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< Back Automated game balancing in Ms PacMan and StarCraft using evolutionary algorithms Link Author(s) M Morosan, R Poli Abstract More info TBA Link

< Back Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence at Develop:Brighton 12-14 July Want to improve the relationship between your game AI and your players? Or polish your VR character’s social interaction skills? Or discuss the latest academic research in the metaverse? Or just chance a flirt with Amy Smith ’s @artbhot? We are super excited to announce that @iggiphd will be attending @developconf in full force with 3 talks and over 20 researchers. This is our first big event since the pandemic and we are stoked! Who else is coming? We would love to meet you all at our stand! Click here for more information. Previous 2 Jul 2022 Next

< Back Nirit Binyamini Ben-Meir wins Best Paper Award at DIS25 Nirit Binyamini Ben Meir 's paper “Domestic Cultures of Plant Care: A Moss Terrarium Probe”, was awarded Best Paper at the ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS) 2025 . The work was lauded particularly for its originality, methodological rigour and its potential impact on the field of interactive systems. Here is the paper abstract: Houseplants are increasingly being used as part of interactive systems that aim to foster pro-environmental concern and awareness of more-than-human life. Yet such interventions rely on conflicting and untested assumptions about how people relate to houseplants. We therefore studied domestic plant care in 11 purposefully sampled households, applying a sensor-equipped moss terrarium as a living ‘thing ethnography’ probe, supplemented with semi-structured interviews. We find that social and intergenerational cultures of plant care inform people's individual concern and accountability through constituents and mechanisms like gift-giving, signaling, knowledge transfer, or joint practical care. We identify five domestic cultures of plant care in our sample, each of which frames plants differently and leads to different practical approaches to plant care. We propose design considerations that emphasise enculturation and shared care over individual behaviour change and reframe houseplants from decorative objects into living household members. You can access the full paper here . DIS25 took place 05-09 July in Madeira (Portugal). Nirit described the conference experience as very valuable, and enjoyed receiving some very useful feedback about her talk from the audience, making new connections as well as exploring its setting at Madeira Islands. Link to QMUL News article Previous 8 Jul 2025 Next

< Back “The game doesn't judge you”: game designers’ perspectives on implementing failure in video games Link Author(s) C Foch, B Kirman Abstract More info TBA Link

< Back Calligraphic stylisation learning with a physiologically plausible model of movement and recurrent neural networks Link Author(s) D Berio, M Akten, FF Leymarie, M Grierson, R Plamondon Abstract More info TBA Link

< Back Exploring Minecraft Settlement Generators with Generative Shift Analysis Link Author(s) Jean-Baptiste Hervé, Oliver Withington, Marion Hervé, Laurissa Tokarchuk, Christoph Salge Abstract More info TBA Link

< Back Twitchchat: A dataset for exploring livestream chat Link Author(s) C Ringer, M Nicolaou, J Walker 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. Riot Games

< Back Mind the gap: Distributed practice enhances performance in a MOBA game Link Author(s) O Vardal, V Bonometti, A Drachen, A Wade, T Stafford Abstract More info TBA Link

