< Back Prakriti Nayak Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Prakriti is a neuroscientist passionate about pushing boundaries at the intersection of technology and biological research. Her journey began with a deep dive into neuroscience during her master’s program, where she explored large-scale imaging data and mastered statistical modelling techniques. Afterward, she pursued a career in scientific editing. She views gaming as an excellent platform to connect different fields, such as computational modelling and behaviour. Prakriti plans to develop a model of player uncertainty to enhance the gaming experience by setting difficulty levels that are enjoyable for each player, making games more accessible for people with limited cognitive capabilities. Additionally, her work has diagnostic applications. A description of Prakriti's research: Navigation and spatial memory are essential cognitive processes that enable individuals to orient themselves in complex environments. Amid the inherent uncertainty of environmental noise and cognitive variability, the brain employs sophisticated strategies to make navigational decisions. This project aims to elucidate the cognitive underpinnings of spatial navigation performance by leveraging gaming data to understand how individuals manage spatial uncertainty. The plan is to adapt a Bayesian ideal-observer model based on visual simultaneous localization and mapping. The model will fit and predict the player’s moment-by-moment movement decisions, given the first-person view and the map of the game environment. Fitting the model to the players' gameplay trajectories will yield parameters indicating each individual's levels of visual, motor, and memory noise. The combination of parameters that best differentiate between players will then be examined. This research has the potential to enhance our understanding of spatial navigation and its underlying mechanisms, as well as improve spatial navigation in games, offering an adaptive gaming experience tailored to individual spatial uncertainty levels. Email p.nayak@qmul.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisors: Dr Guifen Chen Dr Yul HR Kang Themes Accessibility Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Michelangelo Conserva Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum Michelangelo Conserva is a second year PhD researcher studying principled exploration strategies in reinforcement learning. He is particularly interested in randomized exploration and, more generally, Bayesian methods for reinforcement learning. He holds a BSc in Statistics, Economics and Finance from Sapienza, University of Rome and an MSc in Computational Statistics and Machine learning from University College of London. A description of Michelangelo's research: As a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London, Michelangelo aims to leverage Bayesian models to develop principled algorithms for reinforcement learning in the context of function approximations. The main challenge lies in finding a balance between computational costs and optimality. Evaluating such balance requires careful evaluation, which is currently lacking in reinforcement learning. Email m.conserva@qmul.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisors: Prof. Simon Lucas Dr Paulo Rauber Featured Publication(s): Global monitoring of methane point sources using deep learning on hyperspectral radiance measurements from EMIT Global forest typology at 10-meter resolution for forest and land-use monitoring Annual Forest Types Mapping from 2020-2024 to Monitor Land Use Change and Support Global Sustainability Initiatives Exploration with Foundation Models: Capabilities, Limitations, and Hybrid Approaches ForestCast: Forecasting Deforestation Risk at Scale with Deep Learning Foundation Models as World Models: A Foundational Study in Text-Based GridWorlds Heterogeneous graph neural networks for species distribution modeling Mapping Farmed Landscapes from Remote Sensing On the Limits of Tabular Hardness Metrics for Deep RL: A Study with the Pharos Benchmark What are you looking at? Team fight prediction through player camera Posterior Sampling for Deep Reinforcement Learning Hardness in Markov Decision Processes: Theory and Practice Recurrent Neural-Linear Posterior Sampling for Nonstationary Contextual Bandits The Graph Cut Kernel for Ranked Data Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Prof. Greg Slabaugh Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Gregory G. Slabaugh is Professor of Computer Vision and AI and Director of the Digital Environment Research Institute (DERI) at Queen Mary University of London. He is also a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. His research work spans computer vision and computer graphics including geometric modelling and image/video-based understanding. He is interested in deep learning approaches including generative techniques like normalizing flow an generative adversarial networks. He previously worked in the games industry as a 3D graphics programmer and his PhD thesis focussed on how to model 3D objects from a collection of images. He is interested in how to create engaging content and interaction from images as well as procedural methods to reduce the effort of 3D modelling. Email g.slabaugh@qmul.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Immersive Technology - Previous Next

