< Back Dr David Zendle University of York Supervisor David Zendle is an active researcher into the effects of both video games and gambling, and is the author of several key references on the topic of video game monetisation. His most well-known publications deal with the potential effects of loot boxes. His recent work focuses on understanding the diversity of ways that video game play impacts wellbeing, and involves the analysis of large-scale datasets of player behaviour and spending. David is an academic affiliate of the Behavioural Insights Team and holds a research position within the NHS. He is particularly interested in building evidence-based policy in the domain of video game regulation, and has provided oral testimony on video game effects to a variety of government investigations across the globe. David is particularly interested in supervising students with an industry, economics, legal, or behavioural sciences background. He is interested in work on the following topics: The long-term effects of video game play (both positive and negative) Video game monetisation Video game regulation and policy Dark video game design Research themes: Game Analytics Game effects Game policy Email david.zendle@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Themes Game Data Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Joseph Walton-Rivers University of Essex iGGi Alum Controlling Non-player characters. (Industry placement at Visteon) Within games non-player characters help to sell the world and give meaning to the player's experiences. These characters in games are presently not very believable and often lack the ability to interact with each other in meaningful ways. This work is looking at creating socially capable, believable agents to populate the worlds of role playing games. These agents need to be able to cope with player's actions and be capable of acting independent in the world. Joseph studied computer science at the University of Essex, obtaining a first class degree. During his study there he received two awards for academic achievement. After graduation he worked in the IT team of a company with offices across the United Kingdom where he developed and maintained their IT systems. Since starting IGGI he has worked on research involving co-operative agents working together to solve shared goals. He has a keen interest in programming and the Free Software movement. During his free time he enjoys strategy and puzzle games including Prison Architect, the Shadowrun series and Galactic Civilization 2. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Featured Publication(s): Enhancing Programming Learning with AI-Generated Contextual Examples in Digital Creativity Peer Evaluation in Group Projects: Insight into Effective Student Critique and Feedback Evaluating the Effects on Monte Carlo Tree Search of Predicting Co-operative Agent Behaviour An Exploratory Analysis of Student Experiences with Peer Evaluation in Group Game Development Projects Student Perspectives on the Purpose of Peer Evaluation During Group Game Development Projects The 2018 Hanabi competition Hexboard: A generic game framework for turn-based strategy games Fireworks agent competition Evaluating and Modelling Hanabi-Playing Agents Controlling co-incidental non-player characters Monte carlo tree search applied to co-operative problems Distributed Social Multi-Agent Negotiation Framework For Incomplete Information Games Themes Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Francesca Foffano University of York iGGi PG Researcher Available for post-PhD position Francesca is finalising her PhD at the University of York, specialising in UX, player experience and design. Their work spans game experience (e.g. getting stuck), safeguarding the design's impact on players (e.g. emotional accessibility), design recommendations (e.g. emotional design) and game development (e.g. adaptive games). They primarily use qualitative research and mixed methods to gain an in-depth understanding of the player experience. They are currently open to collaborations with industry and academia for funding applications. A description of Francesca's research: When it comes to emotions in video games, players should feel like they are enthusiastically part of the experience. However, at times, players risk feeling forced or overwhelmed. So, how to design these experiences correctly? Through a dual approach, I explore how to design emotional experiences at their extremes. On the one hand, I examine which design components create recognisable emotional experiences. On the other hand, I examine how design can overwhelm players to the point where they struggle to finish a game, as the design makes it impossible for them to process the emotions presented. Email ff716@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisor: Prof. Paul Cairns Featured Publication(s): Artificial intelligence across europe: A study on awareness, attitude and trust Disability tax in gacha games: the social cost of hidden expenses. Do Not Play With My Emotions. Design for Emotional Accessibility A Survey on AI and Ethics: Key factors in building AI trust and awareness across European citizens. When Games Become Inaccessible: A Constructive Grounded Theory on Stuckness in Videogames Artificial intelligence across europe: A study on awareness, attitude and trust Investing in AI for social good: an analysis of European national strategies European Strategy on AI: Are we truly fostering social good? Changes of user experience in an adaptive game: a study of an AI manager Themes Player Research - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8xdnkjVL2c Previous Next

