build the foundations for next-generation gameful systems.

The main goals of GAS 2026 are to:

• Foster collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and developers in Software and Game Engineering, enabling key discussions.
• Identify and analyze challenges and innovations in developing entertainment and serious games, and gamified applications.
• Explore how modern SE methods support scalable, secure, and sustainable gameful systems for real-world impact.
• Promote a shared R&D agenda by exposing open problems, future directions, and fostering collaboration via workshops and community platforms.

Topics of Interest

GAS 2026 welcomes submissions on the evolving intersection of software engineering and digital games—including entertainment, serious, and gamified applications—with emphasis on novel methods, technologies, and interdisciplinary approaches to address challenges in academic and industrial contexts. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Software engineering for games: Requirements, architecture, testing, verification, validation, and automated playtesting.
• Lifecycle and Process Innovations: DevOps pipelines, CI/CD for games, agile workflows, traceability, and ethical compliance.
• Adaptive and personalized game development and gameplay experiences, including player modeling and real-time adaptation.
• AI in game engineering: procedural generation, NPC behavior modeling, tutoring systems, and AI-assisted code/content design.
• Use of biometric data and physiological feedback (e.g., EEG, eye tracking, GSR) to improve user experience and game evaluation.
• Industrial practices and ecosystems: workflows, pipelines, and best practices used by studios in production.
• Competitions and co-design events: game jams, hackathons, and sprints for rapid prototyping.
• Data analytics and visualization: telemetry, behavior modeling, A/B testing, and large-scale analysis of gameplay data.
• Formal methods and DSLs for designing, simulating, and analyzing game mechanics and player interactions.
• Game evolution and maintenance: modding, product lines, backward compatibility, and sustained community engagement.
• Metrics and quality models: user experience (UX), accessibility, performance, fairness, and ethical gameplay indicators.
• Model-driven game development: representations, analysis, and transformation techniques for reusable and scalable designs.
• Human-in-the-loop and co-creative game development tools that support joint human-AI creation and testing.
• Infrastructure, platforms, and tools: support for scalable multiplayer, XR, cloud gaming, and microservice architectures.
• Education and training: Games and gamification in SE education, and SE for game-based learning systems.

Submission Guidelines

We will accept the following types of submissions:

• Long Papers (e.g., research papers): max. 8 pages.
• Extended Abstracts (e.g., demos, position statement): 5 pages.

The submission formatting instructions are available at:
https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template (LaTeX and Word formats).

All workshop papers should be submitted electronically in PDF format through HotCRP

Submissions will be desk-checked to ensure they meet the requirements (e.g., page limitations, format) and are within the scope of the workshop. A single-blind review process will be used.

Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings, officially dated when released in the ACM Library — up to two weeks before the first day of ICSE 2026.
The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. As ACM in January 2026 enters a fully open access publishing model, long papers require the payment of Article Processing Charges (APC). Extended abstracts are free of APC but they will be explicitly tagged as extended abstracts in the digital libraries.

As ACM will transition to a fully open access publishing model in January 2026:

• Long papers require the payment of Article Processing Charges (APC).
• Extended abstracts are free of APC, but they will be explicitly tagged as extended abstracts in the digital libraries.

If you have any questions or wonder whether your submission is in scope, please contact the co-organizers by e-mail:
icse.gas.workshop.2026@gmail.com

Túlio Caraciolo

From Code to Play: Engineering the Art of Games

Abstract: Game development sits at the intersection of engineering, design, art, and business. In this talk, Túlio Caraciolo draws on more than 20 years of experience in the games industry to explore how software engineering principles evolve when the goal is not just functionality, but play. Starting his career as a programmer and later transitioning into game design and leadership roles, Túlio has experienced the full game development lifecycle — from ideation and pitching to prototyping, production, launch, and live operations.

Through lessons learned across collaborations with major studios such as Disney, Ubisoft, Bandai Namco, Zynga, and iWin, as well as leading educational game initiatives at Geppetto Studio that reached nearly 200,000 students, he will reflect on the unique challenges of building interactive experiences at scale. The talk will discuss trade-offs between technical excellence and creative vision, the role of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Graphics in modern games, and what software engineers can learn from the art-driven, product-oriented world of game development.

