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< Back Dr Mihail Morosan University of Essex iGGi Alum Computational Intelligence and Game Balance. (Industry placement at MindArk) Game design has been a staple of human ingenuity and innovation for as long as games have been around. From sports, such as football, to applying game mechanics to the real world, such as reward schemes in shops, games have impacted the world in surprising ways. This process can, and should, be aided by automated systems, as machines have proven to be capable of finding innovative ways to complement human intuition and inventiveness. When man and machine cooperate, better products are created and the world has only to benefit. My research seeks to find, test and assess methods to apply computational intelligence to human-led game balance. Early research has proven that AI can successfully aid game designers in analysing the viability of various game rules and I intend to document this and polish the techniques that will result from my work. To achieve this, I am making use of cutting edge algorithms, powerful AI techniques and novel methods. Most of the current work done involves the use of evolutionary algorithms, as well as statistical analysis and evaluation of intelligent agents in various video games. Programmer (with a focus on optimisation and quick deliverables, mostly due to competitive experience), gamer (games are fun, relaxing and a great social experience), technology consumer (comes with the programmer bit) and all around happy guy stumbling through the world. Once ended up in a management internship at a bank thinking the application was for a programming position. And another time told an interviewer that "buying and eating a burger to solve hunger" is a legitimate problem-solving skill. Somehow received an invitation to the next interview stage. me@morosanmihail.com Email Mastodon Other links Website https://uk.linkedin.com/in/morosanmihail LinkedIn BlueSky Github Featured Publication(s): Automating game-design and game-agent balancing through computational intelligence Lessons from testing an evolutionary automated game balancer in industry Genetic optimisation of BCI systems for identifying games related cognitive states Online-Trained Fitness Approximators for Real-World Game Balancing Evolving a designer-balanced neural network for Ms PacMan Speeding up genetic algorithm-based game balancing using fitness predictors Automated game balancing in Ms PacMan and StarCraft using evolutionary algorithms Themes Design & Development Game AI Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Sarah West University of York Supervisor Sarah West is an interdisciplinary researcher and practitioner working to bring diverse voices into research through participatory approaches, including citizen science. Sarah is currently Director of SEI York, a Centre of the Stockholm Environment Institute, a science-to-policy research institute, whose York Centre is at the University of York in the Department of Environment and Geography. She has used citizen science approaches to address topics as diverse as air pollution, biodiversity, parenting, and exploring community responses to Covid-19. Her projects mainly take place in the UK and Kenya. Sarah has spent over a decade designing, running and evaluating citizen science projects, and together with other SEI colleagues has written reports for Defra, UK Earth Observation Framework and journal articles exploring who participates in citizen science, their motivations for participation, and how volunteers can be recruited and retained. She is particularly interested in exploring how different messaging and communication affects participation in citizen science projects. sarah.west@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.york.ac.uk/sei/staff/sarah-west/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-west-59b82690/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Accessibility Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Prof. Nick Bryan-Kinns Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Nick Bryan-Kinns is Professor of Interaction Design and Director of the Media and Arts Technology Centre at Queen Mary University of London. He is Distinguished Professor at Wuhan University of Technology, and Guest Professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Fellow of the British Computer Society, Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery, and leads the Sonic Interaction Design Lab in the Centre for Digital Music. He has published international journal papers on cross-cultural design, participatory design, mutual engagement, interactive art, and tangible interfaces. His research has been exhibited internationally and reported widely from the New Scientist to the BBC. He chaired the Steering Committee for the ACM Creativity and Cognition Conference series, and is a recipient of ACM and BCS Recognition of Service Awards. He is interested in supervising students with HCI, Interaction Design, or AI backgrounds on research into the intersection of Sonic Interaction Design, play, and AI. Especially project which involve designing and evaluating computer mediated experiences for human participation and collaboration. Research themes: Game Audio and Music Games with a Purpose Computational Creativity Player Experience Gamification n.bryan-kinns@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~nickbk/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Game Audio Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Stefan