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< Back Dr Michael Saiger University of York iGGi Alum Michael is a game design researcher investigating how we engage players (particularly young people) in the design and development of applied games. He has facilitated co-design workshops across health and education research, designing solutions to research problems. Most recently, he was employed as a game design researcher on an ESRC funded project to design and evaluate a game for teacher recruitment. A description of Michael's research: Michael's research involves the facilitation and involvement of children and young people in the design of mental health games. Through their research, they have co-designed mental health prototypes and explored the factors to impact participation and engagement. Their research has highlighted how there are facilitation barriers and shifts in participant preferences towards how young people want to interact during co-design. michael.saiger@york.ac.uk Email https://linktr.ee/MichaelJohnSaiger Mastodon https://micia1592.wixsite.com/mikethingsbetter Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjsaiger/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisors: Dr Joe Cutting Prof. Sebastian Deterding Dr Lina Gega Featured Publication(s): Use of Technology in Brief Interventions How Do We Engage Children and Young People in the Design and Development Of Mental Health Games Children and Young People's Involvement in Designing Applied Games: Scoping Review What Factors Do Players Perceive as Methods of Retention in Battle Royale Games? Themes Applied Games Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games & Game Intelligence (IGGI) is the world's largest PhD research in games programme. The annual IGGI conference showcases students' work. Based at Uni of York & Queen Mary Uni of London, IGGI collaborates closely with 80+ industry partners. Welcome to iGGi !!! We are a group of people doing research in games... Read More Follow us on social media: (if you musk) BiGGi Con 2026 >> REGISTRATION OPEN! - iGGi THEMES - Game AI Game Data Design & Development Immersive Technology Esports Accessibility Creative Computing Game Audio Player Research Applied Games Check out the latest iGGi NEWS 23 April 2026 BiGGi Con 2026 - REGISTRATION NOW OPEN! Don't miss this year's iGGi Conference >> *BiGGi Con 2026* << 15-17 September 2026 at Queen Mary University of London Click the article for registration details! Read More iGGi GAMES iGGi COMMUNITY PG Researchers Staff Industry Partners Management Team Alumni

< Back Dr Ben Kirman University of York iGGi Training Coordinator Supervisor Available to supervise non-iGGi students for 2024 intake Ben is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Prof) in Interactive Media at the University of York, who has over 20 years' experience as a creative technologist. Since his first programming job fixing Y2K bugs (you're welcome), he has worked with dozens of organisations, large and small, in design and prototyping playful experiences. His research uses game design and playful design as a way to explore the complex effects of emerging technologies through novel and unexpected interactions and experiences. Most often, this is through the design and development of games, digital/physical prototypes, and design fictions. Ben has applied this in topics ranging from immersive theatre, dog technology, non-league football, radical cycle delivery, and time travelling robots, to educational games, esports, new situationism and magic. The unifying theme is play – as a topic of study, a way of working, for research insight, and as expression or output in games or playful experiences. This work, especially the more bizarre stuff, has often been covered by traditional media, including the BBC, New Scientist, Wired, The Guardian, TIME, Metro, the New York Times, and Your Cat magazine. Ben is keen on supervising students with strong creative drives, with an interest in making, design, experimentation, and a broad perspective on games and play. This might be a project about playful props in immersive theatre, or a project about context in locative and site-specific games, or any other project that looks to explore new possibilities and new implications of emerging technology through the lens of play. Research themes include: Game Design Applied Games Computational Creativity Sports with an E and without an E Player Experience ben.kirman@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://ben.kirman.org/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Design & Development Esports Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Prof. Nick Bryan-Kinns Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Nick Bryan-Kinns is Professor of Interaction Design and Director of the Media and Arts Technology Centre at Queen Mary University of London. He is Distinguished Professor at Wuhan University of Technology, and Guest Professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Fellow of the British Computer Society, Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery, and leads the Sonic Interaction Design Lab in the Centre for Digital Music. He