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< 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 The AI and Games Conference IS BACK! It was the first event dedicated to game AI developers in Europe since 2017, and boy did the community embrace it. In the main organiser's (Tommy Thompson from AI and Games ) own words: "Nature abhors a vacuum and I'm the idiot big enough to try and fill it." - Tommy, you did achieve, and we thank you for that bold move from the bottom of our hearts! Big thanks also to all the sponsors, and specifically to our iGGi Industry Advisory Board Chair Duygu Ç acmak (Creative Assembly) who's a co-organiser. The one-day, double-track event took place on 08 November 2024 at Goldsmiths, University of London and featured international speakers from industry and academia who covered a broad spectrum of topics related to AI and Games in an informative and well-structured way. We're proud to say that we witnessed this launch with 13 iGGi PG Researchers and a whole bunch of iGGi Staff. We also spotted quite a few iGGi Alumni who had made it to the event independently. Moreover, Raluca Gaina and Diego Pérez-Liébana featured with a talk about their spin-off company " Tabletop R&D " >> If you've missed it, here's the Talk Recording We were really impressed about the level of organisation and attention to detail, and we're certainly hoping that the conference will be back again next year! >> Here's a link to all the the talks' recordings Previous 11 Nov 2024 Next

< Back Dr Anna Bramwell-Dicks University of York Supervisor Anna Bramwell-Dicks has an interdisciplinary background which started in Electronics and Music Technology before taking a sideways move to the field of Human-Computer Interaction research. She likes to combine her underlying interest in sound and music with applied psychology and creativity. She is very interested in research involving multimodal interaction (e.g. using audio, haptics, smell and/or proprioception as well as visuals within interfaces) particularly where audio is used to affect user’s behaviour or experiences. She is also very interested in accessibility research and any research in the application area of mental health and mental illness. As a lecturer in Web Development and Interactive Media, based in TFTI, Anna is always interested in work that involves designing and evaluating novel and interesting user experiences, particularly where that leads to the option to create fun, engaging, accessible experiences. She likes to work across a range of application areas ranging from learning environments to e-commerce to escape rooms and cultural exhibits! Anna is keen to work with students who want to design and develop gamified systems to support people with disabilities, physical or mental illness. Or, those who are also interested in multimodal experiences. Research themes: Accessibility Multimodal and multisensory systems Research methods anna.bramwell-dicks@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-bramwell-dicks-2b941a28/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Accessibility Applied Games Design & Development Game Audio Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dan Cooke University of York iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Dan has a keen interest in the world of finance and how traditional finance interacts with the games industry. He is interested in how criminals use videogame ecosystems for crime and money laundering purposes. He has a background in Accounting and Finance and graduated with a MA in Applied Accounting from De Montfort University in 2019. Outside of his professional life he has an interest in E-Sports and competitive gaming and the content creation and monetisation of these industries. His research interests include money laundering in secondary video game markets, video game monetisation and how users experience with monetisation and secondary markets. A description of Dan’s research: Detecting money laundering in video games through secondary marketplaces Dan’s research has a focus on how criminals can use secondary video game markets for the purposes of money laundering. This includes using internal (developer supported) and external (community ran) systems for the purposes of money laundering. His research aims to identify the scale of the issue and provide ways to identify laundering in these markets as well as investigating safeguards that could be implemented in order to mitigate the risks of money laundering occurring in video game secondary markets. dan.cooke@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor(s): Dr David Zendle Featured Publication(s): Money laundering through video games, a criminals' playground Themes Esports Game Data Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Stefan Stoican University of Essex iGGi Alum Understanding human crowd behaviour via virtual environments: feedback loop between games & research This project uses computer game experiments to explore decision-making in a virtual evacuation simulation. Can one be “saved by the gaze”? Currently, Stefan is investigating how innate social cognition components such as gaze-cuing might inform one’s egress. Do “Us versus Them” scenarios occur? He is also testing how one’s feelings of social identification with the surrounding crowd might modulate one’s risk-taking. Does hoarding prevent herding? Lastly, the project is looking at how cultural differences might affect egress time, when one insists to save personal possessions. More broadly, Stefan’s research concentrates on two key open questions in human crowd behavioural research. Firstly, how do social groups (that the player observes or is a member of) within the simulated crowd of agents affect both individual decision-making and the emergent behaviour of the crowd? Secondly, both empirical and virtual experiments of human crowds have not fully explored the effect of agent or player interactions with underlying landscape features (e.g. layout, signage, debris, large objects and other obstacles, etc). The outcomes of the experimental studies using real human participants will subsequently be used to develop more realistic decision-making and behavioural response algorithms and hence improve the behaviour of simulated agents in follow-on computer games. Stefan’s academic background may lie in Mathematics and Psychology, but his interdisciplinary mindset has constantly pushed him towards games and Computer Science. For his final Mathematics project, he designed an Android app that gamified teaching statistics. As part of his Psychology Masters degree, he investigated the potential benefits of MOBA games such as League of Legends with regard to visual attention. Currently, his extracurricular projects aim to explore video games’ effects on coping with trauma and on one’s perception of vulnerable groups, via commemorative gaming name choices or via in-game refugee storylines, respectively. