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< Back Nuffield Research Placement IGGI was taking part for the first time in the Nuffield Research Placement scheme this year: IGGI PhD researchers were supervising keen A-level students from across the country so that the students could gain an insight into scientific research work. The supervision schemes lasted two weeks per student and took place over the summer. The students benefited from the exposure to complex problems, and their involvement in the respective project may very well give them a significant boost to their prospective university applications. One of the participating IGGI PhD Researchers, Michelangelo Conserva , reported: "It was a pleasure for me to take part in the project! During the first week I did a series of seminars to introduce the student to the relevant topics; whereas in the second week we did a project on generating synthetic faces using Generative Adversarial Networks. I personally believe that this is a great initiative that will increase diversity in the next generation of researchers and I am proud of my little contribution to it. I think that mixing online and in person meetings would be great but I understand that it was not possible this year." Another participant, Nuria Peña Pérez , provided the following feedback: "Participating in the Nuffield Research Placement scheme has been a very enriching experience. During this programme, I supervised an A-level student on a project related to my work. Before starting the project, we had several discussions about the objectives to be pursued, to which the student significantly contributed with their own ideas. The project lasted two weeks, during which the student worked hard on the development of a video game for rehabilitation, a process that allowed the student to improve their technical skills while I gained supervising experience. This programme has therefore greatly benefited both of us.I think that through the Nuffield programme students can get practical experience in research topics that might otherwise be not necessarily accessible outside of academic environments or programmes. This benefits both academia, through the incorporation of external feedback and the possibility of improving communication, and students who can develop their technical and research skills and see if they enjoy these topics before committing to specific programmes. Unfortunately, this year the program took place online, which was not a problem for the project I suggested, but I can imagine many disciplines would benefit from in-person collaborations as this would give students access to physical research labs and their equipment." IGGI is planning to take part again in next year's round which will most likely be conducted in person or in a blended format. Read here to learn more about Nuffield and the Research Placement scheme. Previous 9 Oct 2021 Next

Principled and Scalable Exploration Techniques for Reinforcement Learning Theme Game AI Project proposed & supervised by Paulo Rauber To discuss whether this project could become your PhD proposal please email: p.rauber@qmul.ac.uk < Back Principled and Scalable Exploration Techniques for Reinforcement Learning Project proposal abstract: Reinforcement learning has received significant attention due to its success in training agents that play popular games such as Go , Starcraft II , Dota 2 , and others. Inefficient exploration, one of the earliest problems recognized in the field, still limits the success of reinforcement learning approaches that do not require domain knowledge. Although techniques like posterior sampling convincingly solve hard exploration problems in simple domains ( https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/11891201 ), scalable exploration techniques remain elusive. In this project, you will develop principled and scalable exploration techniques based on reducing model uncertainty ( https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.04436 ). Besides benefiting from games as excellent testbeds, this project has the potential to radically improve automated playtesting. Supervisor: Paulo Rauber Based at:

< Back iGGi Con 2022 Programme Booklet For an online/PDF version of the iGGi Con 2022 Programme Booklet please follow THIS LINK The booklet content: What is IGGI? How to get involved IGGI partners and collaborators IGGI Researchers IGGI Alumni IGGI Conference – Foreword Keynote Speakers Conference Programme Accessibility Information Conference Committee Previous 21 Sept 2022 Next

< Back 2020 Cohort Mini-Conference The recent 2020 cohort Mini-Conference was a great success! It was held in York and focused on highlighting the work being submitted and published by the iGGi PGRs at this stage in their projects. The cohort members had a chance to meet one another (as due to the pandemic, some still had not ever met before!) and to take a deep dive in to each-other's work, sharing knowledge in a simultaneously bonding and educational trip. The meet certainly fostered ideas for some collaborations between students, so watch this space! Previous 20 Apr 2022 Next

< Back iGGi Research Retreat "Unconference" For the second year running, we've assembled a group of 30 people at a remote Holiday Village near Matlock (Derbyshire) to connect individuals over their shared research interests, and to exchange ideas and experiences. The retreat spanned over 4 days (3 nights), and participants were made up of 16 iGGi PG Researchers, 2 iGGi Alumni, 9 Games Industry Members, 2 iGGi Academic Supervisors, and 1 iGGi Admin. The format: The first session of the day is always a "pitching" session. Each participant can put forward the topics they would like to see investigated and invite other participants to join their group. Groups with at least 2 members then retreat to a breakout space on site (e.g., their cottage's living room, outdoors seating, the common room) to work on their project for the rest of that day. The day's results are shared with everyone in the evening, and a larger, more detailed presentation is held on the last day before event close. This year, we had set simple rules as to who can pitch ideas on each day in order to give everyone a fair chance for gathering a group and to foster the creation of new connections. Some of the groups' outcome has been made available in summarised format via these dedicated pages/articles ! Given the enthusiastic feedback we've so far received, we aim to run a similar retreat in 2026, and we're already excited for it! iGGi Unconference Group Outcomes (List) Previous 21 Aug 2025 Next

