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< Back Marko Tot Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for post-PhD position Hello! I'm Marko, and welcome to my page! As a part of the IGGI programme and Game AI research group, I'm working on adapting Statistical Forward Planning methods for complex environments. Statistical Forward Planning methods have proven to be effective in some simpler domains and, without requiring any prior learning, they provide a good out of the box AI algorithm. However, while these algorithms shine in certain games, they struggle to perform well in cases where the reward received from the game is sparse. In games where it takes a series of optimal actions to reach the goal, without any significant feedback from the environment in between, their performance drops significantly. My research is centered on solving this problem through automatic sub-goal generation and utilisation of local learned forward models. Creation of the sub-goals could be used to simulate the feedback from the environment and give regular rewards to the agent even in sparse and complex environments. I started my journey in video games when I got my first PC at the age of six, and at that point it was decided that I'm going to make a career out of it. So here I am, ~20 years later, a PhD. student at Queen Mary University of London, trying to make AI agents that can play games, and regularly spending too much time playing games under the excuse that it's all for 'research purpose'. m.tot@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://markotot.github.io/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/markotot/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/markotot Github Supervisor(s): Dr Diego Pérez-Liébana Featured Publication(s): World and human action models towards gameplay ideation Turning Zeroes into Non-Zeroes: Sample Efficient Exploration with Monte Carlo Graph Search Making Something Out of Nothing: Monte Carlo Graph Search in Sparse Reward Environments What are you looking at? Team fight prediction through player camera Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Prof. Anders Drachen Supervisor Anders Drachen, PhD, (born 1976) is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science, with Digital Creativity Labs and Weavr at the University of York (UK). His work in games research is focused on user behavior, user experience and audience engagement and the application of data science, information systems modelling, business intelligence, design and Human-Computer Interaction in these domains. His research and professional work are carried out in collaboration with companies across the Creative Industries, from big publishers to indies. He is recognized as one of the most influential people in his domains of work and have authored over a hundred publications with international colleagues across industry and academia. Having lived and worked on four different continents, Anders Drachen has had the mixed pleasure of fending off three shark attacks in Africa and Australia. He is also the youngest Dane in history to publish a cooking book – dedicated to ice cream. Research themes: Data Science, Analytics, Machine Learning in Interactive Media Big Data, behavior- and social media analytics in the Creative Industries Data Mining and Business Informatics in the Creative Industries Data-Driven Storytelling and Audience Engagement Games User Research and User Experience in Games Data-Driven Design and Development Human-Computer Interaction Esports and Sports Analytics Behavioral/Market Analytics and Business Intelligence Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies anders.drachen@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.andersdrachen.com Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/drachen/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Design & Development Esports Game Data Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Sarah Masters University of York iGGi PG Researcher Available for post-PhD position Sarah is an artist, game developer and researcher. They have an MA in Indie Game Development from Falmouth University (Distinction), where they created the city-building card game Eudaimonia. They are an active part of the games community taking part in game jams and setting up their own commercially focused studio. Sarah's work takes a research through design approach making and exploring games as an art form for change, collaborative design, speculative futures including 'ecopunk' and how we design games to meaningfully engage and entertain. Alongside a portfolio of games, their previous work includes running a workshop on Solarpunk vs Grimdark concepts. Their work also explores sustainable design and development practices to create emotional, engaging and meaningful experiences that can be a part of a greener industry and engage in climate change conversation. sarah.masters@york.ac.uk Email https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@sarah https://sarahdotgames.itch.io/ Mastodon https://sarah.games/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-games/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/Impalpably Github Featured Publication(s): Radical Alternate Futurescoping: Solarpunk versus Grimdark Radical Alternate Futurescoping: Solarpunk versus Grimdark Better Dead than a Damsel: Gender Representation and Player Churn Themes Applied Games Design & Development Player Research Eudaimonia: A solarpunk city-building choice and consequence game - Save the world in eight years!: Fatalis - a witchy gardening game: Previous Next

< Back Sunny Thaicharoen Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Sunny is a passionate esports enthusiast, with a love of MOBA games. His background is in engineering and entrepreneurship, with a Master of Technology Entrepreneurship degree from University College London. He is the creator of YGOscope, a statistical game data platform for a competitive card game, Yu-Gi-Oh. Sunny is an avid player of competitive Dota in his spare time, and is also a keen theme park enthusiast. He is interested in modelling metagames of MOBAs through game data and player research, particularly how players adopt the most effective strategies when changes to the stable gameplay state occurs. A description of Sunny's research: The project focuses on how the META - most effective tactics available - of MOBA games shift during disruption (usually through gameplay updates) between states of ignorance and stability within the player space of these games, to deepen our understanding of how players adapt to the changes that