A whooping nine iGGi PG Researchers had their paper/short paper/demo accepted and gave a talk at last week’s IEEE Conference on Games (CoG)! That’s on top of the many iGGi Alumni who featured in the programme through their companies or with their own work. iGGi also ran its own stand by the main auditorium entrance.

Here are some key impressions from our time at IEEE CoG in Madrid last week.

First up, reasons for celebration: 

• iGGi PG Researcher Filip Sroka won the runner up Best Paper Award on his paper titled “Segment-Based Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment for Motor Learning in VR Rhythm Games”, which explores the use of dynamic difficulty adjustment and procedural content generation to support motor learning in VR rhythm games - big congratulations to Filip and co-author Laurissa Tokarchuk! 

• iGGi Alum James Goodman won the Best Reviewer Award - well deserved, big congrats to him! The award was called into existence this year to give recognition to those following best practice in peer review. 

• iGGi PG Researcher Toby Best won the Best Demo Award with his demo titled “‘Descent: Journeys in the Dark' Computer-Aided Content Generation”

• Our honorable mentions go to (1) iGGi Alum Kyle Worrall who had been nominated for “Best of TOG” (IEEE Transactions on Games journal) with his paper titled “Considerations and Concerns of Professional Game Composers Regarding Artificially Intelligent Music Technology” and (2) to iGGi Alum Laura Helsby who had been nominated for Best Reviewer. Very commendable achievements, both!

This year's conference:

• The conference audience seemed to have increased in number compared to last year. The venue was the Information Science building of the Universidad Complutense which has a spacious and (considering the 37°C outside) surprisingly airy/cool interior; the event committee and organisers had gone out of their way to make participants feel welcome and well looked after.

• A particularly big thanks goes to General Chairs Raluca Gaina and Pedro Antonio González Calero, to Program Chair Diego Pérez Liébana, Local Chairs Irene Camps Ortueta and Pablo Gutiérrez Sánchez, and Aura Dominguez, and the fabulous team at large.

iGGi Presence:

• Our credits also go to all the iGGi PG Researchers not yet mentioned above who, each, delivered stellar talks and presented their work so comprehensively: Dien Nguyen, Dominik Jeurissen, George Long, Joshua Kritz, Lauren Winter, Ruizhe "Jay" Yu Xia, Tamsin Isaac.

• And lastly, shoutout to the "iGGi-wing of SIE", Adrián Barahona-Ríos and Ryan Spick, as well as to our now officially iGGi-certified Madrid tour guide Carlos González Díaz - it was nice to be able to catch up with you all, and we're already looking forward to seeing you again at BiGGi Con next week!

We’re definitely hoping to be back to CoG again next year!

iGGi stand by the main auditorium's entrance

Filip Sroka and Laurissa Tokarchuk - Runner Up for Best Paper

James Goodman - Best Reviewer Award

Tamsin Isaac speaking at IEEE CoG

Dominik Jeurissen presenting at IEEE CoG

Ruizhe "Jay" Yu Xia during his talk at CoG

Best Paper nominee Filip Sroka at CoG

Kyle Worrall - nominee for Best TOG ("Transaction on Games" journal)