< Back Mini Expo @ iGGi Con 2023 The iGGi Con 2023 Mini Expo ran during Conference Day 2 in the afternoon, in parallel with the main track. It offered a fabulous opportunity for Games Companies to connect with attending PhD researchers and masters students, and created a networking platform for all things game development and research. Here's a big THANK YOU to the games companies / individuals / NPOs who participated and enriched the Expo floor with their presence: Square Enix , Creative Assembly , Women In Games , Safe In Our World , King , Inhalation , Squingle Studios , Meaning Machine , Sumo ( The Chinese Room ) The feedback we so far received from both, Expo attendees and participating companies has been overwhelmingly positive: the Expo will definitely be back next year, at the iGGi Con 2024! Previous 15 Sept 2023 Next

Training iGGi is a collaboration between Uni of York + Queen Mary Uni of London: the largest training programme worldwide for doing a PhD in digital games. Training The training programme is an essential part of the iGGi PhD. It helps students acquire the knowledge and skills they need to do great research -- research that can change both video games and wider society. The programme has a practical focus on the design and development of games. By deepening our PGRs' understanding of games, we aim to motivate and enable PhD research that has real relevance to how games are made and played. Page Index: The Modules - Bringing Researchers Together - Training Requirements The Modules Because iGGi offers a four year PhD programme, the PG Researchers (PGRs) are able to commit substantial time to this training during their first year. There are four modules, with delivery shared by the University of York and Queen Mary University of London: Game Design (York) PGRs learn how to conceive, design, prototype and playtest their own games, be it for entertainment or a 'serious' purpose like health, education, or research. Game Development (QMUL) The module provides hands-on training developing video games using industry-standard game engines. iGGi PGRs work together to prototype a new game in one week . It also introduces a range of state-of-the-art technologies for game development, such as novel interaction techniques, AI opponents and collaborators, and procedural content generation. Methods and Data (York) PGRs learn various methods for empirically studying games and players, including standard HCI methods and data science techniques for gaining insights from large game data sets. Research Impact & Engagement (QMUL) PGRs learn how to engage industry, players, and other societal stakeholders early on in their research, how to conduct responsible research and innovation that is overall beneficial to human wellbeing, and how to present their work online, to the media, and industry. Video Placeholder - to display Game Dev YouTube playlist >> For iGGi news and updates, including event announcements, follow us on social media Bringing Researchers Together A key aim of this training is to bring new researchers together as a well-connected cohort who will carry on learning from, and supporting each other throughout their studies. This has helped us build a strong iGGi community of researchers across four universities and multiple research fields, with a common goal of doing world class PhD research on games. Each module is delivered in two two-week blocks, with the exception of the remotely-supervised individual project. Six weeks of the training takes place in the Autumn of the first year, and another eight weeks is scheduled throughout the rest of first year. For researchers in receipt of an iGGi EPSRC studentship, travel and accommodation is provided for York researchers to study in London, and vice versa. Training Requirements Completing the training programme, including passing the modules, is a compulsory part of the iGGi PhD programme. The Game Development module does assume some knowledge of programming, at least the equivalent of an introductory class.

< Back iGGi Goldsmiths is located in New Cross, South East London, five miles from central London. iGGi is a consortium of four universities or sites: the University of York (York), Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), Goldsmiths, University of London (Goldsmiths), and the University of Essex (Essex). iGGi received funding in two phases: “iGGi 1” funded the first five cohorts of researchers across York, QMUL, Goldsmiths, and Essex and PGR intake spans from 2014 to 2018; “iGGi 2” started in 2019 with funding for a further five cohorts, this time only at York and QMUL. Due to either placement-related interruption of studies and/or switching to part-time studies, some of the "Goldsmiths iGGis" from the iGGi 1 funding round are still in the process of completing their PhD work. Goldsmiths is therefore still listed here as an active iGGi site, even though future iGGi main events such as the iGGi Conference and the iGGi Game Jam will take place at one of the iGGi 2 sites, i.e., either York or QMUL. iGGi Goldsmiths is part of Goldsmiths' Computing Department . You can find the Goldsmiths campus map in the gallery below. Goldsmiths, University of London (Goldsmiths) iGGi Goldmiths Gallery Main Building, Goldsmiths Campus Map, Goldsmiths Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths Previous Next

