Bruce Damer
Title: The Day the Game Came Alive: Virtual Worlds and an Origin of Artificial Life
After decades of developing and dreaming in the field of Artificial Life, fundamental breakthroughs in computational complexity and laboratory chemical simulation hold forth the promise that virtual worlds may become the proving grounds for an authentic artificial proto-biosystem. Early self-organization and complex phenomena within game spaces and virtual worlds suggest what form this profound new emergence might take. Key questions remain: will…(read more).
Johan Pfannenstill, Ubisoft Massive, Sweden
Title: The AI behind World in Conflict
Playing against computer-controlled opponents is one of the base pillars of computer games. This is especially true for real time strategy games, such as World in Conflict. The lecture will discuss how the computer-controlled opponent was created, which algorithms where used and why. We will look into the implications of working with applied AI in a tight production cycle. We will also discuss trends in computer gaming AI and within which areas potential synergies can be found…(read more).
Steve Rabin, DigiPen Institute of Technology, USA
Title: The Past, Present, and Future of Game AI
Game AI has progressed at a steady pace since the early days when we were being chased by Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde. As we stroll through game history, game AI has continued to cheat, steal and slowly progress. Where is it headed and what challenges should we be working on? Rabin will bring a unique perspective from his time as a game AI programmer, over a decade at Nintendo, as editor of roughly 250 game AI articles in the AI Game Programming Wisdom…(read more).
Espen Aarseth, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Title: The Aesthetics of Bottom-Up
The dominating academic paradigm in ludo-narratives (storytelling games) for the last 25 years (e.g. Laurel 1986) has been the top-down, Aristotelian model, where a wellformed drama or narrative is produced as a result of interaction between a player and a “playwright”, a component that plans and executes a story arc. Commercial narrative games, meanwhile, rely on game-world topology, quests and scripting — alternative top-down methods…(read more).
Marc Cavazza, University of Teesside, UK
Title: To be announced
More details about existing keynote talks will be posted soon.