these gameplay updates cause, and why. There is a large degree of variability of how new METAs develops, and currently there is little research on the meta and metagame front. Available research so far has been based on defining the phenomena and resulting effects of gameplay updates, but little modelling has been done to attempt bring these fragmented pieces of knowledge together and attempt to structure them. The study and structuring of this phenomena can be an ideal starting point in understanding how effective strategies develop not only in MOBAs or video games, but any other competitive games such as chess, trading card games or sports. t.thaicharoen@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/thaicharoens/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/thaicharoens Github Supervisors: Prof. Anders Drachen Dr Jeremy Gow Featured Publication(s): An ecosystem framework for the meta in esport games Themes Esports Game Data Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Shopna Begum Queen Mary University of London iGGi Administrator iGGi Admin iGGi Administrator at QMUL Shopna is part of the iGGi Admin Team which is responsible for the smooth running of iGGi. In her role as iGGi QMUL Administator she provides administrative services and pastoral care to PhD students and assists the iGGi QMUL Manager in key aspects of the Centre's management. shopna.begum@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes - Previous Next

< Back Dr Lina Gega University of York Supervisor Qualified both as a nurse and a psychological therapist, Lina is a senior member of the Mental Health and Addictions Research Group (MHARG) at the University of York, where she leads research under the Digital Mental Health Theme. She has published widely on computer-based therapies and virtual environments. Lina's work on technology-mediated interventions and training formed an impact case study was submitted to 2014 Research Excellence Framework as part of Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience. Lina’s current work focuses on interventions to improve health and quality of life for children and young people with mental health problems. She has led the development and evaluation of a purposeful game to treat phobias in children, and of an innovative virtual environments system to assist psychological therapy and skills training. She co-leads the digital theme for the Closing the Gap (CTG) Network, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The Network’s digital theme explores how technologies, including gaming, can be used to improve the physical health of people with severe mental illness, especially schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder. An experienced University teacher, supervisor and examiner, Lina welcomes students with a design, engineering or behavioural sciences background who are interested in applied games research in the field of mental health, with a focus on: development and ‘proof-of-concept’ studies of purposeful games to improve mental health outcomes and social communication skills in children and young people. adaptation and evaluation of gamified applications to improve physical health outcomes with people whose motivation and information processing are affected by severe mental illness. Research themes: Game Design Games with a Purpose Player Experience Gamified Mental Health Interventions lina.gega@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.york.ac.uk/healthsciences/our-staff/lina-gega/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Catherine Flick iGGi Responsible Innovation Lead Supervisor Catherine Flick is a Reader in Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University and has a particular interest in the ethics of emerging technologies (including video games). Her video game research is largely interdisciplinary and focused on the social and ethical impacts of and ethics in design of video games. Previous video game research and talk topics includes on Pokemon Go and mental health, design of moral decision making systems in Bioware games, the representation of chickens in video games, the philosophy of zombie games, desirability of lootboxes, serious games for the hearing impaired, etc. She regularly attends and speaks at PAX East, and has spoken on games and similarly weird things at various conferences and events internationally. She is also the responsible innovation lead for the IGGI programme, so has a particular interest in development of codes of ethics or ethical design principles for games, having worked on the updated ACM Code of Ethics and run EU funded projects that developed responsible innovation guidelines in the fields of healthcare IT, smart homes/smart health, cyber security, nanotechnology & biomedicine. She is particularly interested in students who are excited about the intersection of video games and society from a critical philosophical perspective, or from a social sciences perspective. Research themes: Ethical Game Design Games with a Purpose Player Experience Gamification Social/Ethical Impact of Games Diversity & Inclusion in Games Philosophy & Games catherine.flick@staffs.ac.uk Email https://mastodon.me.uk/@CatherineFlick Mastodon https://www.liedra.net Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/liedra Github Themes Accessibility Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Prof. Sebastian Deterding iGGi Responsible Innovation Lead Supervisor Sebastian Deterding is a designer-researcher working on playful, gameful, motivational, and eudaimonic design. His work asks how we might re-design the socio-technical rule systems we live in to enable a good life for all. He is founder of the Gamification Research Network, and co-editor of The Gameful World (MIT Press, 2015). An internationally recognised leader of gamification research, he is frequently invited to keynote and speak at venues like Lift, Interaction, GDC, Games Learning Society, Google, IDEO, and MIT, and his work has been covered by The Guardian, The New Scientist, the Los Angeles Times, arte, and EDGE Magazine among others. As a senior research fellow at the Digital Creativity Labs, Sebastian works on the intersection of AI, machine learning, and design for augmented creativity: how can we create systems that learn to automatically adapt and serve optimally engaging content to users, and serve optimally supportive design suggestions and tutorials to creators? He is particularly interested in supervising students with a design, HCI, or behavioural sciences background on the following topics: understanding and designing for uncertainty, curiosity, and