Georgios N. Yannakakis
Title: AI That Models Players and Designs Games for Them
Abstract: "Can we understand how players feel, think and react and, in turn, automatically design new games for them? How can we use computational processes to model aspects of player experience? Can those computationally designed games be considered creative? What happens when we design together with an AI instead? Do we merely co-design or can a machine truly foster our creativity as human designers?
In this talk I will address the above questions by positioning computer games as the ideal application domain for AI, computational creativity, and affective computing for the unique features they offer. Advanced methods for player experience modeling, game adaptation, and procedural content generation will be showcased via a plethora of game-based projects developed at the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta."
Bio
Georgios N. Yannakakis (yannakakis.net) is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta and Director of the game technology area. He is a leading expert of the game artificial intelligence research field with core theoretical contributions in machine learning, evolutionary computation, affective computing and player modelling, computational creativity and procedural content generation. He has published more than 200 papers and his work has been cited broadly. He has attracted funding from several EU and national research projects (mainly FP7, H2020) and received multiple awards for published work in top-tier journals and conferences. His work has been featured in New Scientist, Science Magazine, The Guardian, Le Monde and other venues. He is regularly invited to give keynote talks in the most recognised conferences in his areas of research activity and has organized a few of the most respected conferences in the areas of game AI and game research. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing and the IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games journals.
