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iGGi PhD Projects - listing iGGi PhD Projects 2023 Game AI This page displays the supervisor-proposed PhD projects on offer under the above stated theme: If you are interested in any of the projects listed and would like further details and/or to discuss, please email the project supervisor. Please note that you can also frame your own project independently granted that you have secured a supervisor's support. For a list of available supervisors please see the accepting students section of our website. While iGGi has checked that the project descriptions listed below are within iGGi's scope , we wish to highlight that you are still responsible for ensuring that your proposal, too, is in line with this scope, and we would further like to point out that supervisor-framed projects are not prioritised in the application selection process: they are judged by the same criteria as applicant-framed proposals. For guidance to make sure that the proposal you submit (regardless of whether it has been supervisor-framed or created entirely by you) sits within iGGi's scope please refer to this link: https://iggi.org.uk/iggi-scope Navigate to other Themes on offer: Game AI Design & Development Player Research Game Audio Game Data Immersive Technology Creative Computing E-Sports Applied Games Back to ALL Projects Game AI Automatic Evaluation of Tabletop Games This project proposal aims to research and develop methods to accurately evaluate the impact of modern Tabletop Games components in different aspects of gameplay. Price Game AI Duration Diego Pérez-Liébana Read More Game AI Principled and Scalable Exploration Techniques for Reinforcement Learning In this project, you will develop principled and scalable exploration techniques based on reducing model uncertainty. Price Game AI Duration Paulo Rauber Read More Game AI Evolving Perception for Game Agents This project will investigate game agents in open world games which evolve their senses and world representation alongside learning what actions to take in each state. We will evolve game agents with highly alien behaviours which nevertheless have high fitness in the open world environment, while investigating important scientific questions about how senses and world representations evolved in humans. Price Game AI Duration Alex Wade, Peter Cowling Read More Load More

< Back Joint Writing Retreat - November 2023 Another fantastic Joint Writing Retreat was had with our colleagues at MAT , CDE and AIM this week at the beautiful High Leigh. Feedback from the event, was, as always really positive with: 100% of respondents saying the retreat was useful and beneficial to their research/progress 96% saying they would recommend it to others 95% saying they produced more content than expected With comments about the primary benefit of the retreat being: Scheduled writing time and not having to worry about preparing food, chores etc Refreshing and networking with people in a similar but different sphere made me reframe I feel good writing in a big group. And I have good mood in here Very focused working time and environment. More productive than the office. Very quiet and focused. Not having to think about what food to buy and to prepare and to cook takes the mental load off to just focus on writing. It's surprising how much fretting about food preparation for the week takes out of your day. Here is the word cloud created from the Mentimeter “poll of 3 words” to describe the retreat: Previous 24 Nov 2023 Next