has published international journal papers on cross-cultural design, participatory design, mutual engagement, interactive art, and tangible interfaces. His research has been exhibited internationally and reported widely from the New Scientist to the BBC. He chaired the Steering Committee for the ACM Creativity and Cognition Conference series, and is a recipient of ACM and BCS Recognition of Service Awards. He is interested in supervising students with HCI, Interaction Design, or AI backgrounds on research into the intersection of Sonic Interaction Design, play, and AI. Especially project which involve designing and evaluating computer mediated experiences for human participation and collaboration. Research themes: Game Audio and Music Games with a Purpose Computational Creativity Player Experience Gamification n.bryan-kinns@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~nickbk/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Game Audio Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Ruizhe "Jay" Yu Xia Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Ruizhe has bachelor degrees in Mathematics and Physics and a master's degree in Artificial Intelligence. After a short time as a consultant he decided to pursue research into what got him into AI in the first place: game agents. He enjoys games of all kinds, but strategy and RPG games occupy a sizeable portion of his collection. AI agents that perform with superhuman skill in increasingly complex games have appeared in recent years, but these agents are not always useful to game developers. Players within a game exhibit significant variance in their skill levels and play styles. Therefore, game agents with similar variance would better represent the player base. The research Ruizhe proposes will focus on three areas: measuring skill and play styles, developing game agents that mimic a range of human play styles and skill levels, and making these agents human-like. Upon successful completion, this research will improve the game development process via automated playtesting and will enable the development of AI agents that are more engaging and interactive. r.yuxia@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruizheyuxia/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor: Prof. Simon Lucas Dr Jeremy Gow Themes Game AI Game Data - Previous Next

< Back Dr Nuria Peña Pérez Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum Nuria got her bachelor’s in biomedical engineering in Spain before moving to London. After studying an MSc in Neurotechnology and working in robotic neurorehabilitation at Imperial College London, she discovered the enormous potential of serious games in the field of human-robot interaction. She joined IGGI in 2018. Her PhD research involves studying human motor control and learning during bimanual tasks to investigate how the dynamics of the interaction can serve to develop better training systems. This is done through the development of interactive gaming environments that are compatible with rehabilitation robotic devices. The modelling of the recorded human neuromuscular data allows to explore how to better help patients to restore their motor function. Her work is a collaboration between the Advanced Robotics group at Queen Mary University of London and the Human Robotics group at Imperial College London. As part of her PhD she has worked for the company GripAble, developing games for the assessment and training of hand function (February 2020-August-2020). n.penaperez@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor(s): Dr Ildar Farkhatdinov Featured Publication(s): Redundancy Resolution in Trimanual vs. Bimanual Tracking Tasks Dissociating haptic feedback from physical assistance does not improve motor performance Bimanual interaction in virtually and mechanically coupled tasks The impact of stiffness in bimanual versus dyadic interactions requiring force exchange How virtual and mechanical coupling impact bimanual tracking Lateralization of impedance control in dynamic versus static bimanual tasks Is a robot needed to modify human effort in bimanual tracking? Exploring user motor behaviour in bimanual interactive video games Quartz Crystal Resonator for Real-Time Characterization of Nanoscale Phenomena Relevant for Biomedical Applications Illuminating Game Space Using MAP-Elites for Assisting Video Game Design Themes Applied Games - Previous Next