< Back Tamsin Isaac University of York iGGi PG Researcher Tamsin has been a lifelong gamer ever since receiving her first Game Boy and has long been fascinated by how people engage with games emotionally, socially, and behaviourally. She joined the iGGi CDT in 2023 after completing a BSc and MSc in Psychology at the University of Plymouth, where she developed a growing interest in player motivation, disengagement, and live-service game design. Her PhD research focuses on limited-time events (LTEs) in digital games—temporary content designed to encourage engagement and re-engagement in live-service games. Through this work, she explores how LTEs shape player behaviour, routine, anticipation, disengagement, and return play across platforms and genres. Tamsin’s research combines large-scale content analysis with qualitative diary-and-interview methods to investigate both the structure and lived experience of LTEs. She is currently developing a cross-platform taxonomy of LTEs using data from over 2,600 Steam and Google Play games, alongside player-focused research exploring how individuals decide whether events are “worth” participating in during everyday play. Her work aims to support more ethical, sustainable, and player-friendly approaches to live-service game design by helping researchers and developers better understand how event structures influence player experience and long-term engagement. She is open to collaboration opportunities with game studios interested in live-service systems, player behaviour, engagement design, and event analysis using player data or design insights. When not researching or analysing games, Tamsin enjoys baking, reading, playing cosy indie games, and quietly grinding dailies. Email tamsin.isaac@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisor: Prof. Paul Cairns Themes Applied Games Design & Development Player Research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n32ngtGYNQ8 Previous Next

< Back Yu-Jhen Hsu Queen Mary University of London iGGi Alum I have always been interested in automation specifically within strategy games, starting from civilization 5. I have a background in Artificial Intelligence with a Master of Science degree from Queen Mary, University of London, with a focus on Game AI, Computer Vision and Machine Learning/Deep Learning. My research interests involve Game AI improvement in real-time turned-based games with the help of data science techniques. A description of Yu-Jhen's research: This project has two goals. Firstly, to improve the performance of MCTS (Monte Carlo Search Tree) implementation. Secondly, the goal is focused on building an AI agent that is able to win the game but also provide feedback information/data about it’s decisions to the players and designers. In order to achieve the goal, the plan of the project is to use different data science skills to enable the game AI agent to understand the utility of different actions and decrease the time needed for making decisions. The data collected can also help the game AI agent explain it’s behaviors, hence provided useful information/data for its users and designers. Email y.hsu@qmul.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisors: Dr Diego Pérez-Liébana Dr Raluca Gaina Featured Publication(s): Why Choose You?-Exploring Attitudes Towards Starter Pokémon Tribes: a new turn-based strategy game for AI research MCTS Pruning in Turn-Based Strategy Games. Themes Game AI Game Data - Previous Next

< Back Dr Laurissa Tokarchuk Queen Mary University of London iGGi Research Collaboration Coordinator Supervisor Laurissa Tokarchuk is a senior lecturer and researcher working on playful ways of exploring and integrating virtual and real world space. Her primary focus is looking at engaging ways of creating and interacting with AR content in games and incorporating physical sensors for increasing playability in mobile games. Her interests also include merging AI with mobile and social sensing to detect events and behaviours in crowds and games, and the use of technology to promote learning/well-being. Her research has resulted in the widely used SensingKit framework, best poster awards, media appearances in the Guardian and BBC (Royal Institution Christmas Lectures). She is particularly interested in supervising students on the following topics: AR/VR games for learning and cognition design for promoting behaviour change understanding and designing for player behaviour and curiosity in games Research themes: Game AI Games with a Purpose Computational Creativity Player Experience Email laurissa.tokarchuk@qmul.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Game AI Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Debbie Maxwell University of York iGGi Research Collaboration Coordinator Supervisor Debbie is a lecturer in User Experience Design and Interactive Media at the Department of Theatre, Film and Television. Her background spans computing, HCI and Design and she currently teaches user experience (UX) design and design methods and critical design on the BSc Interactive Media programme. Her research focuses on the roles of traditional storytelling and engagement in digital contexts. I’m interested in the ways that people interact with and reshape technology through stories, as both method and artefacts, and across media. She is particularly focuses on applying design and stories across health and wellbeing and environmental design drawing on speculative design processes and approaches. Debbie uses interdisciplinary approaches that draw on a range of fields including Human Computer Interaction (HCI), ethnography, interaction design, social anthropology, and service design. Her research always