Join us at King’s to hear about the exciting, surprising and playful future of games from AI researchers, game developers, digital artists and more.

Talks will cover cutting-edge ideas from the games industry, like the impact of AI on playtesting, as well as incredible scientific research done using games, like using archaeology to tell game stories, or designing a boardgame to understand urban spaces.

Whether you're a big fan of games, curious about the future of technology, or have a burning question for the people working at the cutting edge of computing, sign up now to take part in Next Level 2024.

Attendees are welcome to arrive from 10.30 where there will be refreshments, ready for the event to start at 11.00.

View the schedule here.

Dr Kate Compton is a generative artist, inventor, programmer and teacher. She generated planets for Spore, made Tracery which ran 20,000 community-made bots on Twitter and invented the first phone-based AR. Her longtime personal mission is to bring small playful forms of AI to poets, artists, kids and weirdos.

Dr Michael Cook is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Informatics, with his research focusing on computational creativity and applications of AI to game design and development. He earned his PhD in 2016 from Imperial College London, and currently holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship.

Dr Raluca Gaina is currently a Lecturer in Game AI at Queen Mary University of London, where she obtained her PhD in Intelligent Games and Games Intelligence in May 2021 (in the area of rolling horizon evolution in general video game playing). She completed a BSc and MSc in Computer Games at the University of Essex in 2015 and 2016, respectively. In 2018, she did a 3 month internship at Microsoft Research Cambridge, working on the Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning in Malmo Competition (MARLO). She was the track organiser of the Two-Player General Video Game AI Competition (GVGAI) 2016-2019 and was the Vice-Chair for Conferences of the IEEE CIS Games Technical Committee in 2020. Her research interests include general video game playing AI, evolutionary algorithms and tabletop games.

Sinem Görücü is an interdisciplinary designer, researcher, educator, community organizer, and advocate working at the intersection of data, artificial intelligence, and design through the lens of social justice and intersectional feminism. She is the founding director of Feminist Design, an organization that uses feminist frameworks to inform design processes and harnesses creativity as a tool for feminist advocacy. Sinem’s work spans technology, social justice, urbanism, design, data science, AI, civic engagement, and feminism. She teaches and researches topics such as equitable AI, critical data studies, design justice, feminist hacking, community technology, and creative literacy, advocacy, and resistance. Currently, she is a PhD researcher at King’s College London, focusing on sustainable AI and critical visualization.

Lisa Kasatkina/Fed Kasatkin is the Craft Lead for Quality Assurance at Jagex, the creators of RuneScape. They've worked in video game development on consoles, mobiles and PCs since 2009 despite doing a History degree. They are genderfluid and you might get either version at the actual talk, but like Pokemon games... it's basically the same with minor differences. When not trying to work out how to test games they play them on computers, tables and with fake swords in the woods.

Florence Smith Nicholls is a PhD researcher at Queen Mary University of London. Prior to this they worked in the heritage sector, and they specialise in archaeological approaches to game preservation and narrative design. They have also worked in the writers’ room at the indie studio Die Gute Fabrik, and contributed to a project curating contextual material for narrative mobile apps at the British Library.

Dr Tommy Thompson is the founder of AI and Games, a company that provides consultancy, training, and development support services for artificial intelligence in the video games industry. He is largely known as a content creator on AI for video games, producing the AI and Games YouTube channel for over 10 years, plus a bi-weekly Substack and host of the 'Branching Factor' podcast. Before his work in the industry, Tommy was a university lecturer and researcher for 10 years in computer science and game development, authoring over 50 academic publications in game/AI research.

Dr James Wootton is the Chief Scientific Officer of Moth, a pioneering company bringing the power of quantum computing to the fingertips of musicians, gamers, and digital artists. After receiving his PhD from the University of Leeds, Wootton relocated to Switzerland to conduct postdoctoral research and lecture at the University of Basel. From 2018 to 2024, he developed quantum computing technology under the auspices of IBM Research, looking at gaming applications as well as research in quantum error correction.

This event is in-person only. Register on Eventbrite.

Please note, King's events are free, which means we routinely overbook to allow for no-shows and avoid empty seats. Admission is on a first come, first served basis, so please arrive in good time to avoid disappointment. We will not be able to admit those without tickets or latecomers.

Watch recordings from ‘Next Level – AI and the Futures of Games’, held in May 2023, on the King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence YouTube channel.