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< Back ​ Dr Paulo Rauber Queen Mary University of London ​ Supervisor ​ ​ I am a lecturer in Artificial Intelligence at Queen Mary University of London. Before becoming a lecturer, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Swiss AI lab working on reinforcement learning under the supervision of Jürgen Schmidhuber. I believe that intelligence should be defined as a measure of the ability of an agent to achieve goals in a wide range of environments, which makes reinforcement learning an excellent framework to study many challenges that intelligent agents are bound to face. My current research is focused on developing principled but scalable Bayesian reinforcement learning methods that address the most significant of these challenges: exploration, planning, and generalization. ​ p.rauber@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://paulorauber.com/ Other links Website LinkedIn Twitter https://github.com/paulorauber Github ​ ​ Themes Game AI - Previous Next

iGGi Partners We are excited to be collaborating with a number of industry partners. IGGI works with industry in some of the following ways: ​ Student Industry Knowledge Transfer - this can take many forms, from what looks like a traditional placement, to a short term consultancy, to an ongoing relationship between the student and their industry partner. Student Sponsorship - for some of our students, their relationship with their industry partner is reinforced by sponsorship from the company. This is an excellent demonstration of the strength of the commitment and the success of the collaborations. In Kind Contributions - IGGI industry partners can contribute by attending and/or featuring in our annual conference, offering their time to give talks and masterclasses for our students, or even taking part in our annual game jam! ​ There are many ways for our industry partners to work with IGGI. If you are interested in becoming involved, please do contact us so we can discuss what might be suitable for you. Graz University of Technology

< Back A local approach to forward model learning: Results on the game of life game Link ​ Author(s) SM Lucas, A Dockhorn, V Volz, C Bamford, RD Gaina, I Bravi, ... Abstract ​ More info TBA ​ Link

< Back A compression method for spectral photon map rendering Link ​ Author(s) G Lai, NJ Christensen Abstract ​ More info TBA ​ Link

iGGi Partners We are excited to be collaborating with a number of industry partners. IGGI works with industry in some of the following ways: ​ Student Industry Knowledge Transfer - this can take many forms, from what looks like a traditional placement, to a short term consultancy, to an ongoing relationship between the student and their industry partner. Student Sponsorship - for some of our students, their relationship with their industry partner is reinforced by sponsorship from the company. This is an excellent demonstration of the strength of the commitment and the success of the collaborations. In Kind Contributions - IGGI industry partners can contribute by attending and/or featuring in our annual conference, offering their time to give talks and masterclasses for our students, or even taking part in our annual game jam! ​ There are many ways for our industry partners to work with IGGI. If you are interested in becoming involved, please do contact us so we can discuss what might be suitable for you. Science City York (SCY)

< Back Rolling Horizon Co-evolution in Two-player General Video Game Playing Link ​ Author(s) C Ringer, C Pacheco, GC Dobre, D Perez-Liebana Abstract ​ More info TBA ​ Link

< Back Experimental Game Workshop - GDC 2023 "The Game Developers Conference is a whole lot of fun. Every year tens of thousands of games industry people come together to talk, listen and party. Deal-makers abound – you can spot them a mile away – but the majority remains those that derive a simple joy in the urge to create games and explore ideas of new ways that people can get pleasure from interacting with games." writes iGGi Director Peter Cowling after his recent attendance of GDC 2023. You can read the full blogpost here: http://www.petercowling.com/egw-2023/ ​ Previous 19 Apr 2023 Next

< Back ​ Prof. Massimo Poesio Queen Mary University of London ​ Supervisor ​ ​ Massimo Poesio is a cognitive scientist whose primary field is Computational Linguistics / Natural Language Processing. He is interested in the interdisciplinary study of language processing using evidence from computational modelling, corpora, psychological studies, and neuroscience; specific interests include computational models of anaphora resolution (coreference); the study of disagreement on language interpretation through the creation of large corpora containing multiple judgments (an area in which he pioneered the use of games-with-a-purpose with the development of Phrase Detectives, http://www.phrasedetectives.org ); the interpretation of verbal and non-verbal communication in interaction; and the study of conceptual knowledge using a combination of methods from human language technology and neuroscience. He has also been involved in a number of projects applying NLP methods to real life problems, such as detecting deception online, or identifying human rights violations reports in social media. He holds a European Research Council grant on identifying disagreements in language through Games-With-A-Purpose, DALI and is a co-founder of the open access journal Dialogue and Discourse . Using conversational agents in games Applying games to label data for AI Research themes: Game AI Game Design Games with a Purpose ​ m.poesio@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://sites.google.com/view/massimo-poesio/ Other links Website LinkedIn Twitter https://github.com/dali-ambiguity Github ​ ​ Themes Applied Games Game AI - Previous Next

< Back AutoGraff: Towards a computational understanding of graffiti writing and related art forms Link ​ Author(s) D Berio Abstract ​ More info TBA ​ Link

< 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 https://twitter.com/JoIacovides Twitter Github ​ ​ Themes Applied Games 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 https://www.twitter.com/@igordallavanzi Twitter Github ​ ​ Themes Game Audio Player Research - Previous Next

< Back ​ Philip Smith Queen Mary University of London ​ iGGi PG Researcher ​ ​ I was born and raised in Bermuda, a small island in the Atlantic Ocean with an approximate population of 65,000 people. I finished my undergraduate degree in Computer Science with a Specialist in Game Design at the University of Toronto. For my Master's degree, I studied Computer Games Technology at City, University of London. My goal is to help expand the use of video games from purely recreational activities to viable avenues for aiding in real world problems. A description of Philip's research: My research will be focusing on maximizing player engagement in gamified citizen science as a continuation of my Master's thesis. 'Citizen science' is the practice of employing volunteers from the general public for the collection and/or processing of data with respect to a scientific project. Gamified citizen science projects have relied upon prolonged engagement from volunteers, but the number of long-term participants have been unsatisfactory in current projects. This project attempts to address the lack of sufficient volunteer engagement in gamified citizen science projects. The aim is to build a framework meant to guide game designers in creating an engaging citizen science video game based on the values set by Self-Determination Theory (SDT). These values adhere to the theory’s concept of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators of engagement. Intrinsic motivation relies on the factors of player autonomy, competence, and relatedness during gameplay. Extrinsic motivation relies on external incentives to core gameplay such as in-game rewards. As part of my research, I am evaluating multiple game design frameworks focused on Applied Games and identifying the merits and flaws each have when applied to a citizen science context. The information I gather will formulate a prototype of the Framework that will be iterated upon through design workshops, development, and playtesting. ​ p.c.smithii@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn Twitter https://pjsmith97.github.io/ Github ​ ​ Themes Applied Games Design & Development - Previous Next