Those working in the game space often need to cite games in our papers; authors have taken an ad hoc approach to this so far. I would like to move this forward into the official templates so that we have a clear format for games.
The Game Studies journal has formal specifications for citing games (http://gamestudies.org/1501/submission_guidelines#GSCitation), which are based on APA format. I propose using the Game Studies journal format as a basis, but adapt it to match the format that we are using in SIGCHI. This puts it somewhere between book format and the various misc formats (online video, tweets, etc.). The style needs to have the game title be italicized, must include the publisher information, and should have the "Game [<platform>]
" tag (similar to the Tweet and Online Video samples).
Here is a proposed format, which references a particular instance of a game (release date, platform):
<Developer>. <Year Released>. <Game Title (italicized, like a book)>. Game [<platform played / analyzed for manuscript>]. <Publisher>, <Release Location>. Played <most recent play date>.
Here are examples:
Atari, Inc. 1979. Adventure. Game [Atari 2600]. Atari, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, USA. Played August 25, 2007.
343 Industries. 2012. Halo 4. Game [Xbox 360]. Microsoft Studios, Redmond, WA, USA. Played December 31, 2012.
Namco. 2004. Katamari Damacy. Game [PS2]. Namco, Tokyo, Japan. Played January 20, 2005.
Lucas Pope. 2013. Papers, Please. Game [OS X]. Self-published.
I surfaced this on the CHI Games Facebook group, to little interest. Unclear if there is another body that might have a helpful opinion.