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< Back Joshua Kritz Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Graduated in Applied Mathematics in computer science, however my love for games pushed me to dedicate myself for studying them. This led me to brave many areas of knowledge, such as: psychology, design, education, production and entrepreneurship. My work as a teacher allowed me develop many of these skills in practice, besides invoking a new perspective about the world. On a personal level, I love new experiences that can teach me new knowledge and, most important, I am very open minded and easy to talk to! I believe discussion leads to enlightenment. A description of Joshua's research: Card games, in particular Trading Card Games (TCGs) thrive on using the synergy between the cards to create emergent and interesting gameplay. However, these games usually have hundreds of different cards to create such rich experience, with some older TCGs featuring thousands of different cards. With such a huge amount of different cards playtesting these games present a big challenge. In example a new set of Magic the Gathering takes over 3 years of development to be fully designed. But even considering simpler exemplars like Dominion or Assencion can be difficult to balance, and both games are known to need a few expansions of experience to indeed provide a well balanced experience. One way to make this task faster and easier is to use automated agents to playtest the game exhaustively and provide much needed data. Whilst this would assist card game development, it is not used in practice, the playtesting of card games is still completely done by players. Even with systematic playtesting there is a limit of how much of the possibilities humans can test. However, implementing playtesting of card games have two big challenges, which are the main reason it has not been implemented in practice yet. First: Automated agents are not great when playing a game with too many variables (different cards) Second: The possible combinations of cards used in a deck or set of a single game is huge. My research aim to address the second issue by using a theory of synergy between cards to reduce the search space necessary to properly evaluate a card game. j.s.kritz@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-kritz-38808379/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor: Dr Raluca Gaina Featured Publication(s): A FAIR catalog of ontology-driven conceptual models A Conceptual Model for the Analysis of Investigation Elements in Games A Vocabulary of Board Game Dynamics Unveiling modern board games: an ML-based approach to BoardGameGeek data analysis When 1+ 1 does not equal 2: Synergy in games Towards an Ontology of Wargame Design Themes Applied Games Design & Development Game AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StVXD9EbXzQ Previous Next

< Back Callum Deery University of York iGGi Alum Callum is a researcher and game developer investigating how real-time player experience measurement can be used to drive adaptive games. Aiming to embed player experience questionnaires into games in a way that doesn’t break immersion and presence, his PhD is focussed on leveraging the wide range of existing player experience questionnaires to improve games ability to adapt to players. This will involve exploring the states of immersion and presence: What is necessary to maintain them? What experiences can players reflect on without breaking immersion? How do we embed a questionnaire into an in-development game without disrupting the player experience? callum.deery@gmail.com Email Mastodon https://cfdj.itch.io/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisors: Dr James Walker Dr Anna Bramwell-Dicks Themes Accessibility Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Phoebe Hesketh University of York iGGi Alum Phoebe's PhD explored how people learn to play games through gameplay, online media, and community interaction. At the University of York, Phoebe worked on her skills as a researcher by exploring multiple methodologies and disciplines. She built upon her quantitative research skills from Bristol with qualitative research during their PhD including grounded theory and thematic analysis. She took courses in user-centred design and evaluation and designing for accessible player experiences (through AbleGamers). She participated in game jams and game development courses for experience and technical design. She also gave a talk at DEVELOP 2021 communicating and sharing her research and expertise in how players learn to play games to help designers with their onboarding for their games. She originally studied Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol which focused on systems and mathematical modelling and simulation, the mathematics and implementation of AI and Machine Learning systems, programming in object-oriented programming languages such as C++ and Java, and developed ray tracers in computer graphics courses. She also worked on projects in linguistics, logistics, computer vision, and physics. Once completing her PhD, Phoebe moved into the games industry as an AI programmer for several years before looking to return to games and player research. She has set up her own company, Take A Mo, that focuses on helping developers analyse their systems and internal systems to maximise access for players in usability, onboarding, accessibility, and representation. She is a currently carving her niche in the