< Back iGGi Game Jam 2025 and Awards! iGGi successfully concluded its 11th Game Jam on Friday, and it’s been EPIC! A total of 9 groups worked on a variety of game types, all based on this year’s theme: idiom 🔊 /ˈɪdɪəm/ iGGi PGRs appreciated the (in comparison to previous years) extended and therefore more relaxed format of the iGGi GJ 2025; while the the event itself spread over 72 hours, an extra day on either end afforded plenty of socialising between cohorts, and there was ample time for play testing. A special thank you goes out to the four iGGi Industry Advisory Board members who donated some of their time and who could be contacted online by groups via the iGGi GJ Discord server: A HEARTFELT THANKS !!! For the iGGi GJ 2025 Awards , participants could assign matching idioms (or twists on existing idioms) to each group. The resulting idioms were then used to label jars (one per group) containing 3D-printed keyboard keys with an “iGGi 2025” engraving (to fit the tab key on a mechanical keyboard) which were given out as prizes on Friday after the presentations. What's more, as a revelation that came completely unexpectedly to the researchers, the iGGi Game Jam had a far larger-scale secret Surprise Award still up its sleeve thanks to….. ...…SONY Interactive Entertainment !!!! SONY very generously sponsored the main award – a PS5 !!! – see pictures below showing its enthusiastic reception! - BIG MASSIVE THANKS from all of us to SONY! And here’s a rundown of the groups, games, and their award title: Game: “ Catan Got Your Tongue ” A Catan mod. Game: “ Stochastic Reward Engine ” This game is trying to decompose Catan into its core elements providing the players with a fun time optimising their probability choices in a binary choice environment. All created by: Connor Watts, Peyman Hosseini, Ruizhe Yu Xia, Tom Wells Award title: “Settle for less” Game: “ The Frankenwurst ” A fun 2D adventure game choke full of idioms. Created by: Nicole Levermore, Owen Crucefix (iGGi-ext.), Tamsin Isaac Award title: “When pigs… die…” Game: “ Hammer to Fall ” Grab your hammer and hit as many nails as possible. A tiny VR game about hitting nails with a hammer. Nothing nefarious going on here. Fun for the entire family! Created by: Dominik Jeurissen, Karl Clarke, Philip Smith, Toby Best Award title: “Hammer Time!” Game: “ Hexed or Vexed ” A spooky social deduction murder mystery. Created by: Alex Flint, Océane Lissillour, Prakriti Nayak, Tania Dales Award title: “Let’s burn that bridge when we come to it” Game: “ love & CLAW ” >> A beautiful fusion of balanced gameplay with a unique theme.. >> A furry good card game. Created by: Bobby Khaleque, Daniel Cooke, Dimitris Menexopoulos, Florence Smith Nicholls, Francesca Foffano, George Long, Luiza Stepanyan, Remo Sasso, Sahar Mirhadi, Sunny Thaicharoen Award title: “A Furry in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Game: “ ⏃⏁⎎⊑⍀⋏⊬⏃ ” A music toy. Created by: Cameron Johnston, Doruk Balcı Award title: “(Key-)stroke a chord” Game: “ Pick Up ” Find a Cube in this open world, pick up and put it back! Game Win! Created by: Yiping Han (iGGi-ext.) Award title: “Rinse and repeat” Game: “ Piggioms ” Created by: Alan Pedrassoli Chitayat, Lauren Winter, Steph Carter Award title: “Seeing how the sausage is made” Game: “ snaaaaaa...(300x)...aaaake ” A 1 dimensional snake game controlled using a Pi Pico and 300 LED string. Created by: Ben Kirman (iGGi Supervisor) Award title: “BITE ITTTTT for snake’s sake!” Lastly, a hearty THANKS to the four PGR GJ Organisers Doruk Balcı, Karl Clarke, Lauren Winter, and Tamsin Isaac , to the Supervisor GJ Organiser Ben Kirman , and a special mention goes to the iGGi Admin Team , in particular to Helen Tilbrook who went above and beyond to make it all happen! The next iGGi Game Jam will take place in January 2026 - exact dates tba - and we can't wait!! Photo Gallery - iGGi Game Jam 2025 Awards: Photo Gallery - iGGi Game Jam 2025 Moments: Itch.io link to all submissions here Previous 13 Jan 2025 Next

iGGi PhD Projects - listing iGGi PhD Projects 2023 Game Audio This page displays the supervisor-proposed PhD projects on offer under the above stated theme: If you are interested in any of the projects listed and would like further details and/or to discuss, please email the project supervisor. Please note that you can also frame your own project independently granted that you have secured a supervisor's support. For a list of available supervisors please see the accepting students section of our website. While iGGi has checked that the project descriptions listed below are within iGGi's scope , we wish to highlight that you are still responsible for ensuring that your proposal, too, is in line with this scope, and we would further like to point out that supervisor-framed projects are not prioritised in the application selection process: they are judged by the same criteria as applicant-framed proposals. For guidance to make sure that the proposal you submit (regardless of whether it has been supervisor-framed or created entirely by you) sits within iGGi's scope please refer to this link: https://iggi.org.uk/iggi-scope Navigate to other Themes on offer: Game AI Design & Development Player Research Game Audio Game Data Immersive Technology Creative Computing E-Sports Applied Games Back to ALL Projects Game Audio Machine Learning of Procedural Audio This work will investigate whether procedural audio can fully replace the use of pre-recorded sound effects. Price Game Audio Duration Joshua Reiss & Nemesindo Read More Load More

