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< Back Prof. Alex Wade University of York Supervisor Alex Wade is a psychologist working in the field of human cognitive neuroscience. He uses a combination of structural and functional brain imaging, electrophysiology, psychophysics and big data analysis to ask how we see, solve problems and make decisions. His most recent work in the domain of video games focuses on what we can learn about global cognitive health and player personality from the analysis of large MOBA datasets in collaboration with Riot games (League of Legends). He is particularly interested in supervising students with a psychology or neuroscience background in the areas of: Using commercial video games to measure cognition and personality How the brain responds to solo- and group gameplay Can we use video games to monitor and modify real-world cognition, behaviour and mental health Research themes: Game Analytics Games with a Purpose Computational Creativity E-Sports Player Experience The neuroscience of gaming alex.wade@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.york.ac.uk/psychology/staff/academicstaff/alex-wade/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Esports Game Data Player Research - Previous Next

< Back iGGi Seminar with Creative Assembly: Life After Doctorate Last week, four members of Creative Assembly joined us to talk about their experience of life (in the industry, and in general) after their PhD as well as broader issues around the connection between academic and industry work. Speakers comprised: Duygu Ç akmak (Research and Development Director) Tim Gosling (AI Technical Director) Derek Fagan (Senior AI/Gameplay Programmer) Tristan Smith (Senior AI Programmer) Fittingly, the “Life After A PhD” seminar took place on International Women’s Day, so: On a very related note, iGGi would like to congratulate one of the panellists, namely CA Research and Development Director Duygu Çakmak for winning the FDM everywoman in Technology Awards (Software Engineer Award)! During the event, Duygu pointed out that she was the only one of the four speakers who has not done a PhD, but "loves working with academics". We can reassure her that her scope of skills and ambitious portfolio certainly don't count for less. Thank you everyone who attended these events - we hope you found them interesting and useful! And an even bigger THANKS to the CA team: for joining us on the day and sharing your insights!! Previous 13 Mar 2023 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 debbie.maxwell@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Design & Development Player Research - Previous Next

< Back iGGi conference 2021 Mark the date for our next IGGI Conference: 08 - 09 September 2021 PhD students discuss and showcase their research into new technologies and directions for games.Come along and find out about new ideas, meet future employees, and steer the direction of research in the world’s largest games PhD programme. Click for Tickets and more info here - coming soon Previous 8 Jul 2021 Next

< Back Prof. Simon Lucas Queen Mary University of London iGGi Co-Investigator Supervisor Simon Lucas is a professor of Artificial Intelligence and Head of the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London where he also heads the Game AI Research Group. He holds a PhD degree (1991) in Electronics and Computer Science from the University of Southampton. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Games and co-founded the IEEE Conference on Games. His research involves developing and applying computational intelligence techniques to build better game AI, use AI to design better games, provide deep insights into the nature of intelligence and work towards Artificial General Intelligence. He is the QMUL lead for the EPSRC-funded CDT in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI). He has supervised more that 15 PhD students to completion, most of them in Game AI. Research themes: Game AI Agents (RL, Monte Carlo Tree Search, Rolling Horizon Evolution) Learning Forward Models Automated Game Design, Procedural Content Generation Game AI for real-world problem solving simon.lucas@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/profiles/lucassimon.html Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/simon-lucas Github Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Dr Fiona McNab University of York Supervisor During a postdoc at the Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm, Fiona investigated working memory and attention, providing empirical support for a role for the basal ganglia in the control of access to working memory and identification of changes in the dopamine system related to working memory training. At The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL, with a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship, she designed the working memory game in the large-scale smartphone study; “The Great Brain Experiment ”, leading to studies of different types of distraction in younger adults as well as in healthy ageing. In 2013 she moved to Birmingham University, where she conducted fMRI and behavioural studies of attention and working memory, and behavioural studies of the effects of competition on working memory. Fiona is now a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of York. She is using fMRI and behavioural studies to investigate what limits working memory, how different types of distractors are successfully ignored and how working memory changes through development, with healthy aging, as well as in certain patient groups. Part of her work uses data from a new set of working memory games, which are currently available to play (York Memory Games, YORMEGA ). She is particularly interested in supervising students on the following topics: Understanding the limitations of working memory and the role of attention using games Understanding age-related changes in cognition using games, Cognitive training using games. Research themes: Game Design Games with a Purpose Player Experience Gamification Games for Cognition Research Games for Cognitive Training fiona.mcnab@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.york.ac.uk/psychology/staff/academicstaff/fm841/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games - Previous Next