< Back Emily Marriott University of Essex iGGi Alum Automated Story Generation for Games Emily is researching automated story generation for video games, focusing on the use of Planning for real-time, dynamic generation. Ideally, the stories created will reflect choices made by the player during gameplay and will update continually throughout gameplay. The aim of this research is to create a system that could be easily utilised in the development of more adaptive games. This could improve player enjoyment, increase re-playability, and allow for the inclusion or exclusion of content that may only appeal to niche audiences. Emily’s current focus is on investigating story structures and pacing to create a template for generating good stories specifically for games that are consistent, well-structured and interesting. This involves studying the pacing requirements in existing games to establish what these are and how they differ the requirements for film and TV. The system will ideally be integrated with existing game-development tools and provide an easy-to-use interface to make the creation of adaptive games easier and quicker. The eventual goal is a full story-generation system would support both the creation of quests that emerge from story requirements and a game world that fits the environment required for the story. Emily graduated from Glyndŵr University with a BSc in Computer Games Development before completing an MSc in Computer Science at Oxford Brookes University. The substance of the MSc dissertation involved generating dungeon levels and quests using grammars based on the play style the player appeared to favour. Emily enjoys playing both tabletop and computer roleplaying games, especially ones in which player actions can have a dramatic effect on the game’s progression. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Themes Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Michael Aichmüller Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum My background lies in physics and statistical mathematics with a later specialization in optimization in the fields of Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Causal Inference. My first encounters with RL occurred during my Masters when studying how to create strong policies in perfect information games using algorithms, such as MinMax, MCTS, DQN, and later AlphaZero variants. My favorite game application remains the board game ‘Stratego’. In the meantime I investigated the estimation of causal parents influencing a target variable from interventional datasets for my Master’s thesis. Specifically, how well Deep Learning estimations could replace exponentially scaling graph search methods with approximations requiring only polynomial runtime. A description of Michael's research: My research focuses on the state-of-the-art in game-playing solutions for imperfect information games (think games like Poker, Stratego, Liar’s Dice etc.). I am particularly interested in the application of No-Regret (and related) methods which seek to learn those actions that provided the most benefit (or least regret) compared to the benefit all possible actions provided on average. These methods learn such via iterative play to find a Nash-Equilibrium (NE), a game-theoretic concept comparable to an optimal policy known from Single-Agent RL, but for all partaking players at once. Particularly, variants of Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR) remain the state-of-the-art algorithms for computing NEs in 2-player zero-sum games due to their success in tabular form so far. Yet, prohibitive complexity and memory scaling bars them from large-scale applications. Hence, research of recent years seeks to couple CFR (and other No-Regret methods) with function approximation, such as Deep Learning, to scale up the size of applicable games with already notable successes (Deepstack, Libratus, Pluribus, DeepNash). My research seeks to contribute to this endeavour by first analyzing the specifics of established methods and finding ways to introduce Hierarchical RL concepts to No-Regret learning. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email m.f.aichmueller@qmul.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisor(s): Prof. Simon Lucas Dr Raluca Gaina Themes Applied Games Game AI - Previous Next

iGGi PhD Projects - listing iGGi PhD Projects 2023 This page displays the supervisor-proposed PhD projects on offer for our 2023 intake: If you are interested in any of the projects listed and would like further details and/or to discuss, please email the respective project supervisor. Please note that you can also frame your own project independently as long as 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 Select by Theme: Game AI Design & Development Player Research Game Audio Game Data Immersive Technology Creative Computing E-Sports Applied Games ALL Projects Design and Development Realistic physical interaction of 3D point cloud objects This project will investigate geometric and machine learning approaches to developing 3D game assets. Price Design and Development Duration Miles Hansard, Changjae Oh Read More Game Data Building Player Profiles in Mobile Monetisation: A Machine Learning Approach This project aims to use machine learning techniques to segment and profile mobile gamers in terms of their in-game spending. Price Game Data Duration David Zendle Read More Creative Computing Novelty Optimisation Can we identify and automatically balance the right amount of novel content we serve to players? Price Creative Computing Duration Jeremy Gow, Sebastian Deterding Read More Player Research Modelling the interactions in metaverse videogames This project will seek to inform AR and VR enabled videogames by analysing existing online platforms supporting these technologies. Price Player Research Duration Ignacio Castro Read More 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 Creative Computing Novel video narrative from recorded content This project constructs novel video narratives from recorded content under employment of deep learning tools and techniques. Price Creative Computing Duration Nick Pears Read More 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 Immersive Technology Places That Don't Exist The goal of this project is to combine state-of-the-art 3D computer vision and procedural content generation to create game-ready scene models and assets from existing media. Price Immersive Technology Duration William Smith Read More Immersive Technology Tactile Interaction With Virtual Reality Content In this project the student will explore the use of vibrating motors distributed over the human hand (e.g. using a wearable glove) to give tactile feedback about the physical interactions happening in a VR. Price Immersive Technology Duration Lorenzo Jamone & Valkyrie Industries 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 Game Data Understanding ongoing mental states using video games: applications to mental health research. This project will use a combination of neuroscience and advanced data analysis methods to examine the link between video game play and the brain. We will use a combination of cutting-edge data analytic techniques applied to large, existing video game telemetry datasets and neuroimaging experiments designed to measure changes in ongoing mental states while people play simple video games. Price Game Data Duration Alex Wade Read More Load More

