Search Results

< Back Dr James Walker University of York iGGi Industry Liaison Supervisor Dr James Walker is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science and Digital Creativity at the University of York. A member of the Digital Creativity Labs, and the York Cross-disciplinary Centre for Systems Analysis (YCCSA). His current research focuses on bio-inspired algorithms (including AI and machine learning) and their application to games and game data analytics. He is also a senior member of the IEEE. James@digitalcreativity.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-walker-96a53465/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Creative Computing Esports Game AI Game Data - Previous Next

< Back Dr Guifen Chen Queen Mary University of London Supervisor Dr Guifen Chen is a Lecturer in Neurobiology at QMUL. Her work focuses on the neuronal basis of multisensory integration, spatial cognition and memory. Her lab uses state-of-the-art techniques such as immersive virtual reality and in vivo electrophysiological/probe recording in mice. Her research is currently supported by funding from BBRSC and the Royal Society. Dr Chen completed her undergraduate studies in both biology and computer science at East China Normal University in China. She then pursued PhD in neuroscience, conducting research at both East China Normal University and Boston University in the USA. Following that, she undertook postdoctoral research at University College London in the UK. Her work has been published in high-impact journals such as Nature Communications, eLife, and Current biology. guifen.chen@qmul.ac.uk Email https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5459-660X Mastodon https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sbbs/staff/guifen-chen.html Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/guifen-chen-51039973/ LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/annie2013 Github Themes Creative Computing Design & Development Immersive Technology Player Research - Previous Next

< Back iGGi Seminar - Alexander Swords Alexander Swords is visiting us at Empire House to speak about: Narrative Design of Totem Teller Wednesday, 22 June 2022 @ 16:00-17:30 Abstract Alexander Swords is the writer and narrative designer on the transmedia video game experience Totem Teller as well as the creator of The Forest Paths Method For Narrative Design. In this talk he’ll cover how the Method has been indispensable in the development of the game, bringing together the more tangible requirements of game development and the transcendental form on which the game is based. It will include a behind the scenes look at the narrative design patterns used in development, as well as footage of gameplay yet to be made public. Bio Alexander Swords is a writer and narrative designer working across emotional games, games for change, the adaptation and evolution of stories moving to new mediums, and advocating for the power of interactive narrative and the need for diverse future storytellers. With 20 years experience working with stories, creators, and their audiences, he’s currently wielding this experience as a writer and narrative design director on Totem Teller and Anytown: Garage Sale Monsters. He’s also the creator of the Forest Paths Method for Narrative Design; a structuralist approach to understanding story in an approachable and collaborative way. Moderated by Timea Farkas (iGGi PhD) For further info and/or if you are an iGGi-external who would like to attend, please contact s.binder@qmul.ac.uk Previous 15 Jun 2022 Next

< Back Dr Kevin Denamganaï University of York iGGi Alum Available for post-PhD position After graduating as an Engineer from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de l'Electronique et de ses Applications (ENSEA), France, with two double-degree diplomas, a MEng in Electrical Engineering and Information Science from the Osaka Prefecture University (OPU), Japan, and a MRes in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics from the Université de Cergy-Pontoise (UCP), France, Kevin Denamganaï spent a year accumulating experience as a Robotics & Machine Learning freelancer. He is now putting those skills at use in the IGGI PhD program, that, among other things, gives him the opportunity to reunite with video games. Indeed, it was thanks to a keen interest towards video game creation that he started learning programming around 12. His research interests are about everything psychology, neuroscience, AI, (deep) reinforcement/imitation learning, robotics, and natural/artificial language emergence and understanding as well as human-computer interfaces, challenging the question what are the necessary components of artificial agents to be able to converse with human-beings in an engaging manner and to be able to cooperate with them towards a pre-defined goal, e.g. clearing a level in a given video game. kevin.denamganai@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://kevindenamganai.netlify.app/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky https://github.com/Near32/ Github Supervisor(s): Dr James Walker Featured Publication(s): ETHER: Aligning Emergent Communication for Hindsight Experience Replay Visual Referential Games Further the Emergence of Disentangled Representations Meta-Referential Games to Learn Compositional Learning Behaviours A comparison of self-play algorithms under a generalized framework On (Emergent) Systematic Generalisation and Compositionality in Visual Referential Games with Straight-Through Gumbel-Softmax Estimator ReferentialGym: A Nomenclature and Framework for Language Emergence & Grounding in (Visual) Referential Games A generalized framework for self-play training Coupled Kuramoto oscillator-based control laws for both formation and obstacle avoidance control of two-wheeled mobile robots Obstacle avoidance control law for two-wheeled mobile robots controlled by oscillators Themes Game AI - Previous Next