Duration: 40 minutes + 10 minutes Q&A

Bio: Túlio is a veteran game designer, game producer, and product lead with over 20 years of experience in the games industry. His career spans the entire game development lifecycle, including ideation, pitching, prototyping, production, launch, and live operations. He began as a programmer, transitioned into game design, and later moved into leadership roles, coordinating internal teams and external partners. His portfolio includes collaborations with major studios such as Disney, Ubisoft, Bandai Namco, Zynga, and iWin. Most recently, at Geppetto Studio, Túlio led the development of an English-learning game for K–12 education, which reached hundreds of schools and nearly 200,000 students. He holds a BSc (2005) and an MSc (2008) in Computer Science from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Brazil. His academic and professional background emphasizes Software Engineering, with a strong focus on Artificial Intelligence and Computer Graphics for PC and console games. He is a game entrepreneur, co-founder of Geppetto and Manifesto Games, and an active voice in the Brazilian games industry.

Are we there, yet? Top Challenges on the Road Ahead for Games and Software Engineering

Mediator: Troy Costa Kohwalter Duration: 40 minutes + 10 minutes Q&A

Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera

Bio: Dr. Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera (he/they) is a Puerto Rican Assistant Professor and Founding Faculty of the Division of Games at the University of Utah. Rogelio is a computational design scientist, whose research focuses on formal models of storygames and their relationships to human cognition and player experience. Alongside his students, Dr. Cardona-Rivera has authored over 50 articles and books and has obtained nearly $1.5M in support for their research projects toward establishing a science of game design.

Paolo Ciancarini

Bio: Paolo Ciancarini is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bologna. His research focuses on software engineering for distributed and intelligent systems. He has contributed to research on computer chess, game AI, and the use of games as experimental environments for studying autonomous and adaptive systems. He has served on the program committees of major software engineering conferences and has authored numerous publications in software engineering and artificial intelligence.

Esteban Clua

Bio: Esteban Clua is Full Professor at the Federal Fluminense University and general director of UFF Medialab, CNPq PQ B researcher, Proze of Scientist of State of Rio in 2024. He holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of São Paulo, and a master’s and doctorate in Informatics from PUC-Rio. His area of expertise is especially focused on Video Games, Virtual Reality, GPUs, Simulation and Data Science. He is one of the founders of SBGames (Brazilian Symposium on Games and Digital Entertainment), currently serving as president of the Special Games Committee of the SBC (CEJOGOS). He is also the General President of the IFIP Technical Committee 14 (TC14 Digital Entertainment), and its representative for Brazil. In 2023, Esteban received the important award of Honored Researcher at SBGames (life achievement) from the SBC in the area of Games and Digital Entertainment. In 2024, he received the Friends of the Navy medal from the Brazilian Navy for the importance of his research to the institution. In 2015, he was named an NVIDIA CUDA Fellow, and in 2020, an NVIDIA Ambassador. In 2007, he received the ABRAGAMES award as the greatest academic contributor to the digital games industry in Brazil. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the CLEI Journal, Strategic Advisors for IEEE Transaction on Games, Steering Board of Elsevier Entertainment Computing Journal. To date, Esteban has published more than 75 articles in journals and more than 240 full papers in conferences. In 2024, he was a keynote speaker at several prestigious conferences, such as SIBGRAPI, SBCAS, SBPO, CIIS, and SET; Program Chair of the ACM High Performance Graphics in 2024; and General Chair of the International Conference on Entertainment Computing (ICEC) in 2024. In 2026 he is the General chair of the IEEE Serious Games for Health Conference.

Joseph Osborn

Bio: Dr. Joseph C. Osborn (he/they) studies technical game design and artificial intelligence (but not that kind) as an Associate Professor at Pomona College. Joseph is particularly interested in how players and designers differently understand and conceptualize games and in building computational systems inspired by those cognitive processes. In recent years Joseph has collaborated on a large-scale platform for recording, sharing, and citing moments and performances of games for archival and scholarly use. They are also a competitive Splatoon 3 player.