involves working with communities using participatory methods. She is particularly interested in supervising students with a design or HCI background on the following topics: design of applied games for environmental education or knowledge exchange design and application of serious games to mental health and wellbeing contexts design and application of serious games to outdoor spaces, particularly cultural heritage settings Research themes: Games with a Purpose User experience design Design methods and ethnography Speculative design Email debbie.maxwell@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Themes Applied Games Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Alex Flint University of York iGGi PG Researcher Available for placement Alex has an academic background in Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction. Their Master’s dissertation comparing measures of perceived challenge and demand in video games was published at CHI 2023. Alex has previously worked on the Research Operations team at PlaytestCloud and as a freelance Games User Researcher. They are also a Student Video Games Ambassador for UKIE, and regularly volunteer at conferences such as CHI Play and the GamesUR Summit. When they aren’t at their desk, you can find Alex figure skating, playing roller derby, or DJing 80’s rock. Alex’s research focuses on levelling up the narrative testing practices of indie video game developers. Narrative testing is a specialised games user research (GUR) practice that requires resources and knowledge not easily accessible to indie developers, meaning they are often disadvantaged compared to their larger AAA counterparts. Thus, Alex's work proposes the direct study of indie developers to level the playing field by democratising narrative testing best practices and empowering non-research team members to conduct GUR activities. Alex aims to achieve this goal by: 1) Defining narrative testing best practices. 2) Identifying key challenges indie developers face when evaluating narrative. 3) Co-designing and evaluating narrative testing prototype(s). 4) Assessing methods for disseminating GUR knowledge. The successful completion of this work will impact how indie studios conduct narrative testing, ultimately leading to the creation of better games. Email alex.flint@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisor: Dr Alena Denisova Dr Jon Hook Featured Publication(s): Comparing Measures of perceived challenge and demand in video games: Exploring the conceptual dimensions of CORGIS and VGDS Faking handedness: Individual differences in ability to fake handedness, social cognitions of the handedness of others, and a forensic application using Bayes’ theorem Themes Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Jo Iacovides University of York Supervisor Jo Iacovides, is a Lecturer in Computer Science at the University of York, UK. Her research interests lie in Human Computer Interaction with a particular focus on understanding the role of learning within the player experience, and on investigating complex emotional experiences in the context of digital play. In addition, she is interested in exploring how games and playful technologies can created for a range of purposes, such as education, citizen science, or wellbeing. She is an active member of the HCI and games community and serves on the Steering Committee for the annual CHI PLAY conference. She has received awards for a work on examining reflection and gaming (best paper, CHI PLAY 2018), evaluating serious experience in games (honourable mention, CHI 2015) and for the game Resilience Challenge, which encourages healthcare practitioners to consider how they adapt safely under pressure (first prize, 2017 Annual Resilience Healthcare Network symposium). She is interested supervising students that have a mix of qualitative, mixed method or design experience that they wish to apply to the study of digital games and playful technologies. Possible topics include exploring the effects of negative emotion in the context of playful approaches to persuasion; or examining how games can support wellbeing (particularly in relation to challenging life experiences). Research themes: Game Design Games with a Purpose Player Experience Email jo.iacovides@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Themes Applied Games Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Charline Foch University of York iGGi Alum Charline first came to the UK in 2011 to study English and Film Studies at King’s College London, before going on to a MSc in Film, Exhibition and Curation at the University of Edinburgh. By chance, accident or fate, she stumbled into the games industry, working in an independent game studio in Berlin, where she touched upon customer support, community management, content writing and QA for a new MMORPG. This experience gave her the push to start a PhD in video games. In her spare time, she is an avid film viewer, volleyball player, and amateur artist. Charline’s research focuses on how people conceptualise failure, with an emphasis on its perceived positive, desirable effects on player experience. Throughout her PhD, she has conducted research among video games players to gain a better understanding of what they perceive as the purpose and value of failure in the games they play; and conducted research among video games developers to gain a better understanding of what processes, obstacles, and ideas go into the design and implementation of failure in their games. With a focus on single-player, more