< Back Dr Joseph Walton-Rivers University of Essex iGGi Alum Controlling Non-player characters. (Industry placement at Visteon) Within games non-player characters help to sell the world and give meaning to the player's experiences. These characters in games are presently not very believable and often lack the ability to interact with each other in meaningful ways. This work is looking at creating socially capable, believable agents to populate the worlds of role playing games. These agents need to be able to cope with player's actions and be capable of acting independent in the world. Joseph studied computer science at the University of Essex, obtaining a first class degree. During his study there he received two awards for academic achievement. After graduation he worked in the IT team of a company with offices across the United Kingdom where he developed and maintained their IT systems. Since starting IGGI he has worked on research involving co-operative agents working together to solve shared goals. He has a keen interest in programming and the Free Software movement. During his free time he enjoys strategy and puzzle games including Prison Architect, the Shadowrun series and Galactic Civilization 2. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Featured Publication(s): Evaluating the Effects on Monte Carlo Tree Search of Predicting Co-operative Agent Behaviour An Exploratory Analysis of Student Experiences with Peer Evaluation in Group Game Development Projects Student Perspectives on the Purpose of Peer Evaluation During Group Game Development Projects The 2018 Hanabi competition Hexboard: A generic game framework for turn-based strategy games Fireworks agent competition Evaluating and Modelling Hanabi-Playing Agents Controlling co-incidental non-player characters Monte carlo tree search applied to co-operative problems Distributed Social Multi-Agent Negotiation Framework For Incomplete Information Games Themes Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Amy Smith Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for post-PhD position After completing a BA in Fine Art, at Bath School of Art and Design, Amy spent some years as a tattoo artist travelling and creating artworks. An interest in learning to code then led her to complete a conversion Masters degree in Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. Keen to preserve her interests in both a creative practice as well as a new interest in generative deep learning, Amy joined the IGGI program to explore these interests further under the guidance of Dr. Mike Cook, Dr. James Walker and Prof. Simon Colton. Amy's research is currently focused on the intersection between 'imaginative play', computational creativity and generative deep learning. This project explores whether the kind of novel text, image and video media produced by generative deep learning algorithms can be used to provoke and stimulate the imaginative, ideation and visualisation capabilities of the user as they interact with this cutting edge technology. To date, her work has been accepted to several conferences, including the International Conference on Computational Social Science, AAAI, the International Conference on Computational Creativity, and EvoMusArt. Amy hopes to further encourage and explore the fruits of a close collaboration between human creativity and creative AI. amyelizabethsmith01@gmail.com Email Mastodon http://aialchemy.media.mit.edu Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-smith-791784173 LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisors: Dr Mike Cook Prof. Simon Colton Dr James Walker Featured Publication(s): Scaling Analysis of Creative Activity Traces via Fuzzy Linkography Fuzzy Linkography: Automatic Graphical Summarization of Creative Activity Traces AI-Generated Imagery: A New Era for the 'Readymade' The @artbhot Text-To-Image Twitter Bot. Trash to Treasure: Using text-to-image models to inform the design of physical artefacts Clip-guided gan image generation: An artistic explorationClip-guided gan image generation: An artistic exploration Art and the science of generative AI Generative Search Engines: Initial Experiments Themes Creative Computing Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Jo Iacovides University of York Supervisor Jo Iacovides, is a Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of York, UK. Her research interests lie in Human Computer Interaction with a particular focus on understanding the role of learning within the player experience, and on investigating complex emotional experiences in the context of digital play. In addition, she is interested in exploring how games and playful technologies can created for a range of purposes, such as education, citizen science, or wellbeing. She is an active member of the HCI and games community and serves on the Steering Committee for the annual CHI PLAY conference. She has received awards for a work on examining reflection and gaming (best paper, CHI PLAY 2018), evaluating serious experience in games (honourable mention, CHI 2015) and for the game Resilience Challenge, which encourages healthcare practitioners to consider how they adapt safely under pressure (first prize, 2017 Annual Resilience Healthcare Network symposium). She is interested supervising students that have a mix of qualitative, mixed method or design experience that they wish to apply to the study of digital games and playful technologies. Possible topics include exploring the effects of negative emotion in the context of playful approaches to persuasion; or examining how games can support wellbeing (particularly in relation to challenging life experiences). Research themes: Game Design Games with a Purpose Player Experience jo.iacovides@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/people/?group=Academic%20and%20Teaching%20Staff&username=ii Other links Website https://uk.linkedin.com/in/joiacovides LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Prasad