< Back iGGi Game Jam 2023 The iGGi Game Jam has kicked off on 11 January 2023 and this year’s theme was TRANSFERENCE - check out what the jammers came up with! Here’s a quick summary of the submitted games (in no particular order): Prison of the Endless by James Goodman, Prasad Sandbhor, George Long Agony Haunt by Callum Deery, Sahar Mirhadi, Amy Smith, Florence Smith Nicholls, Sunny Thaicharoen Pseudo Judo by Toby Best, Bobby Khaleque, Dimitris Menexopoulos, Oliver Withington Trip to the Moon by Charline Foch, FrancescaFoffano, Carlos Gonzalez Diaz Outbalance by Yu-Jhen Hsu, Peyman Hosseini, Nirit Binyamini Ben-Meir, Dominik Jeurissen Move The Groove by Dan Cooke, Nathan John-McDougall Pitch ‘it by Michael Saiger Nick Cage's Face Off 2 by Adrián Barahona-Ríos, Matt Whitby Mind Shift by Remo Sasso, Michelangelo Conserva, James Gardner *hacker voice* I’M IN. –– A Hacking Mechanic Supplement by Younès Rabii I know that person by Madeleine Frister, Maximilian Croissant Harlan by Luke Farrar, Tom Wells, Lauren Winter, Evgenii Kashin General audio support to various games was lent by Erin Robinson. And links to all of these games can of course be found via the iGGi GAMES page here or alternatively also via this page on itch: https://itch.io/jam/iggi23/entries There even was a Mini Contest on the last jam day!! Prizes went to the following teams and categories: Agony Haunt won MUCH WOW Nick Cage's Face Off 2 won BUT… WHY? Harlan won LESS IS MORE Outbalance won GIT GUD Pseudo Judo won IT’S A FEATURE Many Congrats to the winners! Yet, it needs to be said: With so many little game gems, it’s nigh impossible to pick favourites! The Game Jam wrapped on Friday afternoon - see twitter thread: Previous 13 Jan 2023 Next

< Back iGGi Con 2024 - It's A Wrap Now in its 11th iteration, the iGGi Con once again proved to be a full success. Each year, the iGGi Con showcases latest advancements in games research and offers a networking platform where games industry members and academics working in games and adjacent fields can connect. The iGGi Con 2024 was held at the University of York in the Law and Sociology Building of Campus East and spanned over two days. Totaling 11 talks, 3 keynotes, 2 panels, 3 workshops, 3 buzz talk sessions and 28 posters. It hosted l 160 attendees from industry and academia. The iGGi Expo ran in parallel during the afternoon of conference day 1 and afforded conference attendees the opportunity to chat 1:1 with participating iGGi industry partners: a big thank you to everyone who took part! We were also excited to welcome a number of iGGi Alumni who joined the event and who were able to share stories and anecdotes from their time with as well as after iGGi, and we loved the insights and tips they offered! And of course, we're back next year, again at the University of York , so, make sure you SAFE THE DATE >>> 10-11 September 2025 <<< The galleries below show impressions of the two days. iGGi Talks iGGi Keynotes iGGi Posters iGGi Panels More impressions Previous 13 Sept 2024 Next

< Back How does machine learning affect diversity in evolutionary search? Procedural content generation of video games levels has greatly benefited from machine learning. In such complex domains, generative models can provide representation spaces for evolutionary search. But how expressive are such learned models? How many different levels would they be able to produce? A new paper, co-authored by IGGI PhD researcher Sebastian Berns and Professor Simon Colton, looks at the limitations of generative models in the context of multi-solution optimisation. The work will be presented at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) and is nominated for a best paper award . The study shows that quality diversity (QD) search in the latent space of a variational auto-encoder yields a solution set of lower diversity than in a manually-defined genetic parameter space. The authors find that learned latent spaces are useful for the comparison of artefacts and recommend their use for distance and similarity estimation. However, whenever a parametric search space is obtainable, it should be preferred over a learned representation space as it produces a higher diversity of solutions. Alexander Hagg, Sebastian Berns, Alexander Asteroth, Simon Colton & Thomas Bäck. (2021). Expressivity of Parameterized and Data-driven Representations in Quality Diversity Search. In Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. Pre-print available on arXiv https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.04247Accompanying code repository available on Github https://github.com/alexander-hagg/ExpressivityGECCO2021 Previous 27 Jun 2021 Next