Stoican University of Essex iGGi Alum Understanding human crowd behaviour via virtual environments: feedback loop between games & research This project uses computer game experiments to explore decision-making in a virtual evacuation simulation. Can one be “saved by the gaze”? Currently, Stefan is investigating how innate social cognition components such as gaze-cuing might inform one’s egress. Do “Us versus Them” scenarios occur? He is also testing how one’s feelings of social identification with the surrounding crowd might modulate one’s risk-taking. Does hoarding prevent herding? Lastly, the project is looking at how cultural differences might affect egress time, when one insists to save personal possessions. More broadly, Stefan’s research concentrates on two key open questions in human crowd behavioural research. Firstly, how do social groups (that the player observes or is a member of) within the simulated crowd of agents affect both individual decision-making and the emergent behaviour of the crowd? Secondly, both empirical and virtual experiments of human crowds have not fully explored the effect of agent or player interactions with underlying landscape features (e.g. layout, signage, debris, large objects and other obstacles, etc). The outcomes of the experimental studies using real human participants will subsequently be used to develop more realistic decision-making and behavioural response algorithms and hence improve the behaviour of simulated agents in follow-on computer games. Stefan’s academic background may lie in Mathematics and Psychology, but his interdisciplinary mindset has constantly pushed him towards games and Computer Science. For his final Mathematics project, he designed an Android app that gamified teaching statistics. As part of his Psychology Masters degree, he investigated the potential benefits of MOBA games such as League of Legends with regard to visual attention. Currently, his extracurricular projects aim to explore video games’ effects on coping with trauma and on one’s perception of vulnerable groups, via commemorative gaming name choices or via in-game refugee storylines, respectively. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Pilar Zhang Qiu Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum Pilar is a researcher with a background in Design Engineering. She has a keen interest in user experience and interaction, wearables and the use of cyber-physical systems in the medical field. Her PhD centres around the creation of play assessments for neuromotor conditions in children with cerebral palsy. This gravitates around the idea that better and more objective clinical data can be obtained through gamification of common assessments. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Mastodon https://www.pilarzhangqiu.com/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/pilar-zhang-qiu/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/pili-zhangqiu Github Themes Applied Games - Previous Next

< Back Tom Wells University of York iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Tom has an interest in niche alternative and indie games which evoke strong emotions and are narratively immersive. He studied Experimental Psychology as an undergraduate in Oxford, specialising in conscious brightness perception in specific optical pigments. His Masters was in Computational Neuroscience, Cognition and AI from Nottingham, and focused on Computer Vision (specifically facial recognition) and Visual Attention. He enjoys heavy metal, strength sports and literature. A description of Tom's research: With the rise of digital art, Uncanny Valley has emerged from an esoteric robotics concept into an infectious memetic phenomenon, with specific memes such as 'Uncanny/Canny Mr. Incredible', or more generally uncanny faces being used as reaction images for humor. Critics and players will now refer to specific media being 'Uncanny' rather than using more general words as 'off-putting', demonstrating uncanniness cementing itself in the public consciousness as examples increasingly abound; ergo digital artists should be aware of evoking the uncanny even with modern rendering technology, as audiences become increasingly discerning of the Uncanny. This is most pertinent in videogames, where rendering is performed in real-time, meaning rendering constraints must be implemented. This potentially confines characters to the Uncanny Valley, as it may not be possible to increase graphical fidelity, thus artists may be left to either accept the uncanny or demaster their work (both undesirable options). This project aims to learn about the Uncanny Valley pertaining to modern skin rendering techniques, using artificial intelligence (specifically GANs) to directly map skin rendering parameters onto user assessments of uncanniness and realism. This can then be reverse engineered to provide automated tools for generatively rendering realistic non-uncanny skin, and predicting audience responses to skin realism, expediting QA testing. The primary experimental stage is to generate a face database with photorealistic skin to be assessed using psychometrics by participants. This is additionally one of few studies looking into the novel phenomena of training AI's to generate human-oriented psychologically salient content. tw1700@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes - Previous Next