industry. phoebe@takeamo.co.uk Email Mastodon http://www.takeamo.co.uk Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/phoebe-hesketh/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisors: Prof. Sebastian Deterding Dr Jeremy Gow Featured Publication(s): How Players Learn Team-versus-Team Esports: First Results from A Grounded Theory Study Themes Esports Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Nathan John Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum After graduating with a MEng in Computer Science from the University of Bristol, Nathan joined the games industry as a programmer, working for Climax Studios, Gaming Corps and Freejam, before moving to a career as a general software engineer, while still developing indie games on the side. His experiences across a range of industries sparked a passion for testing, and left him wondering if there were was to improve the automated testing in game development. Borne from an experiment Nathan had performed training AIs to play his indie game WarpBall, in which he found the agents solved for exploits in the authored AI rather than playing the game well, his research project proposes a novel method for improving the quality of behaviour of human authored agents by pitting them against trained agents and observing what bad behaviours/exploits the trained agents reveal. Authored agents refer to AI agents whose actions are explicitly designed by programmers using traditional techniques such as Utility functions, Behaviour Trees and state machines; trained agents refer to agents whose behaviour is learned by playing many games against the authored agents. n.m.john-mcdougall@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/vethan4/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisors: Dr Jeremy Gow Dr Laurissa Tokarchuk Themes Design & Development Game AI - Previous Next

< Back David Hull University of York iGGi Manager iGGi Admin I have worked at the University of York since October 1995, almost all of it in the Department of Computer Science. My various roles have included Laboratory and Facilities Manager, Technical Manager and, most recently, Project Manager. Outside work, I have been a change-ringer for almost 50 years, and am currently a member of the band that rings the bells weekly at York Minster. I am also an accredited teacher of bellringing. I do parkrun most weeks, alongside the occasional 10k and half marathon, like to watch cricket, and play the clarinet and piano. iggi-admin@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes - Previous Next

< Back Dr Laura Helsby University of York iGGi Alum Laura Helsby is a HCI researcher with a background in psychology, currently examining how features of games might be beneficial to wellbeing and mood. She is particularly interested in how people with persistent low mood play and experience games, and what this might mean for their wellbeing. So far, she has conducted one interview study asking people with low mood what they play and why, and one diary study investigating the 'in the moment' effects and motivations for gaming. Future plans involve making more direct measures of the impact of particular games on wellbeing, as well as looking further into the FPS and simulation genres to unpack what about these games might make them appealing to people with persistent low mood. Laura has achieved an MSc in Foundations in Clinical Psychology from Newcastle University and a BSc in Psychology from the University of York. In her spare time, Laura enjoys denying she is a computer scientist at all. Her hobbies include reviewing books professionally, board game nights and of course, playing video games. laura.helsby@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn https://bsky.app/profile/laurahelsby.bsky.social BlueSky Github Supervisors: Prof. Paul Cairns Dr Jo Iacovides Featured Publication(s): "Leave our kids alone!": Exploring Concerns Reported by Parents in 1-star Reviews Do People Use Games to Compensate for Psychological Needs During Crises? A Mixed-Methods Study of Gaming During COVID-19 Lockdowns Themes Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Timea Farkas Goldsmiths iGGi Alum Timea is a researcher striving to understand how people engage with technologies—broadly defined—in their everyday lives, and how new technologies can enhance people's experiences of play, creative expression, and beyond. She has always been drawn to learning new things, with a background ranging from creative arts through games to science, which allows her to apply an interdisciplinary outlook towards research. She holds an MA in Sonic Arts from the University of Sheffield and has graduated with a First Class (Hons) degree in music composition and technology with a special award for outstanding achievement and collaboration. A description of Timea's research: This research project centres around understanding board game players' relationship with the immersive capabilities of hybrid board games - board games with a digital component - through finding novel interactions which strengthen the sensory elements of tabletop games. By focusing on physical board game pieces as alternative input devices to touch screens, the goal is to explore the design space of analogue-digital hybrids with a player-centric approach. farkasmarimba@gmail.com Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/timeafarkas/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Featured Publication(s): Exploring the Design Space of Analogue-Digital