GALA NoE Deliverable 2.1 Activity Report

The activities within WP2 aim to highlight best practices and gaps within specific technical areas that will contribute towards the actual research and development (R&D) carried out by the special interest groups operated under WP3, as well as coordinating leading edge European R&D across the network of excellence. These activities are coordinated under nine technical committees addressing the different elements essential for the success of R&D of serious games. The activities within the GALA NoE will be carried out for a maximum of four years, where COVUNI is responsible as the scientific coordinator of the R&D activities. The activities of WP2 fall under interrelated themes - foundation work in Year 1 contributing to solutions and framework extracted in Year 2 to be applied in Year 3 and reviewed in Year 4. The road map will support cross-links between WP2 and 3, present a common framework for GALA to be tested and support defragmentation of the network of excellence communities through gap identification and better links through to industry-standard applications. Tools, models and frameworks will be shared and used by partners to facilitate better research and development techniques and to ensure state of the art investigation and advances. This reports covers the overview of the status so far, coordination of TCs , roadmap for the next three years, deliverable 2.1 (TC Research Field Reports) as well as issues. Summaries from the TC Research Field Reports provide an insight into the key findings so far with the technical committees towards solutions to research gaps and fragmentation issues. This report documents the role of WP2 in coordinating research and development within the GALA network, the harmonising of activities within the technical committees, the overview of the interconnectivity of the TCs and other WPs and the main findings so far (hot topics and research gaps (see table 5), fragmentation issues (see table 7) and solutions/outlooks). A more detail elaboration of the key findings (hot topics, research gaps and fragmentation issues) from each of the TCs is documented in each of the nine TC Research Field Reports, which is a part of the deliverable 2.1 as annexes to this TC Activity Report. The objectives for Year 1: Foundations and the first milestone (MS3) for WP2 have been achieved.