< Back Marko Tot Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for post-PhD position Hello! I'm Marko, and welcome to my page! As a part of the IGGI programme and Game AI research group, I'm working on adapting Statistical Forward Planning methods for complex environments. Statistical Forward Planning methods have proven to be effective in some simpler domains and, without requiring any prior learning, they provide a good out of the box AI algorithm. However, while these algorithms shine in certain games, they struggle to perform well in cases where the reward received from the game is sparse. In games where it takes a series of optimal actions to reach the goal, without any significant feedback from the environment in between, their performance drops significantly. My research is centered on solving this problem through automatic sub-goal generation and utilisation of local learned forward models. Creation of the sub-goals could be used to simulate the feedback from the environment and give regular rewards to the agent even in sparse and complex environments. I started my journey in video games when I got my first PC at the age of six, and at that point it was decided that I'm going to make a career out of it. So here I am, ~20 years later, a PhD. student at Queen Mary University of London, trying to make AI agents that can play games, and regularly spending too much time playing games under the excuse that it's all for 'research purpose'. m.tot@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://markotot.github.io/ Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/markotot/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/markotot Github Supervisor(s): Dr Diego Pérez-Liébana Featured Publication(s): World and human action models towards gameplay ideation Turning Zeroes into Non-Zeroes: Sample Efficient Exploration with Monte Carlo Graph Search Making Something Out of Nothing: Monte Carlo Graph Search in Sparse Reward Environments What are you looking at? Team fight prediction through player camera Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Dominik Jeurissen Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Hey, I'm Dominik Jeurissen, and I'm passionate about both software engineering and machine learning, with a particular interest in fully autonomous agents that do not rely on absurd amounts of data. My focus areas include reinforcement learning, unsupervised learning, and the emerging capabilities of large language models. I earned my MSc in Artificial Intelligence from Maastricht University and my BSc in Computer Science with a focus on Applied Mathematics from RWTH Aachen. During my undergraduate studies, I worked as a software engineer at INFORM GmbH, contributing to their supply management software, add*ONE. A description of Dominik's research: My PhD is a collaboration with Creative Assembly , focusing on researching AI for complex strategy games, such as Total War. With the recent emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs), I’m exploring their potential to enhance game-playing agents. LLMs can instantly recall knowledge on almost any topic (though not without occasional errors), perform basic reasoning, and are easily configured for a wide range of text-based tasks. These abilities make them especially promising for game development, where machine learning agents often struggle due to constantly changing game environments. d.jeurissen@qmul.ac.uk Email https://commandercero.github.io/ Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominik-jeurissen/ LinkedIn https://bsky.app/profile/dominikjeurissen.bsky.social BlueSky https://github.com/CommanderCero Github Supervisors: Dr Diego Pérez-Liébana Dr Jeremy Gow Featured Publication(s): Playing NetHack with LLMs: Potential & Limitations as Zero-Shot Agents PyTAG: Challenges and Opportunities for Reinforcement Learning in Tabletop Games Generating Diverse and Competitive Play-Styles for Strategy Games PyTAG: Challenges and Opportunities for Reinforcement Learning in Tabletop Games Automatic Goal Discovery in Subgoal Monte Carlo Tree Search Game state and action abstracting monte carlo tree search for general strategy game-playing Portfolio search and optimization for general strategy game-playing The Design Of" Stratega": A General Strategy Games Framework Themes Design & Development Game AI Game Data - Previous Next

< Back Dr Nathan Hughes University of York iGGi Alum Nathan Hughes is a player experience researcher who focuses on how player make choices within games. Specifically, the work explores open world games such as Skyrim and the Witcher 3, as these games allow players a vast amount of choice with little restrictions on how and when these are made. However, little research has considered these choices, so little is known about how players experience choice in open world games. Therefore, research questions for this work include; why do players choose not to pursue the main quest? What do players choose to do instead? When and how do they make this decision? His background is in psychology, and so asks these questions from a psychological perspective. The aim is to uncover how the process of choosing unfolds, and how this is influenced. In turn, this may allow reflections on how the decision-making process operates - by analysing choices within open world games, a more controlled (but still intrinsically motivating) setting can be studied. ngjhughes@gmail.com Email Mastodon https://faethfulexplorations.wordpress.com Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-hughes-1035b611b/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor Prof. Paul Cairns Featured Publication(s): Clinicians Risk Becoming "Liability