Games Conferences

GAME-ON 2002 3rd International Conference on Intelligent Games and Simulation, Westminster University, London, November 2002

Here are some of the participants at our annual meeting in London. As usual, the conference was a blend of experienced academics and PhD students and everyone felt that this was an excellent way for new researchers to promote their work and gain experience. The standard of the papers reached new heights. In his Keynote Speech, Professor Marc Cavazza gave us an illuminating account of his work on interactive storytelling and virtual environments. The other sessions were organised as:

Developments in games

Rendering algorithms

Storytelling and natural language processing

Learning technologies

Neural networks and evolutionary systems

Agents, behaviours, planning and motion

Applications1: Flight and war game simulations

Applications II: Network, board and miscellaneous

EU GAMESRESEARCH-NET: discussion on proposed European Network of Excellence

Whilst it is wrong to single out a few papers from all of these, we should mention the paper on On-Line Coevolution for Action Games by Pedro Demasi and Adriano de O. Cruz from Rio de Janeiro, which won the best paper award. It was also good to see a psychologist appear at the conference for the first time in the guise of Russell Shilling, from the Moves Institute, Monterey, where they are working on emotions for America’s Army: Operations. Strangely enough, the very last paper of the conference on emergent modelling by Lubo Jankovic from Birmingham UK, was the one that attracted the most attention. There was a heated debate on whether such a thing as “emergent modelling” really exists, and this debate looks certain to continue. You may also be intrigued to discover how Cyrille Bertelle and colleagues from the university at Le Havre were able to develop games for blind children! To find out more, consult the Proceedings of the Conference. Finally, as usual we should express special thanks to Philippe Geril of EUROSIS - who always manages to get the organisation right some how – as well as Wasan Mehdi and Mike Allen, who made sure that the registration desk and presentation facilities worked smoothly.

The 4^th GAME-ON Conference is scheduled to take place in London 19021 November 2003 and the Call for Papers is already available, Please put the date and place in your diary and plan to submit a paper. We look forward to seeing you there!

Games Conferences

Agents, behaviours, planning and motion

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