Sandbhor University of York iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Prasad is a serious game designer and researcher. He has designed digital, tabletop and hybrid games in diverse areas such as education, healthcare, entrepreneurship, social safety, accessibility and sustainability. He is a part of the ‘Play in Nature’ initiative that crafts playful experiences to connect people with nature around them. He also teaches game design and user experience design. As a multidisciplinary design consultant, Prasad has been involved in conceptualising and creating B2C and B2B digital products for Indian as well as international organisations. His professional experience of 8 years in setting and leading design teams has made him proficient in strategic management of design. Prasad has been able to maintain his secret identity as a freelance author too. He writes short stories and essays in his native language, Marathi. A description of Prasad's research: Prasad’s PhD research explores designing games that facilitate the sensemaking of climate actions among university students. It defines ‘sensemaking’ as a structured process aiding the understanding of alternative pro-environmental actions within complex constraints, involving activities like reflection, brainstorming, and critiquing. The primary objective of his work is to identify game elements that impact players’ ability to make sense of climate actions to articulate design and facilitation guidelines for researchers, designers, and educators from climate change education and communication domains. It also aims to explore the transferability of sensemaking from the game into the real world. As a part of his research, Prasad is designing 3 climate change games using user-centred methods and exploratively evaluating them to see how they help players experience and develop sensemaking. He started with ‘Climate Club’, a tabletop role-playing game dealing with climate action-related decision-making challenges within everyday constraints. Its evaluation showed that the use of curated group setup, relatable contexts, problem-solving mechanic, and explicit mention of climate issues enhances sensemaking while group dynamics and asymmetric role-plays may cause hindrance. Combining these with other literature findings, Prasad designed ‘Climate Club 2.0’, a mini-live action role-playing game (LARP) about planning a climate-friendly holiday which is currently under evaluation. prasad.sandbhor@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://linktr.ee/prasadsandbhor Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/prasad-sandbhor/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor: Dr Jon Hook Featured Publication(s): Radical Alternate Futurescoping: Solarpunk versus Grimdark Climate Club: A Group-based Game to Support Sensemaking of Climate Actions Radical Alternate Futurescoping: Solarpunk versus Grimdark Themes Applied Games Design & Development - Previous Next

< Back Yu-Jhen Hsu Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum I have always been interested in automation specifically within strategy games, starting from civilization 5. I have a background in Artificial Intelligence with a Master of Science degree from Queen Mary, University of London, with a focus on Game AI, Computer Vision and Machine Learning/Deep Learning. My research interests involve Game AI improvement in real-time turned-based games with the help of data science techniques. A description of Yu-Jhen's research: This project has two goals. Firstly, to improve the performance of MCTS (Monte Carlo Search Tree) implementation. Secondly, the goal is focused on building an AI agent that is able to win the game but also provide feedback information/data about it’s decisions to the players and designers. In order to achieve the goal, the plan of the project is to use different data science skills to enable the game AI agent to understand the utility of different actions and decrease the time needed for making decisions. The data collected can also help the game AI agent explain it’s behaviors, hence provided useful information/data for its users and designers. y.hsu@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/yujhenhsu/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisors: Dr Diego Pérez-Liébana Dr Raluca Gaina Featured Publication(s): Why Choose You?-Exploring Attitudes Towards Starter Pokémon Tribes: a new turn-based strategy game for AI research MCTS Pruning in Turn-Based Strategy Games. Themes Game AI Game Data - Previous Next

< Back Peter York University of York iGGi Alum PhD student working in analytics and machine learning for esports broadcast and understanding. In particular working with Weavr on various projects related to broadcast and learning tools for Dota 2. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Mastodon https://pete-york.github.io Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Featured Publication(s): Data-Driven Audience Experiences in Esports Metagaming and metagames in Esports DAX: Data-Driven Audience Experiences in Esports A generalized framework for self-play training Themes Esports Game AI - Previous Next