iGGi Unconference Group Outcomes (List) iGGi is a collaboration between Uni of York + Queen Mary Uni of London: the largest training programme worldwide for doing a PhD in digital games. iGGi Research Retreat "Unconference" Since Summer 2024, iGGi has been running a "Research Retreat" (aka "Unconference") at a secluded cottage village in Derbyshire. We gather 30 people made up of iGGi PGRs, Alumni, Staff and Industry Partners and ask: What are the nagging questions from your PhD research (or, for industry partners: in your work or from your pet project) where you could use new eyes and approaches? What are the most intriguing research questions in your area? What ideas has your research/work/hobby thrown up that you'd love to take a closer look at? What are the key research ideas and questions in other areas? The ideas to be explored emerge during the retreat: Everyone can propose an idea/topic/"problem", and participants then choose which small group they would like to join to explore further. To play with new ideas. Below you can find a selection of group outcomes from the 2025 iGGi Unconference iGGi Research Retreat "Unconference" August 2025 The Future of AI This group discussed what the "future of AI" might look like, how it will change us as a society and what possibilities it could create. Read More iGGi Research Retreat "Unconference" August 2025 Social Simulation Game on a Graph / Network This group started off with the idea of a cellular automaton and set off to investigat how such a simple structure could be rendered as a playable simulation of social dynamics. Read More iGGi Research Retreat "Unconference" August 2025 Generative AI, Abstraction and Epistemology This group tried to come up with the skeleton of a short presentation for technologists in the former CIS region about the topic. Read More iGGi Research Retreat "Unconference" August 2025 Trust and Freedom in Transformative Games This group discussed how games build or break trust and the factors involved in creating tustworthy games. Read More

Locations (All) iGGi is a collaboration between Uni of York + Queen Mary Uni of London: the largest training programme worldwide for doing a PhD in digital games. Locations iGGi Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) iGGi QMUL is located at the heart of East London on Queen Mary, University of London's Whitechapel campus. Read More University of York (UoY) iGGi York is located just outside the City of York's centre, on University of York's East Campus. Read More Goldsmiths, University of London (Goldsmiths) iGGi Goldsmiths is located in New Cross, South East London, five miles from central London. Read More University of Essex (UoE) iGGi Essex is located two miles from the historic city of Colchester and set in over 200 acres of beautiful parkland. Read More

< Back Gaze for Dyads & Blinks for Triads: Task Engagement Predictors in Free-Flow VR Interactions Link Author(s) C Gonzalez Diaz, GC Dobre, E Andre, C Conati Abstract More info TBA Link

< Back The many faces of monetisation: Understanding the diversity and extremity of player spending in mobile games via massive-scale transactional analysis Link Author(s) D Zendle, C Flick, S Deterding, J Cutting, E Gordon-Petrovskaya, ... Abstract More info TBA Link

Realistic physical interaction of 3D point cloud objects Theme Design and Development Project proposed & supervised by Miles Hansard, Changjae Oh To discuss whether this project could become your PhD proposal please email: miles.hansard@qmul.ac.uk < Back Realistic physical interaction of 3D point cloud objects Project proposal abstract: Point cloud data is becoming widely available, owing to commodity depth cameras and lidar systems. This creates many opportunities for creating 3D game assets, including environments and objects, from scanned real-world data. The realistic rendering of such data has been widely investigated (e.g. https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01017700/) , and can be performed efficiently. However, physical interactions between point clouds, meshes, and other representations are also critical, for gaming and VR applications. These interactions, which include collision, deformation, occlusion, and other effects, may require alternative representations (e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.12033) . This project will investigate geometric and machine learning approaches to these open problems, in typical game environments. Supervisor: Miles Hansard , Changjae Oh Based at:

< Back What are you looking at? Team fight prediction through player camera Link Author(s) M Tot, M Conserva, AP Chitayat, A Kokkinakis, S Patra, S Demediuk, ... Abstract More info TBA Link