Sinks" for Artificial Intelligence Understanding specific gaming experiences: the case of open world games The need for the human-centred explanation for ML-based clinical decision support systems Growing Together: An Analysis of Measurement Transparency Across 15 Years of Player Motivation Questionnaires Contextual design requirements for decision-support tools involved in weaning patients from mechanical ventilation in intensive care units Growing together: An analysis of measurement transparency across 15 years of player motivation questionnaires Opening the World of Contextually-Specific Player Experiences No Item Is an Island Entire of Itself: A Statistical Analysis of Individual Player Difference Questionnaires Ethereum Crypto-Games: Mechanics, Prevalence, and Gambling Similarities Themes Player Research - Previous Next

< Back - @ Develop:Brighton 2025 - Tania Dales University of York iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Tania is an indie video game designer and developer, working with horror, science fiction and games which are a little strange, bizarre and uncomfortable. They adopt research through design methodology, utilizing game design artistic practices, and game development software in their studies. About Tania's research: "My research is situated within character design, specifically in humanoid characters that elicit complicated and nuanced emotional reactions in players. These emotional reactions are those that creep in, linger, and last beyond the moment of play, rather than instantaneous responses like jump scares. We often experience these reactions when engaging with games that explore themes of body, cosmic and existential horror. My research looks at why these reactions occur, how we design our characters with these reactions in mind, and what is the role of bugs and glitches during existential gameplay experiences." tania.dales@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website http://www.linkedin.com/in/tania-dales-268912197 LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor: Dr Ben Kirman Themes Design & Development Game AI Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Laura Helsby University of York iGGi PG Researcher Laura Helsby is a HCI researcher with a background in psychology, currently examining how features of games might be beneficial to wellbeing and mood. She is particularly interested in how people with persistent low mood play and experience games, and what this might mean for their wellbeing. So far, she has conducted one interview study asking people with low mood what they play and why, and one diary study investigating the 'in the moment' effects and motivations for gaming. Future plans involve making more direct measures of the impact of particular games on wellbeing, as well as looking further into the FPS and simulation genres to unpack what about these games might make them appealing to people with persistent low mood. Laura has achieved an MSc in Foundations in Clinical Psychology from Newcastle University and a BSc in Psychology from the University of York. In her spare time, Laura enjoys denying she is a computer scientist at all. Her hobbies include reviewing books professionally, board game nights and of course, playing video games. laura.helsby@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn https://bsky.app/profile/laurahelsby.bsky.social BlueSky Github Supervisors: Prof. Paul Cairns Dr Jo Iacovides Featured Publication(s): "Leave our kids alone!": Exploring Concerns Reported by Parents in 1-star Reviews Do People Use Games to Compensate for Psychological Needs During Crises? A Mixed-Methods Study of Gaming During COVID-19 Lockdowns Themes Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Søren Riis Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Søren Riis has more than 15 years of experience in teaching computability, complexity and the art of creating fast efficient algorithms. He has a strong interest in reinforcement learning and generative adversarial networks (GANs) related to strategy games. Riis has been actively involved in computer chess, and is listed on the wiki of influential people in chess programming https://www.chessprogramming.org/ Søren Riis is a strong player of strategy games including Chess, Shogi, Go and Bridge at an internal level. He has worked as a consultant for an AI company and is involved in applying deep learning for the card game of bridge. For the last 5 years he has been working on technical projects related to machine learning and reinforcement learning. He has practical experience and interest in scientific computing on super computers, and in creating C and C++ libraries to run from within python. Søren Riis is particularly interested in supervising students with a strong technical and/or maths background. Aptitude for strategy games with an interest in one the following ares is an advantage. Games requiring inductive reasoning combined with exploration. Hidden identity games (Werewolf, Resistance/Avalon, Mafia etc) Using GANs to sample realistic scenarios during gameplay Deep Reinforcement Learning in multi-agent strategy games Building and analysing games for investigating evolution of communication. Research themes: Game AI Game Design Game Creativity Games and mathematics s.riis@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/profiles/riissoren.html Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/soren-riis-13602117/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Creative Computing Game AI Game Data - Previous Next