< Back Dr Ben Kirman University of York iGGi Training Coordinator Supervisor Available to supervise non-iGGi students for 2024 intake Ben is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Prof) in Interactive Media at the University of York, who has over 20 years' experience as a creative technologist. Since his first programming job fixing Y2K bugs (you're welcome), he has worked with dozens of organisations, large and small, in design and prototyping playful experiences. His research uses game design and playful design as a way to explore the complex effects of emerging technologies through novel and unexpected interactions and experiences. Most often, this is through the design and development of games, digital/physical prototypes, and design fictions. Ben has applied this in topics ranging from immersive theatre, dog technology, non-league football, radical cycle delivery, and time travelling robots, to educational games, esports, new situationism and magic. The unifying theme is play – as a topic of study, a way of working, for research insight, and as expression or output in games or playful experiences. This work, especially the more bizarre stuff, has often been covered by traditional media, including the BBC, New Scientist, Wired, The Guardian, TIME, Metro, the New York Times, and Your Cat magazine. Ben is keen on supervising students with strong creative drives, with an interest in making, design, experimentation, and a broad perspective on games and play. This might be a project about playful props in immersive theatre, or a project about context in locative and site-specific games, or any other project that looks to explore new possibilities and new implications of emerging technology through the lens of play. Research themes include: Game Design Applied Games Computational Creativity Sports with an E and without an E Player Experience ben.kirman@york.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://ben.kirman.org/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Applied Games Creative Computing Design & Development Esports Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Amy Smith Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Available for post-PhD position After completing a BA in Fine Art, at Bath School of Art and Design, Amy spent some years as a tattoo artist travelling and creating artworks. An interest in learning to code then led her to complete a conversion Masters degree in Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. Keen to preserve her interests in both a creative practice as well as a new interest in generative deep learning, Amy joined the IGGI program to explore these interests further under the guidance of Dr. Mike Cook, Dr. James Walker and Prof. Simon Colton. Amy's research is currently focused on the intersection between 'imaginative play', computational creativity and generative deep learning. This project explores whether the kind of novel text, image and video media produced by generative deep learning algorithms can be used to provoke and stimulate the imaginative, ideation and visualisation capabilities of the user as they interact with this cutting edge technology. To date, her work has been accepted to several conferences, including the International Conference on Computational Social Science, AAAI, the International Conference on Computational Creativity, and EvoMusArt. Amy hopes to further encourage and explore the fruits of a close collaboration between human creativity and creative AI. amyelizabethsmith01@gmail.com Email Mastodon http://aialchemy.media.mit.edu Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-smith-791784173 LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisors: Dr Mike Cook Prof. Simon Colton Dr James Walker Featured Publication(s): Scaling Analysis of Creative Activity Traces via Fuzzy Linkography Fuzzy Linkography: Automatic Graphical Summarization of Creative Activity Traces AI-Generated Imagery: A New Era for the 'Readymade' The @artbhot Text-To-Image Twitter Bot. Trash to Treasure: Using text-to-image models to inform the design of physical artefacts Clip-guided gan image generation: An artistic explorationClip-guided gan image generation: An artistic exploration Art and the science of generative AI Generative Search Engines: Initial Experiments Themes Creative Computing Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Dr Tara Collingwoode-Williams Goldsmiths iGGi Alum Tara is an IGGI PhD student from Goldsmiths University taking her Mphil/PhD in Intelligent Games/Game intelligence with a focus on Avatar Embodiment and Interaction within Virtual Reality. Before this she graduated with a Bsc in Creative Computing. Over the years, her interdisciplinary profile has enabled her to work as a Technical Support and Researcher with many organisations in relation to her research, such as UCL, Great Ormond Street Hospital, George Mason Serious Games Institute in the United States where she also co-lectured a XR Games Module and, more recently as an Associate Lecturer in Goldsmiths University teaching Unity based XR experience development. Currently, she is contracting for USTech as an Assistant UX researcher at Facebook whilst completing her PhD program. With this rise in demand for Head Mounted Displays (HMDs), so is the need to create Embodied Shared Virtual Environments (ESVE) where users may experience authentic social interactions. Tara’s research presents an exploratory examination of Embodiment - meaning the subjective feeling of owning a virtual representation in VR, and specifically Consistency in Embodiment - relating to how we prioritize and syncronise objective attributes of embodiment (i.e avatar representation) in order to create ESVEs which supports more intuitive social interaction. The goal is to understand how different technical setups could have a psychological impact on participants' experiences in ESVE. This research hopes to inform development of successful social interaction in a variety of applications in VR, ranging from training to gaming. Tara presently holds a position as Lekturer in VR at Goldsmiths, Universtiy of London. tc.williams@gold.ac.uk Email Mastodon Other links Website https://www.linkedin.com/in/tara-collingwoode-williams-81141776/ LinkedIn BlueSky Github Featured Publication(s): Delivering Bad News: VR Embodiment of Self Evaluation in Medical Communication Training The impact of self-representation and consistency in collaborative virtual environments G487 (P) Is clinician gaze and body language associated with their ability to identify safeguarding cues? Evaluating virtual reality experiences through participant choices A discussion of the use of virtual reality for training healthcare practitioners to recognize child protection issues A study of professional awareness using immersive virtual reality: the responses of general practitioners to child safeguarding concerns The effect of lip and arm synchronization on embodiment: a pilot study Themes Applied Games Player Research - Previous Next