Building Player Profiles in Mobile Monetisation: A Machine Learning Approach Theme Game Data Project proposed & supervised by David Zendle To discuss whether this project could become your PhD proposal please email: david.zendle@york.ac.uk < Back Building Player Profiles in Mobile Monetisation: A Machine Learning Approach Project proposal abstract: This project aims to use machine learning techniques to segment and profile mobile gamers in terms of their in-game spending. Estimates suggest that more than 2.6bn people play mobile games globally; that more than 80 billion mobile games are downloaded annually; and that mobile gaming accounts for almost $100bn in transactions every year. Despite the profitability of mobile gaming, little is known about how different kinds of players spend money in mobile games. Informal theories regarding specific differences in gaming are widely espoused: one influential model, for example, posits the existence of a small but profitable layer of heavily-involved 'whales', and much larger groups of smaller-spending 'dolphins' and 'minnows'. However, it is unclear whether this structure really does explain the monetisation of most games; and whether monetisation may vary between games; and between cultural contexts. In this project, we will take a data-driven approach, and apply a variety of machine learning techniques to large datasets of real player transactions. By both applying and developing algorithmic techniques for the analysis of such data, we will help build an understanding of how in-game spending may be profiled. This project would suit a machine learning specialist; a quantitative social scientist, or a data scientist wishing to do impactful work. It will be supervised by David Zendle, one of the world's leading experts on video game monetisation, and may involve one or more industrial partners who will share player data for the project. Supervisor: David Zendle Based at:

Evolving Perception for Game Agents Theme Game AI Project proposed & supervised by Alex Wade, Peter Cowling To discuss whether this project could become your PhD proposal please email: alex.wade@york.ac.uk < Back Evolving Perception for Game Agents Project proposal abstract: How does perception emerge? Hugely successful approaches to creating AI game playing agents such as MuZero, AlphaGo and AlphaStar learn the action to take in each state alongside a representation of the world to aid learning. For MuZero, AlphaGo and AlphaStar the representation is a prior distribution on how promising each move is in a given board position. The prior distribution can be seen as a highly effective way to perceive and simplify the game world, for greater decision-making fitness. In this project we will create game agents, for open world games such as Minecraft, which start from rudimentary sensors and simultaneously evolve a world representation while learning to make decisions leading to high fitness in the game world. We will investigate important scientific questions about how perception has evolved in humans, alongside creating interesting agents which might exhibit very weird and "alien" behaviours. Our internal representation of the world is conditioned both by evolution (for example, the physiology of the eye and brain) and also by learned experience. What sorts of perceptual systems might artificial agents develop in a simulated world? In this project we will develop simple 'open world' games into which we will release software agents with rudimentary sensory systems, possibly alongside human-controlled agents. These agents will be able to sense their world but not, initially, to perceive it (since perception is a combination of sensing and interpretation ). Both the sensory apparatus and the structure of the machine learning networks will be free to evolve (through genetic algorithms and reinforcement learning). Each generation will need to undergo a period of 'development' to train its networks on the current environment. We seek a motivated and talented student with a creative approach to research and skills in some of AI/machine learning, programming/game design, psychology/neuroscience and data analysis, and a willingness to learn new skills as necessary. Some travel to other international labs with an interest in this space may be possible. Supervisor: Alex Wade , Peter Cowling Based at:

< Back iGGi Con 2023 - Get Ready! Preparations for the next iGGi conference are underway! Better mark the date: iGGi Con 2023 13. + 14. September 2023 Queen Mary University of London This year's event will be packed with talks, workshops, panels, posters and more. For the first time ever, we will also run a Mini Expo with Industry stands. iGGi Con 2023 is a showcase for iGGi PGRs and friends, and iGGi Industry Partners as well as a networking platform for everyone interested/involved in the games industry and games research. So, don't miss out and REGISTER HERE TODAY !! Spaces are limited. Previous 3 Apr 2023 Next

< Back Mark the Date! iGGi Con 2024 - 11+12 Sep The iGGi Conference is the annual showcase of our 60+ PhD Researchers, allowing a birds-eye view into their work, and a chance to bring academic research, innovation and the games industry together. Following the success of the conferences in 2022 and 2023, the iGGi Con 2024 will take place at the University of York. More information to follow in a few months. Previous 20 Oct 2023 Next