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Prof. Damian Murphy University of York Supervisor Damian Murphy is Professor in Sound and Music Computing at the Department of Electronic Engineering AudioLab, University of York, where he has been a member of academic staff since 2000, and is the University Research Theme Champion for Creativity. He started his career in the Performing Arts Department at Harrogate College and has previously held positions at Leeds Metropolitan University and Bretton Hall College. His research focuses on virtual acoustics and he has published over 130 journal articles, conference papers and books in the area. He is a member of the Audio Engineering Society, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a visiting lecturer to the Department of Speech, Music and Hearing at KTH, Stockholm. Prof. Murphy is also an active sound artist and the Director of the £15m XRStories Creative Industries R&D Partnership exploring interactive and immersive storytelling for the UK’s creative and cultural sectors. He is interested in supervising students with interests in sound design, acoustics and audio signal processing and with a particular focus on: Interactive and immersive audio environments for real-time systems Room acoustics simulation and auralisation Assessment of immersive audio content for gameplay and competitive advantage Interactive/immersive audio storytelling Acoustic scene classification using spatial and spectral feature Audio for immersive environments. Research themes: Game AI Game Audio and Music Games with a Purpose Player Experience damian.murphy@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www-users.york.ac.uk/~dtm3/ Other links Website https://uk.linkedin.com/in/damian-murphy-b272b914 LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Creative Computing Game Audio Immersive Technology - Previous Next

< Back Younès Rabii Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for post-PhD position Younès is an awarded game designer and generative AI researcher. Their current research is concerned with the relationship between a game's rules, its narrative, and how to build AI systems that can understand these relationships, manipulate them, and invent new ones. Younès also has been a game developer for the past 10 years. They specialize in crafting new forms of play and making it accessible for their peers. Their work has been previously exposed in the French embassies and international conferences like the Game Developers Conference, the Gamedevs of Color Expo and the A MAZE Festival. A description of Younès' research: Younès' research goal is to bring to video games some of the most interesting properties of roleplaying games: their ability to trust every player with building a part of the game, and their ability to generate both new narrative and gameplay on the fly. Younès is working both on the AI techniques needed to allow that, and how to design the social spaces around those games in a way that won't hurt players or abuse creators. For the end of their PhD, Younès is designing a prototype in that new genre, counting among the first games to contain a form of Live Automated Game Design. yrabii.eggs@gmail.com Email Mastodon http://pyrofoux.itch.io/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/youn%C3%A8s-rabii-755717185/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/pyrofoux Github Supervisor(s): Dr Mike Cook Dr Jeremy Gow Featured Publication(s): " Hunt Takes Hare": Theming Games Through Game-Word Vector Translation Why Oatmeal is Cheap: Kolmogorov Complexity and Procedural Generation Revealing game dynamics via word embeddings of gameplay data Themes Creative Computing Design & Development Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Tania Dales University of York iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Tania is an indie video game designer and developer, working with horror, science fiction and games which are a little strange, bizarre and uncomfortable. They adopt research through design methodology, utilizing game design artistic practices, and game development software in their studies. About Tania's research: "My research is situated within character design, specifically in humanoid characters that elicit complicated and nuanced emotional reactions in players. These emotional reactions are those that creep in, linger, and last beyond the moment of play, rather than instantaneous responses like jump scares. We often experience these reactions when engaging with games that explore themes of body, cosmic and existential horror. My research looks at why these reactions occur, how we design our characters with these reactions in mind, and what is the role of bugs and glitches during existential gameplay experiences." tania.dales@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website http://www.linkedin.com/in/tania-dales-268912197 LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor: Dr Ben Kirman Themes Design & Development Game AI Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Mike Cook Supervisor Mike is a Senior Lecturer at King's College London where he leads research into automated game design, computational creativity, and the theory and practice of generative systems. mike@possibilityspace.org Email Mastodon https://www.possibilityspace.org/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Creative Computing Design & Development Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Bobby Khaleque Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for post-PhD position Bobby Khaleque is an IGGI student focused on the creation of Automated Game Design (AGD) Systems particularly for Secret Box experiences. Secret box experiences refer to games which focus less on their game mechanics and rules and more on their aesthetic design, mood evocation and exploration. AGD systems might help empower solo and indie developers during the game design process by quickly creating playable versions of games with little to no human intervention required. A further research goal of his project is game quality evaluation for games seeking to provide the aforementioned experience. After completing a Bachelors in Computer Science and a Masters in Artificial Intelligence both at QMUL he decided to pursue games research particularly for AGD and player experience due to the lack of research in regard to games aiming to provide a Secret Box experience. Bobby is part of the QMUL Game AI group actively pursuing his research in Computational Creativity to answer the question: Can a computer design a high quality Secret Box experience? b.d.a.khaleque@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/BKhaleque Github Supervisor(s): Dr Mike Cook Dr Jeremy Gow Featured Publication(s): What Factors Do Players Perceive as Methods of Retention in Battle Royale Games? Themes Creative Computing Game AI - 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 Connor Watts Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement I am a machine learning research engineer and software developer with commercial experience deploying and maintaining models for start-ups and larger organizations. I have experience researching and developing novel algorithms, as well as designing custom environments for application in domains such as combinatorial optimization, finance and games. c.watts@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/connor-watts-363354232/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://ConnorWatts.github.io Github Supervisor: Dr Paulo Rauber Themes Game AI - Previous Next