Event Details
Speakers- Mark Baker and Sean Parsons (MindCandy)
- Tom Betts (Big Robot Games)
- Ryan Barkataki and Belen Albeza (inensu)
- David Braben (Frontier Developments)
- Michael Cook (Imperial College, London)
- Demis Hassabis (DeepMind Technologies)
- Nicoll Hunt (Nicoll Hunt Games)
- Joss Knight (Natural Motion)
- Peter Molyneux (22 Cans)
Mark Baker and Sean Parsons
MindCandy
Mark is the Technology Lead of Tools at Mind Candy and has been writing
code for Games and the Tools to create them for 13 years.
Sean is a Senior Developer at Mind Candy, where he has been for almost 4
years after escaping a life working in the finance industry.
Scala at MindCandy
As games make increasing use of online services and components, more
game developers are making the change from traditional game development
to write network and server code. Many developers are already familiar
with scripting languages for in-game use or automation. However, most
server development is in statically typed languages such as Java or C#,
due to the benefits of static typing in large application and the wealth
of existing software libraries that are available.
Scala is a programming language that combines the brevity and speed of
development of dynamic scripting languages with the type safety and
scalability of statically typed languages. Scala smoothly works with the
Java virtual machine and existing libraries and scales from scripts to
large applications easily. The actor model and strong functional
composition features provide a powerful technique to build decoupled and
highly scalable servers.
Scala is an excellent migration path for game developers familiar with
C++, Python or Ruby but who need to build scalable, high performance and
stable services for their games.
In this talk, Sean and Mark show how and why MindCandy is using the
Scala language for developing new services for Moshi Monsters, as well
as for tools and infrastructure.
Tom Betts
Big Robot Games
Tom Betts, aka Nullpointer, is an artist, academic, coder and gamer. He's been a lecturer, designer, published musician, professional artist, warlock... but right about now he is working on his Phd about the sublime in digital games and he's also head coder at Big Robot making a game for Channel4. He's exhibited digital artworks and performed at international venues such as Sonar, ZKM, Lovebytes, FACT and has done professional design/coding for Tate, the V&A and the Southbank Centre. He likes coding indie projects, drinking coffee, watching films where nothing much happens and is slowly growing beard.
Glimpses of Infinity: Exploring Procedural Permutation Space in Games
Sometimes it can seem like modern games are reducing the user experience to a linear,scripted entertainment ride. It could be argued that such experiences are contrary to what makes games unique in creative media, the capability for exploring permutation and possibility.
Many gamers enjoy exploring the possibility spaces defined by game rules and procedures, especially when those spaces are large enough for players to discover unique territory or mark out their own completely individual path through the game space. Procedural and generative techniques lie at the heart of providing this sort of replayable, variable experience. Such mechanisms provide an active expression of code which can be intoxicating to both developers and players, even bringing the two practices closer together, and breaking down strict notions of authorship.
In this talk Tom will show how a procedural & generative methods can help drive content production and game design. Tom will show a number of his own projects and prototypes where modular and generative design have helped overcome the problems of content production and created intriguing exploration spaces. He will also probably go hideously off topic and end up talking about generative music, honey and Deleuze.
Ryan Barkataki and Belén Albeza
inensu
inensu makes apps and platforms that sit at the intersection of games and entertainment. inensu develops its own original IP and works with clients around the world. inensu was founded by Paulina Bozek, former Executive Producer of the SingStar Franchise.
Ryan is the Lead Designer at London-based games startup inensu. His background is in User Experience; at his previous consultancy, Amberlight, he headed up the Gaming UX division, working on UX testing and design for the Playstation platform on titles such as Singstar, Eye Toy, Motorstorm and various Move games. At inensu, he has designed the game mechanics, user experience and other concepts for two inensu platforms, Closet Swap and SuperFan. Ryan has an MA in Industrial Design from Central Saint Martins, an MSc in Human Computer Interaction from UCL and a BSc in Computing and Design from Goldsmiths.
Belén is the rare combination of a computer engineer, game developer and a hacker with an eye for design. Working with several companies in London and in Spain, she has developed iPhone games, web games and won first place in several mashup & game development competitions. Belén has a BSc in Computer Engineering and a Masters in Game Development.
Designing and Developing with Users at the Centre of the Experience
At inensu we create games and apps around activities that users are already passionate about in their real lives: like music and fashion. We design and develop for a users' existing social graph and use game mechanics to make activities and media more social and interactive. This focus on the user influences our design process and decisions and sets us specific technical challenges. Paulina will talk about our design approach and techniques for keeping the user front and centre and Belen will discuss the challenges and our approach to social app and multi-platform development.
David Braben
Frontier Developments
David is chairman and founder of Frontier Developments, a software company employing 210 people on Cambridge's Science Park. He is also co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a registered charity making very low cost educational computer equipment (with an ambition to give computers away free to kids in schools), a member of the BAFTA games board, a member of Cambridge Angels, and Chairman of the government SkillSet approval committee for university Computer Science courses. David and Frontier are known for many successful games over the years including more recently 'Kinectimals', 'Disney Adventures' and 'LostWinds'. Many are big sellers over a long period of time like 'Elite' and 'RollerCoaster Tycoon 3' (still charting an amazing 7 years after release).