< Back iGGi Becomes WIG Education Ambassador iGGi is proud to officially announce that we are now Women in Games (WIG) Education Ambassadors as of last week. We at iGGi feel strongly that the future in games industry and research must include a more level playing field for all the groups which currently lack visibility and/or voice. We want to do our part in creating societal change in that respect. Here's a link to the article in the WIG newsletter featuring our senior academic spokesperson Raluca Gaina. >> iGGi joins Women in Games as Education Ambassador . We are very happy that Raluca has accepted this new role: as she is both, an iGGi Alumna and an iGGi Supervisor/Staff, she is particularly suited to representing women, not only within iGGi but also in games research as a whole. Included in the iGGi WIG team will be any interested PGRs who we will introduce in one of the forthcoming iGGi News articles, so, watch this space! If you as an iGGi PGR are interested in joining in, please let iGGi Admin know. (Note: You don’t have to identify as female to become a WIG Ambassador.) Here’s also a general link to this month’s WIG July Newsletter And finally, a big THANKS goes to the WIG Team who have been amazingly supportive already. We look forward to many years of collaboration ahead of us! Previous 20 Jul 2023 Next

< Back iGGi Game Jam 2022 We thought that with summer fast approaching and the end of term in close sight, the time would be right to reflect back on some of iGGi’s more iGGi-ish events which took place earlier this year. One such event was the iGGi Game Jam . iGGi PGRs gather once a year to create a game from scratch in a limited space of time (usually over 48 hours). This is an opportunity for those less familiar with game design/development to experience the process first hand, for those who are already experienced and/or have worked in industry before to explore new tools and/or skills, but most of all, we look at it as a shared fun time dedicated to (re-)connecting within and across cohorts, socialising and exchanging ideas. Traditionally, the Game Jam is coincided with international online events such as the Global Game Jam or Ludum Dare. This year, however, all of the jamming iGGi groups opted out of submitting to the Global Game Jam (for which iGGi was a registered site) – partly out of protest over the Global Game Jam’s initial choice of sponsor, partly because many felt that a relaxed group atmosphere was preferable to the high-octane pressure that participation in a global competition brings with it. This is not to say that we didn’t succumb to competitive spirit: prizes in 5 different categories were given out iGGi-internally at the final presentations upon conclusion of the jam. The categories were Non-fungible Gameplay - Best mechanic and game experience Houston, We Have A Problem - Most successful fail in a making a game Best Buddy - Best multiplayer game I Just Can't Get Enough - Best storytelling, immersive or replayable experience Tech Neutral - Most original & climate friendly use of technology You can find the majority of the resulting mini-games/proofs of concept uploaded on Itch here: https://itch.io/jam/iggi22/entries Previous 30 Jan 2022 Next