Hybrid Boardgames Using a Player-Centric Approach How Boardgame Players Imagine Interacting With Technology The Effects of a Soundtrack on Board Game Player Experience A Grounded Analysis of Player-Described Board Game Immersion Themes Creative Computing Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Laurissa Tokarchuk Queen Mary University of London iGGi Research Collaboration Coordinator Supervisor Laurissa Tokarchuk is a senior lecturer and researcher working on playful ways of exploring and integrating virtual and real world space. Her primary focus is looking at engaging ways of creating and interacting with AR content in games and incorporating physical sensors for increasing playability in mobile games. Her interests also include merging AI with mobile and social sensing to detect events and behaviours in crowds and games, and the use of technology to promote learning/well-being. Her research has resulted in the widely used SensingKit framework, best poster awards, media appearances in the Guardian and BBC (Royal Institution Christmas Lectures). She is particularly interested in supervising students on the following topics: AR/VR games for learning and cognition design for promoting behaviour change understanding and designing for player behaviour and curiosity in games Research themes: Game AI Games with a Purpose Computational Creativity Player Experience laurissa.tokarchuk@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~laurissa/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurissa-tokarchuk-27aa3214/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Game AI Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Raluca Gaina Queen Mary University of London iGGi Outreach Coordinator iGGi Alum + Supervisor Dr Raluca D. Gaina is currently a Lecturer in Game AI at Queen Mary University of London, where she obtained her Ph.D. in Intelligent Games and Games Intelligence in May 2021 (in the area of rolling horizon evolution in general video game playing). She completed a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Games at the University of Essex in 2015 and 2016, respectively. In 2018, she did a 3-month internship at Microsoft Research Cambridge, working on the Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning in Malmo Competition (MARLO). She was the track organiser of the Two-Player General Video Game AI Competition (GVGAI) 2016-2019 and was the Vice-Chair for Conferences of the IEEE CIS Games Technical Committee in 2020. Her research interests include general video game playing AI, evolutionary algorithms, and tabletop games. r.d.gaina@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://rdgain.github.io/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/raluca-gaina-347518114/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://www.github.com/rdgain Github Featured Publication(s): PyTAG: Tabletop Games for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning PyTAG: Challenges and Opportunities for Reinforcement Learning in Tabletop Games The n-tuple bandit evolutionary algorithm for automatic game improvement Population seeding techniques for rolling horizon evolution in general video game playing Automatic Game Tuning for Strategic Diversity Analysis of vanilla rolling horizon evolution parameters in general video game playing General video game for 2 players: Framework and competition General Video Game Artificial Intelligence Playing with evolution Rolling horizon evolutionary algorithms for general video game playing Self-adaptive rolling horizon evolutionary algorithms for general video game playing Rolling Horizon NEAT for General Video Game Playing Frontiers of GVGAI Planning Planning in GVGAI Efficient heuristic policy optimisation for a challenging strategic card game General video game artificial intelligence Optimising level generators for general video game AI 'Did you hear that?' Learning to play video games from audio cues Project Thyia: A forever gameplayer Tackling sparse rewards in real-time games with statistical forward planning methods General video game ai: A multitrack framework for evaluating agents, games, and content generation algorithms The Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning in Malm\" O (MARL\" O) Competition VERTIGØ: visualisation of rolling horizon evolutionary algorithms in GVGAI General win prediction from agent experience League of Legends: A Study of Early Game Impact Self-adaptive MCTS for General Video Game Playing The 2016 two-player gvgai competition Introducing real world physics and macro-actions to general video game AI Rolling horizon evolution enhancements in general video game playing Learning local forward models on unforgiving games Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Dr Joe Cutting University of York iGGi Alum + Supervisor Dr Joe Cutting is a Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York, UK. He has a BSc in Computer Science and an MSc in Cognitive Science from the University of Birmingham and completed an IGGI PhD at the University of York in 2019. Much of his research is in the area of the effects of playing video games on outcomes such as learning, cognitive abilities, wellbeing and behaviour change. This includes new psychological theories of how learning happens in video games and how game play can affect mental health, as well as studies on how game play can prevent cognitive decline in older people. He is also creating applied games to address current issues in education such as student