Has Game Development Gone Full Circle?
This talk will look at some of the parallels between the new wave of games on mobile devices and games in the early 1980s, and look at some of the techniques used in "Elite". It will also look at the differences and touch on the future of mobile games too.
Michael Cook
Imperial College, London
Michael Cook is a PhD student at Imperial College London's Computational Creativity Group, an AI-focused research group looking to 'to address interesting practical and philosophical questions about what it means for software to be autonomously creative' (among other things). He is currently researching automated game design techniques through the development of a game-designing AI, ANGELINA.
Previously, Michael studied at Imperial College for an MEng in Computing, tried his hand at some freelance journalism, and was behind the 2012 cult non-hit Pro Invigilator 2012.
Artificial Aesthetics and Meaningful Metroidvanias
ANGELINA is an AI system being built to design games from the ground up; this means thinking about issues like game balance, player enjoyment, challenge and mechanics. Should we be thinking bigger, though?
This talk will explore new research into empowering ANGELINA, and other AI systems like it, with tools to make games that have emotional weight and meaning, and look at the potential for new game design philosophies being discovered and exploited by software, not humans.
Demis Hassabis
DeepMind Technologies
Demis Hassabis, PhD, Founder of DeepMind Technologies, is a former child chess prodigy, who finished A-levels early at 16 before going on to co-create the multi-million selling game Theme Park. Upon graduating from Cambridge University with a Double First in Computer Science he founded the videogames company Elixir Studios, which he grew to 60 people, producing pioneering games for Microsoft and Vivendi Universal. After gaining a decade of experience in starting and managing successful technology companies, Demis completed a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at UCL. His research connecting memory with imagination was listed in the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2007 in any field by the journal Science. Demis is an expert player of many games winning the international Mind Sports Olympiad a record 5 times and was widely considered to be the best general games player in the world.
The Connection between Games and AI
Games and AI have a long history together, going all the way back to Alan Turing. The latest console games are now close to photo-realistic and yet most AI in games is still fairly simplistic. In this talk I will discuss not only how AI is going to revolutionise gaming in the future but also, perhaps more surprisingly, how games will have a key role to play towards the development of advanced general AI.
Nicoll Hunt
Nicoll Hunt Games
Nicoll Hunt has worked at pretty much every extreme a computer game developer can. From 2 man teams to 250 man teams, from games with zero budget to titles that cost over $110,000,000 (and destroyed a company in the process). He's worked on million sellers like the Colin McRae Rally series, and numerous games which never even made out the door. Now one of the fastest rising stars in the "indie" scene Nicoll's last title was the Tron-tastic explosion of neon and humour, Hard Lines, for iOS and Android.
Work. Sweat. Achieve.
Nicoll Hunt used to be terrible at making computer games, really shockingly terrible. His games were woefully basic, wildly unplayable, and the only notable media interest was having one title described as "the worst game of all time". This was 17 years ago, and a lot has changed in that time. This talk will take the audience on a montage-filled excursion charting Nicoll's rise through the ranks and the many, occasionally painful, lessons learned along the way.
Joss Knight
Natural Motion
Joss Knight started out in the research community, making robots navigate using vision as well as working on some notable planetary exploration projects with the Open University, including a stint with the ill-fated Beagle 2 project as the probe arrived at Mars. He joined NaturalMotion in 2004 and is now Head of Research, running the small team that ensures the company always has something unique to put out with each new version. His personal bandwagon has mainly been IK and retargeting, with a side-cart on numerical optimisation.
NaturalMotion are an animation middleware and games studio based in Oxford. Their inaugural product endorphin made it possible for animators to add physical realism easily into their clips without compromising performance. Since then they have produced euphoria, the runtime engine that brought hyper-realism to deaths, electrocutions, explosions and even drunkenness (!) into titles such as Rockstar’s GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption; and morpheme, an animation tool and engine that puts complex blends, transitions and procedural techniques into the hands of the artists.
Cutting edge character animation for the next generation
As a new console generation approaches, focus is returning to the technology that will deliver the wow factor to differentiate the new hardware. More and more, character animation is becoming the distinguishing factor as the ultra-realistic rendering jars with jerky, often under-prioritised animation blending and simulation. Joss Knight looks at the latest techniques being used in the industry to redress the balance, with an overview of some of the cutting edge research being done at NaturalMotion for their morpheme and euphoria animation middleware.
Peter Molyneux
22 Cans
Peter Molyneux is one of the best-known names in the international world of computer games. In 1987 he formed Bullfrog Productions Ltd. and created a new genre of computer games with the release of Populous. Bullfrog was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1995 and in 1997, Peter left Bullfrog Productions to form Lionhead Studios releasing many multi-award winning games including the Black and White franchise, The Movies and 3 games in the Fable Franchise. Lionhead was acquired by Microsoft in 2006 and Peter left in March 2012 to start a new game development company 22 Cans Limited whose plans are as yet unannounced.
The Future of AI in gaming
With gaming now truly becoming a mass media entertainment and touching millions the need for AI to embrace user choice and enable personalized experiences is essential to the future of what will become a major force in global entertainment. Now that we potentially have access to a mass of user related data, this talk will discuss the possibilities of using AI to craft highly personalized entertainment in abstract worlds.