< Back Prof. Simon Colton Queen Mary University of London iGGi Co-Investigator Supervisor Simon Colton is an AI researcher with particular focus on issues of Computational Creativity, where we engineer software to take on creative responsibilities in art and science projects. He undertakes projects advancing the state of the art in generative technologies such as evolutionary approaches and deep learning, and uses these to help develop software such as The Painting Fool, The WhatIf Machine, the Wevva game designer, the HR3 automated code generator, and the Art Done Quick casual creator for visual art. In turn, these software systems and their output are used in cultural projects such as a poetry readings, art exhibitions, game jams, and even the production of a West-End musical. This enables Simon to undertake much public engagement, with coverage from the BBC, The Guardian, MIT Tech Review, The New Scientist and many others. These practical and cultural projects inform an evolving philosophical discourse around what it means for machines to be creative, and Simon has co-authored numerous essays driving forward our understanding of this important topic. In this way, he has helped to introduce ideas such as automated framing of products and processes, issues of authenticity and the notion of the machine condition, i.e., what the lived experience of a machine is, and how this could be expressed by that machine through creative production. He is particularly interested in supervising students in project where we apply generative technologies to applications in videogame design, visual art, software engineering, music and text generation. One particular current interest is stretching the boundaries of both what can be achieved by, and our understanding of, generation deep learning methods such as generative adversarial networks (GANs) and auto encoders. Another current interest is the design of casual creators, which are creativity support tools where the focus is on users having fun, rather than on efficient, professional production of artefacts. He is currently developing a casual creator for visual art called Art Done Quick for public release, which employs evolutionary and deep learning techniques to deliver a fun-first experience while users make decorative art pieces. Any project involving generative technologies is of interest to Simon. Research Areas: Game AI Game Audio and Music Game Design Computational Creativity Player Experience Casual Creators Generative Deep Learning s.colton@qmul.ac.uk Email Mastodon https://ccg.doc.gold.ac.uk/ccg_old/simoncolton/cv/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Themes Accessibility Creative Computing Game AI Game Audio Player Research - Previous Next

< Back Deep visual instruments: realtime continuous, meaningful human control over deep neural networks for creative expression Link Author(s) M Akten Abstract More info TBA Link

< Back Florence Smith Nicholls Queen Mary University of London iGGi PG Researcher Florence Smith Nicholls is a game AI PhD researcher based in London. They worked as an archaeologist and heritage consultant for 7 years prior to their doctoral research. Building on their heritage background, they have contributed to the field of archaeogaming through experimenting with archaeological approaches to titles such as Elden Ring and Nier: Automata. They coined the term “generative archaeology games” for their doctoral project on the archaeological recording of procedurally generated content. Their work is motivated by contributing to wider research on games preservation, ethics of game AI and procedural narrative. They are also interested in queer approaches to games, having written about queerness and documenting glitches. They are also a freelance narrative designer, previously a member of the writers' room at the indie studio Die Gute Fabrik. During a placement at the British Library they worked on enhanced curation methods for narrative mobile apps, and were commissioned to produce gameplay footage for the Library's Digital Storytelling exhibition. f.c.smithnicholls@qmul.ac.uk Email http://florencesmithnicholls.itch.io/ Mastodon https://florencesmithnicholls.com/ Other links Website LinkedIn BlueSky Github Supervisor(s): Dr Mike Cook Dr Laurissa Tokarchuk Featured Publication(s): The Dark Souls of Archaeology: Recording Elden Ring “That Darned Sandstorm”: A Study of Procedural Generation through Archaeological Storytelling User-centred collecting for emerging formats Permalife of the Archive: Archaeogaming as Queergaming How To Save A World: The Go-Along Interview as Game Preservation Methodology in Wurm Online Archaeological Gameworld Affordances: A Grounded Theory of How Players Interpret Environmental Storytelling Themes Creative Computing Design & Development Game AI Game Data - Previous Next