< Back IGGI on Industry Impact As the Easter Break is approaching fast, IGGI Year 1 students can report the successful conclusion of the last in a total of four modules: The Impact and Engagement Training. The course (usually held at Queen Mary University of London) was online this year, running over two weeks. The module encourages students to explore the potential impact of their research on the games industry in view of different aspects such as creativity, society, culture, economy, politics, etc. Students discuss feasibility and effectiveness of available engagement tools that can be utilised to create and maximise the envisaged impact. Rooted in the real-world, in true IGGI style, the training included talks by a wide range of invited guest speakers who brought their experience and expertise to the (virtual) table. On that note, a MASSIVE THANKS goes to AI Factory , Women in Games , BAME in Games , Sony , Game Republic , Fusebox Games , Player Research , UKIE , aiandgames.com , and Science Fiction author Matthew de Abaitua for their insightful talks and for representing the industry’s multifaceted perspective. A shoutout also to the IGGI academics and PhD students who contributed! Previous 1 Apr 2021 Next

< Back LAST EVER iGGi Cohort – Sep 2023 Start iGGi is proud to announce that we have now successfully recruited a total of 120 PhD researchers over its two funding runs (i.e., “IGGI 1” and “IGGI 2” which each granted funding for 5 years of new intake), resulting in a total of 10 cohorts of 12 new researchers on average per year. While this is sad news for those who were hoping to apply to the programme in future as there won’t be any further recruitment, we are excited about the high quality of work that iGGis on the programme have so far achieved and about what is still to come. Our last ever intake comprises a total of 16 new researchers who are about to start the programme officially at the beginning of this October (2023). We’ve seen teasers of their research projects during the “Year 1 Buzz” session of last week’s iGGi conference, and, diverse though they were in their topic areas, they all looked very promising. – We can’t wait to hear more of it!! If you are a new iGGi Year 1 and happen to read this: Here’s a warm welcome to you from the iGGi Community - to many years of shared work and fun! Previous 18 Sept 2023 Next

< Back 2021 iGGi Brochure Out now! The 2021 iGGi Brochure * lists profiles of all iGGi Researchers who actively participated in this year's iGGi Conference. Browse the linked pdf version (as well as the Students page on this site, of course) to find out more about individual iGGi PhD's current research. *Brochure design/layout by Timea Farkas Previous 8 Oct 2021 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 iGGi/AIM/C4DM Spring Writing Retreat 2025 Last week’s 2025 Spring Writing Retreat was a great success! And the warm & sunny weather certainly landed like the cherry on top! The event brought together 16 PG Researchers from iGGi and AIM CDTs, and the C4DM. The three days were spent at High Leigh Conference Centre in Hertfordshire. According to feedback survey, all respondents found the retreat useful, and an overwhelming majority (75%) deemed the duration and number of participants to be just right. (The remaining 25% are equally split both ways, so we conclude that what was on offer hit the sweet spot.) Here is what participants replied to the question " What was the primary benefit of being away with your and other CDT members?" Made some new friends, got to work on my research in a very focused manner. Vitamin D & focused writing time A change of scenery and structure I could focus entirely on my project Focus, socialise, change environment, and being inspired by other people's research and knowledge Balanced and structured days with focused writing sessions Very concentrated environment A constructive environment Focus. No need to worry about food I felt a really supportive and productive environment spending sometimes with my colleagues and new ones away from the usual workplace. Many participants enquired if there will be another writing retreat soon, so we better get planning! Previous 7 May 2025 Next