Sahar Asadi

Sahar is a research lead at King where she drives AI research for the game. Sahar has obtained her Ph.D. on mobile robot olfaction from Applied Autonomous Sensor System, Orebro University. Throughout her 8 year-long industry journey, she got to apply research to real problems in many different domains: user experience at Spotify, distributed deep learning at Clusterone, information retrieval and NLP at Meltwater, and product recognition at OculusAI.

Keynote: AI in Content Production Automation

Offering high-quality content and good user experience is essential in game development. The goal of AI-powered content production automation is to build AI solutions that support content creators and curators. This talk will focus on AI solutions that enable automatic game playtesting and improve the process of content generation. We will go through some of the research trends in this domain, and discuss challenges in real-world use cases. In particular, a few examples from our experience at King to apply AI in content production automation will be presented.

Tom Betts

Tom Betts, aka Nullpointer, is an artist, academic and game developer. He’s been a lecturer, designer, published musician, professional artist and programmer. He has a PhD investigating the digital sublime in videogames, and his practice explores aesthetic ideas of permutation and generativity in game spaces. He is the director of Nullpointer a game development studio currently developing a title with Humble publishing. Outside of the studio he has delivered papers, talks and performances at international venues such as DIGRA, FreePlay, UNITE, Sonar, Rezzed and Indievelopment. He has also designed interactive work for the Tate, the V&A, the Design Museum and the Southbank Centre. He really likes generative systems, drinking coffee, watching films where nothing much happens and quite likes ironing.

Keynote: Procedural Content Generation as Art, Design and Play

In this talk Tom will explore some of the ways that procedural content generation influences and directs his design practice, from visual aesthetics to the fundamentals of gameplay, and how his latest game, Into The Pit, will let players participate in the design and control of generative processes. Tom will discuss how his thinking about generative design led to this approach, and how he aims to give players control over a generative system in a way that is natural, diegetic and fun. He'll also discuss the new challenges this poses for designers and researchers, and what exciting new possibilities for games this gives rise to.

Marie Foulston

A playful curator with a love for the alternative and disruptive. Marie was lead curator of the V&A’s headline exhibition ‘Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt’ and is co-founder of UK based videogame collective the Wild Rumpus. Her practice focuses on exploring radical ways videogames can be brought into cultural spaces and has worked alongside MoPOP, AGO, Channel 4, Somerset House, GDC and the Smithsonian Institution.

Keynote: Photography Workshops for Spacemen & Parties in Spreadsheets

A playful curator with a love for the alternative and disruptive. Marie was lead curator of the V&A's headline exhibition `Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt' and is co-founder of UK based videogame collective the Wild Rumpus. Her practice focuses on exploring radical ways videogames can be brought into cultural spaces and has worked alongside MoPOP, AGO, Channel 4, Somerset House, GDC and the Smithsonian Institution.

Luke Dicken

Dr. Luke Dicken is Director of Applied Artificial Intelligence at Zynga Inc where he leads a team driving innovation at the intersection of AI, Analytics, Game Development and Computational Creativity. Luke is also Chair of the IGDA Foundation, a charitable organization driving diversity and inclusion throughout the games industry. He was named as one of Develop magazine’s ``30 Under 30'' for 2013, and was listed as the #1 most influential person in Game Analytics in 2018, but hasn’t found a subtle way to work either of these into a bio.

Keynote: From the Ivory Tower to the Skunk Works - Bringing Research to Life in Industry

Founding and running the R&D group for one of the leading mobile games companies on the planet has some unique challenges and some excellent opportunities; from convincing executive leaders of the potential of established techniques from the research world, to ensuring that novel techniques can scale across a global player base measured in millions of people per day. In this session Luke will discuss the work that led to the creation of Zynga’s Applied AI team, the manner in which an industry-facing research team operates and some of the work that the group has undertaken in its first year of operation.

Deirdre Quarnstrom

Deirdre Quarnstrom started the program at Mojang Studios to bring Minecraft to mainstream education which now reaches millions of students and educators around the world. She currently leads the teams responsible for Minecraft Education, Minecraft Hour of Code, Minecraft’s China business and the work to make Minecraft more accessible for players of all abilities. She also serves as a Director on the board of Block by Block, a non-profit partnership between Mojang and UN-Habitat, and is a Trustee on the Board for the French American School of Puget Sound.

Keynote: Back to school with Minecraft

The video game Minecraft is being used to support remote and distance learning during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Hear how developers, educators and curriculum designers work together to bring learning from computer science to social-emotional learning to millions of students who are suddenly home from school, and how the gaming community is rallying around the popular social platform to connect virtually.

CONTACT US - fdg2020@easychair.org