epistemic emotions in games applied games for decarbonisation and climate adaptation design for behaviour change Self-determination theory and games Research themes: Game Design Games with a Purpose Computational Creativity Player Experience Gamification sebastian.deterding@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://codingconduct.cc Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Igor Dall'Avanzi Goldsmiths iGGi Alum Creation of accessible tools for the use of procedural audio in video games The aim of this research is to investigate and provide new tools to developers for the use of procedural audio into video games. Procedural approaches could address different issues that commonly afflict game audio. In music, generative systems are not only less repetitive, but offer more adaptability as well. For what concerns sound design, they can provide not only variety, but stronger and more realistic support to the interaction with the game world; interaction that is becoming even deeper with the advent of VR Yet, these methods still need improvement on different sides. One is the level of quality that procedural audio needs to achieve to compete with the current aesthetic established by the use of rendered sounds and music in the media. Another is the additional amount of work required by the CPU to render the assets on runtime, and its variable cost). Finally, there is a general lack of user-friendly tools, to link common programming languages for audio to game engines. Software like MaxMsp, Pure Data or SuperCollider is used to design generative audio systems. A more accessible integration of these software could promote generative approaches among sound designers and composers in the field, that today have instead access to tools mainly designed to be used with rendered assets. My plan is to bring on research first by focusing on how a higher degree of quality could be addressed, exploring tools like the above mentioned MaxMsp, Pure Data, low level solutions, and machine learning algorithms. Primary research will be run to confront procedurally generated audio content with rendered one; to understand its impact on the player, and the level of quality needed to deliver a satisfactory experience. The creation of more accessible interfaces and tools dedicated to implement procedural audio in video games will be investigated and undertaken. I like to make noises of all sort and to play with them. For this reason I graduated in Music Production in 2016 and, at the moment of writing, I am finishing my final project for an MSc in Sound and Music for Interactive Games at Leeds Beckett University. Composer and sound designer, in the last year I have been focusing on audio implementation and programming, and I am currently exploring machine learning approaches for procedural audio. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Game Audio Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Lisa Sha Li University of York iGGi Alum Gifting in video games (Industry collaboration with BT) Lisa’s research is an exploration of gifting behaviour in video games. In the fields of social science and positive psychology, a considerable amount of research has found out how being generous, and its incarnation in gifting can benefit one’s subjective well-being. However, when it comes to the digital space, little do we know about how people can become happier through gifting. On the one hand, the research is curious about whether the practice of gifting changes in the context of video games. If it changes, the research attempts to identify what features thereof are different or even new, and to understand how gifting protocols could function in the digital space. On the other hand, the research is curious about how to apply gifting to video games, employing its benefits in enhancing social relationships and good feelings. The current purpose is to propose a framework of gifting between a human player and non-player characters that designers can use as an instruction when designing such activities. There is also a potentially high value of gifting in the marketing aspect of the game industry. Inspired by the observation of everyday life, Lisa tries to find better solutions to problems which need to be considered from both artistic and informatics perspectives. She is now a research student at the University of York. She is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh where she received an MSc in Advanced Design Informatics, with Distinction. Her earlier degree is B.Eng in Digital Media Arts (Xiamen University, Software School). She spent half a year in Taiwan as an exchange student in 2012. She did a summer internship developing VR games with the Two Big Ears, back in 2014. shali.8.lisa@gmail.com Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Cristiana Pacheco Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum Cristiana is a researcher with a passion for game development. Her research explores how to assess believability in video games and model/develop human-like behaviour. In addition, her research investigates applying these techniques in general, rather than a single specific game. She finished her BSc in Computer Games in Essex, where she also worked as a research assistant for an autonomous car racing project. She then started her PhD at Queen Mary University of London focused on games believability. Since, she has completed her placement at Ninja Theory, where she collaborated with Microsoft Research in Project Paidia. This opportunity provided experience with both game development and research. As a PhD student in her last year, she is working on the modelling of players through gameplay data and how this can be used to develop more human-like AI. The goal is to combine her research concepts into agents that do not always play to win, but rather present a diverse set of behaviours. c.pacheco@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/cpache111/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/Cpache1 Github Supervisor(s): Prof. Richard Bartle Dr Laurissa Tokarchuk Dr Diego Pérez-Liébana Featured Publication(s): Believability Assessment and Modelling in Video Games Predictive models and monte carlo tree search: A pipeline for believable agents Discrete versus Ordinal Time-Continuous Believability Assessment Trace it like you believe it: Time-continuous believability prediction Studying believability assessment in racing games PAGAN for Character Believability Assessment Rolling Horizon Co-evolution in Two-player General Video Game Playing Themes Creative Computing - 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