- Title: Compressing Space, Warping Perception And Projecting Flowers Onto Cups Of Tea
- Speaker: Dr Michael Cook (Games By Angelina)
- Time and date: 4pm to 5pm, Apr 3, 2019
- Room: 1.04, Scape Building, Mile End Campus (building 64 on QMUL’s campus map)
- Drinks/reception: Coffee/tea/cakes will be served at 3:30pm in the hub, wine and nibbles will be served in the hub after the seminar.
On Wednesday 3rd April 2019 the Game AI Group will host a seminar by Michael Cook from Queen Mary University of London. All welcome (especially students), no pre-booking required.
Abstract
I’ll summarise some recent directions in my research on automated game design and procedural content generation, including two submissions to COG 2019.
- I’ve been looking at ways to compress state space graphs using the notion of reversible game actions, and why this might have exciting implications for game analysis in the future;
- Some new analytical techniques for procedural generators, allowing us to understand the behaviour of inputs to a generative system, and thus build tools for people which are easier to use.
- A new framework for studying AI that can play games for the purposes of curation, criticism and recommendation. I want to build AI that can appreciate games in ways other than just winning, and we’re hoping to organise a competition-like event around it to – we need your help! Lastly, I’ll report on my visit to teamLab Borderless in Tokyo, a really inspirational experience that has made me rethink how we build digital experiences, and what the scope of our research can be.
Bio
Michael Cook is an AI researcher and game designer. He holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship at Queen Mary University of London, and is a Visiting Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Kaiserslautern, Germany. His research interests include automated game design, computational creativity, procedural content generation and models of game design. He is best known as the designer of ANGELINA, a game-designing AI, and as the founder of PROCJAM, the procedural generation jam. In his spare time he designs games and writes about AI and game design. He once managed to collect every strawberry in Celeste. You can find him on Twitter @mtrc, or find his papers, writing and more at possibilityspace.org.