< Back Radical Alternate Futurescoping: Solarpunk Vs Grimdark Workshop THIS NEWS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN BY PRASAD SANDBHOR AND SARAH MASTERS ACADEMIC MINDTREK CONFERENCE Academic Mindtrek 2023 was an exciting conference based at Tampere University in Finland and focused on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) that featured talks and workshops in research and development on games, gamification, human-nature interaction, AI, robotics and lots more, including punk game design!🌱🧷✨🤖 COLLABORATION Intelligent Games and Games Intelligence (IGGI) PhD researchers Prasad Sandbhor and Sarah Masters proposed and delivered a design and research workshop at Academic Mindtrek 2023 titled Alternate Radical Futurescoping: Solarpunk vs Grimdark. The workshop was conducted in a hybrid set-up and involved the co-creation of mock-ups of play experiences dealing with eco futures and climate action in solarpunk and grimdark themes. PARTICIPATION A dedicated website was created for the workshop that provided information about its purpose and enabled participant registrations. It was promoted over Twitter, Linkedin and various communities interested in climate change and game design. The workshop received 15 registrations. 11 participants (6 online, 5 in-person) took part in the workshop as 4 registrations got cancelled due to various reasons. The participants belonged to diverse backgrounds such as PhD and postdoctoral research in games and HCI (that included 2 iGGi PhD researchers), creative arts, future visioning and game design. Workshop slides and reference materials were emailed to all participants prior to the workshop in order to help them familiarise themselves with the topics and methods being used. Participants were given a choice of either forming a group or working by themselves to create a mock-up of a play experience concept. 4 participants (1 in-person, 3 online) opted to work by themselves as solo creators while the rest formed 2 groups (1 group of 4 participants in-person and 1 group of 3 participants online). 3 participants (1 in-person and 2 online) joined only the mock-up creation part of the workshop. WORKSHOP The workshop aimed at bringing people from diverse interdisciplinary backgrounds together to conceptualise speculative play experiences for climate change engagement. Therefore, the workshop format included the facilitation of mock-up co-creation, initiation of a community of radical alternate futurescopers and reflection on the design journeys followed to articulate the opportunities, risks, challenges and effects associated with working on solarpunk and grimdark genres. Details about the context, goals, format and schedule of the workshop are available as a workshop can be found here The workshop consisted of 4 phases - introduction, conceptualisation, mock-up creation, and critical reflection discussion. The slide deck provided here was used across all phases of the workshop. In the first phase, participants were introduced to solarpunk and grimdark genres and given prompts for mock-up creation. In the second phase, they were taken through hands-on exercises using Critical Game Design, Triadic Game Design, and Design Box methods to support them in ideating and developing their concepts. In the third phase, participants created conceptual mock-ups on the medium of their choice. The last phase of the workshop involved a showcase of the participants' mock-ups, followed by a thorough discussion and critical reflection session. They also reflected on their own emotional journeys during the workshop. The workshop used a dedicated Discord channel for collaboration and communication between the organisers and both online and in-person participants. An itch page was set up for hosting the mock-ups created during the workshop. OUTCOMES The workshop produced 6 mock-ups of play experience concepts that followed solarpunk and grimdark genres. Although the design brief to the participants expected them to choose one of the two genres, it was observed that all concepts preferred an amalgamation of the two genres. The concepts generated during the workshop included a game about surviving the winter of 2023 in Ukraine, an open world VR experience related to deep sea impacts of climate change, a grimdark game related to urban forests, a resource management game about developing green spaces in cities, a city building game dealing with flood management, and a strategy game on climate refugee migration conflict. In the fourth phase of the workshop, participants presented their play experience concepts using mock-ups and took part in a reflection exercise over a Miro board. The reflection exercise included 6 questions dealing with the design process followed, the challenges faced and the takeaways from the workshop. Preliminary insights are as follows: >> Reflections on the design process and workshop format - The format of the workshop was found helpful by the participants. They reported that the prompts given were useful in quickly deciding the topic and using it as an anchor for the design process involving the triadic game design framework and the design box method. >> Challenges faced - The participants noted that while ideating in the context of the prompt, it was easy to slip from one genre to the other as some prompts had an inherent inclination towards one of the genres (for instance, a prompt about the climate refugees aligned with grimdark genre more than solarpunk). Some participants found managing the scale or scope of the game topic difficult during the workshop. It was also shared that following solarpunk aesthetics in the limited time and resources was challenging. Another feedback comment related to the challenges said that it was hard to work with solarpunk as its overtly positive vibe was “killing the dramatic elements”. >> Feelings and takeaways - For most of the participants, the takeaways from the workshop were related to the design processes followed and game design strategies for designing and developing games and play experiences for future research. When asked about their feelings about the future in the context of climate change experienced during the mock-up creation journey, they said that the duration of the workshop was too short to observe the feelings. Here are a few selected participant comments on the question: “Did creating your mockup change the way you feelabout the future in the context of climate change, if so, how?” "Not sure if it made me feel differently about climate change, but definitely about using games to tackle the issue. And about the potential of both solarpunk and grimdark conventions to convey different ideas." “Tips the scale a bit, games have been a great way to spread your message and awareness as you immerse the player to think and live your world” “It was very illuminating; an alternative way of brainstorming and fleshing out solutions. I feel more optimistic about climate action.” Workshop and its outcomes CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK Overall, the workshop was successful in achieving its objectives. The participants learned new concepts and methods of design and were able to create innovative play experiences with a climate change lens. The critical reflection discussion helped them articulate the challenges of creating solarpunk and grimdark artefacts. The workshop and the conference also served as an opportunity to connect with other researchers working in the domains of climate change games and human nature interaction. We intend to work further on the mock-ups created during the workshop and the feedback comments gathered in the form of a research publication. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We want to give a big shoutout to all our amazing participants for their contributions. We couldn't have done it without you!🙌We would like to say thank you to Academic MindTrek Conference 2023 for hosting us and to IGGI - Intelligent Games & Game Intelligence for supporting us with its collaboration fund to make it happen.😊 Prasad Sandbhor, Sarah Masters Previous 3 Oct 2023 Next

< Back Grounded Theory in Games Research: Making the Case and Exploring the Options Link Author(s) JH Salisbury, T Cole Abstract More info TBA Link

< Back iGGi Essex is located two miles from the historic city of Colchester and set in over 200 acres of beautiful parkland. 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. One of the "Essex iGGis" from the iGGi 1 funding round is still in the process of completing their PhD work. Essex 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 Essex is part of the University of Essex's School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering . You can find the University of Essex campus map in the gallery below. University of Essex (UoE) iGGi Essex Gallery University of Essex Colchester Campus University of Essex Campus Map Colchester Campus, University of Essex Previous Next