wellbeing and teacher recruitment. Before becoming an academic, Joe enjoyed a varied career which included working as an interactive producer for the London Science Museum and founding his own digital startup company in the area of applied games. joe.cutting@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/people/jcutting Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor(s): Prof. Paul Cairns Featured Publication(s): The Relationship Between Lockdowns and Video Game Playtime: Multilevel Time-Series Analysis Using Massive-Scale Data Telemetry Four grand challenges for video game effects scholars: How digital trace data can improve the way we study games Measuring the experience of playing self-paced games Measuring game experience using visual distractors Four dilemmas for video game effects scholars: How digital trace data can improve the way we study games The many faces of monetisation: Understanding the diversity and extremity of player spending in mobile games via massive-scale transactional analysis Busy doing nothing? What do players do in idle games? Understanding whether lockdowns lead to increases in the heaviness of gaming using massive-scale data telemetry: An analysis of 251 billion hours of playtime Themes Applied Games Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Sam Hughes University of York iGGi Alum Affect and Emotion using Immersive Sound in Intelligent Games. (On Industrial Placement with Remedy Entertainment) Recent advances in high definition video displays and 3-D headsets, coupled with motion tracking and biosensor technologies, have enabled video games to reach unprecedented levels of visual immersion and interaction. There is little research however on how the aural feedback of the player, which can help assess their emotional state, can be used to inform the game intelligence and affect the emotive impact of the game. Furthermore, improvements in domestic surround sound and binaural technology are paving the way for fully enveloping and realistic soundtracks that extend the gameplay beyond the visual and can significantly enhance the emotive experience. This research project therefore addresses how current sensor and tracking technologies can be enhanced through analysis of player aural reactions such that the game intelligence can in turn provoke a conditional response via the reproduced soundtrack. In other words, how can the emotional impact of a spatial soundtrack during gameplay be enhanced by the user aural response alongside other physiological detections such as heartbeat and movement? Sam is a sound designer and voice actor who founded the audio journalism site, The Sound Architect™. Sam was selected as one of the first to ever receive the Prince William Scholarship from both BAFTA & Warner Bros. to study MSc Post Production with Sound Design at The University of York where he graduated with a Distinction and a Departmental Award for achieving the Highest Overall Average Grade. Sam has been highly active in the community for years including writing for BAFTA Guru, sitting on the BAFTA Youth Board, running Game Audio North and being an active member of BAFTA Crew Games. Most recently Sam has worked regularly with game audio company Sweet Justice on a variety of titles that include mobile and AAA. Sam’s recent credits include Injustice 2 and Madden NFL 2017. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Mastodon Other links Website https://uk.linkedin.com/in/thesoundarchitect LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Jen Beeston University of York iGGi Alum + Supervisor Jen is currently working as a Lecturer in HCI in the Department of Computer Science (University of York) whilst writing up her PhD. She has a multidisciplinary background, from studying subjects such as environmental science and media production and having worked in various jobs such as grassland research, flood risk management, and plasterboard quality. She feels extraordinarily fortunate to have been able to do research into her lifelong hobby of playing digital games. In particular, Jen feels it is important that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy gaming should they wish. As such, her research has been aimed at exploring the experiences of people with disabilities in playing games, beyond how various technologies can support play. Jen’s research is focused particularly on the social experiences of players with disabilities in-game and within the broader gaming community. She has worked alongside the charity AbleGamers with the aims of investigating these player’s experiences of gaming, what effects alternative controls have upon play, and what it’s like for these players in multiplayer or online games. Jen is broadly interested in HCI, user experience, player experience, inclusivity, social play, and game communities. Outside of her work, she enjoys walking, thinking, reading, crochet, art, and tabletop roleplaying games. jen.beeston@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenbeeston/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Featured Publication(s): Validation and Prioritization of Design Options for Accessible Player Experiences Social experiences of people with disabilities in playing (in) accessible digital games Enabled players: The value of accessible digital games Accessible player experiences (APX): The players Characteristics and motivations of players with disabilities in digital games Perceptions of Telepresence Robot Form Themes Accessibility - Previous Next