narrative-driven games, she has used this research to design a cards-based design toolkit to support game designers in approaching the question of fail states and player experience in the early stages of the game development process, helping them reflect on the intersection between failure, game mechanics, storytelling, and player experience when working on their games. Aside from her PhD, Charline has also worked with the Digital Creativity Labs on the PlayOn! project, a European project gathering 9 theatres across Europe working on immersive technologies (VR, AR, apps for audience participation...) and theatre productions. During her time at PlayOn!, she has worked on the connections between the games industry and the performance arts, investigating how technology, game design principles, and theatre can work together, and what barriers practitioners face when attempting to reconcile all sides in a single production through experimentation and collaboration. Email charline.foch@york.ac.uk Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Supervisor: Dr Ben Kirman Featured Publication(s): “The game doesn't judge you”: game designers’ perspectives on implementing failure in video games “Slow down and look”: Desirable aspects of failure in video games, from the perspective of players. Themes Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Thryn Henderson University of York iGGi Alum Thryn’s phd explored the practices of personal vignette games, with a particular interest in the vignette game’s approaches to digital persona, their roots in approachable DIY culture, and their importance to marginalised creators. Publications from their work can be found in the Digra 2020 archive and Persona Studies Volume 6, Issue 2 . Thryn’s interest in gaming grows from a delight in telling stories. They endeavour to find the spaces where play incorporates and encourages collaborative narrative, poetry, theatre, activism, subversion, surprise and expression. Most of Thryn’s work in playful media can be found in zines, cardboard installations, paper games, hidden screens, or roaming through the woods around the UK. They are a co-founder of the playful design co-operative Furtive Shambles, currently producing experimental live and tabletop game experiences. Email thrynhenderson@gmail.com Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Small acts of self: practices of personal vignette games “It’s just part of being a person”: Sincerity, Support & Self Expression in Vignette Games Positioning in Personal Games: Perspectives of the Author-Player Persona in Memoir En Code: Reissue Themes Design & Development - Previous Next

< Back Dr Myat Aung University of York iGGi Alum Immersion is a state in which players are engaged to a degree of total absorption that inhibits the ability to correctly report one’s surroundings or time. Present theory on immersion has developed a coherent model that provides sufficient evidence to distinguish itself from other cognitive concepts such as presence, attention, selective attention, absorption and flow. However, immersion research thus far has been hindered by difficulties with taking in-vivo measurements of cognition and physiological responses during videogame play. This presents an ideal opportunity for implementations of neuroimaging methods to carry out such real time measurements of attention, as well as other cognitive processes and their roles in videogame immersion. Using various combinations of neural and physiological methods such as skin conductance, eye tracking, electroencephalography and even functional magnetic resonance imaging, it is now possible to obtain richer data in immersion research. The goal of this project is to apply such methods in order to better define and measure videogame immersion, identify the cognitive processes and hierarchical models that are involved in immersion and ultimately contribute to the literature in videogame immersion. Though neuroimaging is limited by statistical sensitivity, challenging experimental logistics and non-ideal lab environments, they are still presently the best tools available to obtain fine-grain data of attention and the many other cognitive components of immersion. Such knowledge would contribute significantly to a better understanding of effective development of videogames, as well as educational tools. I am an MPsych Psychology graduate from the University of York, having studied Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience & Neuroimaging for four years. My Master’s research was primarily in vision, attempting to manipulate and record parahippocampal responses to visual stimuli selected parametrically by computer algorithms. During my degree I also spent much of my time researching videogames, studying the literature on the effects of videogame play on sleep, and working with a IGGI PhD student as a lab assistant. Between my degree and my PhD, I have also been working as a data analyst at Digital Creativity Labs researching skill learning in large gaming populations from Riot Games’ League of Legends. Please note: Updating of profile text in progress Email Website LinkedIn Mastodon BlueSky GitHub Other Link Featured Publication(s): Different rules for binocular combination of luminance flicker in cortical and subcortical pathways Investigating the non-disruptive measurement of immersive player experience The trails of just cause 2: spatio-temporal player profiling in open-world games Predicting skill learning in a large, longitudinal MOBA dataset Themes Game AI - Previous Next