< Back GAIG Meetup The recent Game AI Meetup took place on 01 March 2023. Talks and presentation included: Jakob Foerster (University of Oxford, UK): Opponent-Shaping and Interference in General-Sum Games Original talk abstract: In general-sum games, the interaction of self-interested learning agents commonly leads to collectively worst-case outcomes, such as defect-defect in the iterated prisoner's dilemma (IPD). To overcome this, some methods, such as Learning with Opponent-Learning Awareness (LOLA), shape their opponents' learning process. However, these methods are myopic since only a small number of steps can be anticipated, are asymmetric since they treat other agents as naive learners, and require the use of higher-order derivatives, which are calculated through white-box access to an opponent's differentiable learning algorithm. In this talk I will first introduce Model-Free Opponent Shaping (M-FOS), which overcomes all of these limitations. M-FOS learns in a meta-game in which each meta-step is an episode of the underlying (``inner'') game. The meta-state consists of the inner policies, and the meta-policy produces a new inner policy to be used in the next episode. M-FOS then uses generic model-free optimisation methods to learn meta-policies that accomplish long-horizon opponent shaping. I will finish off the talk with our recent results for adversarial (or cooperative) cheap-talk: How can agents interfere with (or support) the learning process of other agents without being able to act in the environment? Vanessa Volz ( modl.ai ): Establishing Trust in AI-based Tools for Game Development Original talk abstract: AI-based tools to support the game development process have long been a topic in Game AI research, with popular publications in testing, churn prediction, asset, level and even game generation. However, the adaptation of these techniques from the games industry has been hesitant at best: The small-scale and simplified examples researchers use to demonstrate their work understandably only seldom convince the industry to risk investing in AI tools. In this talk, I will speak about my experience establishing trust in AI-based tools to support creative processes in game development. Having worked on this topic in both industry and academia, I will address issues ranging from establishing a common language and explaining AI behaviour to issuing performance guarantees via benchmarking and theoretical analysis. Mike Preuss (Leiden University, The Netherlands): In the eye of the storm? Where are we going with game AI? Original talk abstract: Looking back at the last 10 years of research in Game AI we find that Big Tech research has shaken up things quite a lot. A number of challenges were resolved in record time (Go, StarCraft, etc) and AI algorithm development is probably still increasing in speed. However, it seems that the use of AI in game-making has not changed that much, and academic research often opts for "smaller problems", slowly turning towards Human-Centered AI as possibly most important general research direction. How can we approach the next leap predicted by Alex Champandard 10 years ago of really intelligent game AI? And where would we want that? Mike presents some inconclusive thoughts and ideas on future developments. The Game AI Meetup takes place several times a year. To sign up and receive updates, please register/join here: https://www.meetup.com/game-ai-meetup-gaim-of-london/ Previous 1 Mar 2023 Next

< Back Is computational creativity flourishing on the dead internet? Link Author(s) T Broad Abstract More info TBA Link

< Back Dr Lina Gega University of York Supervisor Qualified both as a nurse and a psychological therapist, Lina is a senior member of the Mental Health and Addictions Research Group (MHARG) at the University of York, where she leads research under the Digital Mental Health Theme. She has published widely on computer-based therapies and virtual environments. Lina's work on technology-mediated interventions and training formed an impact case study was submitted to 2014 Research Excellence Framework as part of Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience. Lina’s current work focuses on interventions to improve health and quality of life for children and young people with mental health problems. She has led the development and evaluation of a purposeful game to treat phobias in children, and of an innovative virtual environments system to assist psychological therapy and skills training. She co-leads the digital theme for the Closing the Gap (CTG) Network, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The Network’s digital theme explores how technologies, including gaming, can be used to improve the physical health of people with severe mental illness, especially schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder. An experienced University teacher, supervisor and examiner, Lina welcomes students with a design, engineering or behavioural sciences background who are interested in applied games research in the field of mental health, with a focus on: development and ‘proof-of-concept’ studies of purposeful games to improve mental health outcomes and social communication skills in children and young people. adaptation and evaluation of gamified applications to improve physical health outcomes with people whose motivation and information processing are affected by severe mental illness. Research themes: Game Design Games with a Purpose Player Experience Gamified Mental Health Interventions lina.gega@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://www.york.ac.uk/healthsciences/our-staff/lina-gega/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next

< Back iGGi Con 2023 - Get Ready! Preparations for the next iGGi conference are underway! Better mark the date: iGGi Con 2023 13. + 14. September 2023 Queen Mary University of London This year's event will be packed with talks, workshops, panels, posters and more. For the first time ever, we will also run a Mini Expo with Industry stands. iGGi Con 2023 is a showcase for iGGi PGRs and friends, and iGGi Industry Partners as well as a networking platform for everyone interested/involved in the games industry and games research. So, don't miss out and REGISTER HERE TODAY !! Spaces are limited. Previous 3 Apr 2023 Next

< Back Dr Phoebe Hesketh University of York iGGi Alum Phoebe's PhD explored how people learn to play games through gameplay, online media, and community interaction. At the University of York, Phoebe worked on her skills as a researcher by exploring multiple methodologies and disciplines. She built upon her quantitative research skills from Bristol with qualitative research during their PhD including grounded theory and thematic analysis. She took courses in user-centred design and evaluation and designing for accessible player experiences (through AbleGamers). She participated in game jams and game development courses for experience and technical design. She also gave a talk at DEVELOP 2021 communicating and sharing her research and expertise in how players learn to play games to help designers with their onboarding for their games. She originally studied Engineering Mathematics at the University of Bristol which focused on systems and mathematical modelling and simulation, the mathematics and implementation of AI and Machine Learning systems, programming in object-oriented programming languages such as C++ and Java, and developed ray tracers in computer graphics courses. She also worked on projects in linguistics, logistics, computer vision, and physics. Once completing her PhD, Phoebe moved into the games industry as an AI programmer for several years before looking to return to games and player research. She has set up her own company, Take A Mo, that focuses on helping developers analyse their systems and internal systems to maximise access for players in usability, onboarding, accessibility, and representation. She is a currently carving her niche in the industry. phoebe@takeamo.co.uk Email Mastodon http://www.takeamo.co.uk Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/phoebe-hesketh/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisors: Prof. Sebastian Deterding Dr Jeremy Gow Featured Publication(s): How Players Learn Team-versus-Team Esports: First Results from A Grounded Theory Study Themes Esports Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Recurrent Neural-Linear Posterior Sampling for Nonstationary Contextual Bandits Link Author(s) A Ramesh, P Rauber, M Conserva, J Schmidhuber Abstract More info TBA Link