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< Back NATS - iGGi Collaboration showcased at NATS Research Conference A recent collaboration between the University of York and NATS, the UK's leading provider of air traffic control services, is being shown at NATS’ Virtual Research Collaboration Conference . The 6-month A2URE project investigated what a suitable methodology for the development and approval of decision-making automation in Air Traffic Control operations would look like. Alongside this, what changes would be required to operational procedures and policies were considered. Nathan Hughes , a third year IGGI student, worked with NATS to produce three reports for the project. The first considered how current safety assurance processes for changes introduced to the Air Traffic Management (ATM) system could be applied to decision-making automation. The second summarised the factors commonly seen in controller-automation interactions. The final report described a new methodology for designing and developing automated decision-making tools, which could also provide evidence of safety assurance, validation and verification. Alongside these reports, two workshops were run internally to gain feedback from NATS experts, with attendees from the departments of safety assurance, validation, and human performance. The project aims to support future research into introducing decision-making automation to ATM, including the continued development of procedures and policies as more automation is introduced. Find link to the project summary here: https://i.nats.aero/rc21/site/automation/a2ure/ and the project's video for the exhibition below: The exhibition continues until 15 October 2021. Follow this link to access the online venue: https://i.nats.aero/rc21/ Previous 1 Oct 2021 Next

< Back Festive Wishes from iGGi Festive Wishes from iGGi As another calendar year is drawing to a close, iGGi wishes you a happy & relaxing Festive Break and a good start into 2023 !!! In other news: Selected recordings of the last iGGi Conference are OUT NOW and can be accessed via our iGGi YouTube channel: iGGi CON 2022 Talks here https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrhB7hwYCdScgdnGraofca1YhhL3BfGyd iGGi CON 2022 Keynotes here https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrhB7hwYCdScXSOX3vDlGwUzQLu1WciTd Subscribe to https://www.youtube.com/@iGGiPhD for further updates! We look forward to seeing you all in the New Year! Previous 21 Dec 2022 Next

< Back *New Partner Alert* - Safe In Our World iGGi is proud to introduce our new partner Safe In Our World . The charity (which was founded in 2017 by a group of dedicated folks from games industry) wants to foster positive mental health wellbeing and deliver support not only for players but also developers, publishers, retailers and the other incredible folk and teams who make up the video games industry. The main goal of Safe In Our World is to create and foster worldwide mental health awareness within the video game industry; to eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health, to make it a natural topic of discussion, and to promote the dialogue surrounding mental health so people are not afraid to reach out for help if they need it. iGGi is definitely happy to get behind that goal! As part of our pledge, we are committing to address the following points over the forthcoming year and beyond: Continue to create awareness among iGGi Staff, Supervisors and Researchers in respect of mental health related matters Make sure that all iGGi Supervisors have completed some form of mental health training Offer access to Safe In Our World’s resources to all iGGi Staff and PGRs, including training on mental health first aid and similar Update our annual mental health newsletter which contains important local contacts and resources and other information relevant to the topic Campaign for the cause, disseminate and foster “best practice” and support Safe In Our World in its mission Collaborate with Safe In Our World via sharing mental health-related iGGi research/publications and via joint events such as workshops, talks, panels, etc. So, here’s an official WELCOME to the Safe In Our World Team! We look forward to working together on that mission. #LevelUpMentalHealth Please note: Safe In Our World will feature in our upcoming iGGi Conference (06+07 September in York, find the Registration Link here . Previous 24 Aug 2022 Next

< Back iGGi 2021 CON The iGGi 2021 Conference concluded last week and we look back on two days that were fully packed with Talks Keynotes Panels Workshops the customary iGGi Buzz Talks knowledge exchange + networking and not to forget, a much-needed dose of socialising + fun If you've missed some or (hopefully not) all of it - we've compiled selected recordings, so that you can catch up via YouTube at your own leisure. A MASSIVE THANK YOU to the team of conference organisers: Nick Ballou , Timea Farkas , Dan Gomme , Joe Hesketh , Bobby Khaleque , Charlie Ringer , Michael Saiger , Evelyn Tan , Marko Tot , Kyle Worrall - this could not have happened without your dedication, effort, and creative input!This year's IGGI 2021 CON took place online on gather.town : with customisable avatars and an engaging conference map it felt like the next best option to an in-person event. Having said that, we can't wait to run IGGI 2022 as a face-to-face experience again, and we are very much hoping to see you there!! Previous 17 Sept 2021 Next

< Back iGGi Becomes WIG Education Ambassador iGGi is proud to officially announce that we are now Women in Games (WIG) Education Ambassadors as of last week. We at iGGi feel strongly that the future in games industry and research must include a more level playing field for all the groups which currently lack visibility and/or voice. We want to do our part in creating societal change in that respect. Here's a link to the article in the WIG newsletter featuring our senior academic spokesperson Raluca Gaina. >> iGGi joins Women in Games as Education Ambassador . We are very happy that Raluca has accepted this new role: as she is both, an iGGi Alumna and an iGGi Supervisor/Staff, she is particularly suited to representing women, not only within iGGi but also in games research as a whole. Included in the iGGi WIG team will be any interested PGRs who we will introduce in one of the forthcoming iGGi News articles, so, watch this space! If you as an iGGi PGR are interested in joining in, please let iGGi Admin know. (Note: You don’t have to identify as female to become a WIG Ambassador.) Here’s also a general link to this month’s WIG July Newsletter And finally, a big THANKS goes to the WIG Team who have been amazingly supportive already. We look forward to many years of collaboration ahead of us! Previous 20 Jul 2023 Next

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