Artificial Intelligence in Games

Playing games has been considered a relevant task for AI research since the very inception of the field. Some of the AI accomplishments have been based on solving Games like Checkers, Chess and Go. Often, competitions based on games are organized to foster the research on AI and define frameworks for comparison of work. One example is the General Game Playing that challenges AI players to play and win games they do not know beforehand. Games can also be the base of research on computational creativity. The procedural design of new levels for games or the design of complete games with novel gameplay has been an interesting challenge. The generation of game content has been addressed in the sense of story creation and interactive storytelling as well, which is one of the very promising fields of research on AI for games, and one that attracts the interest of the game development industry. Finally, the social nature of games, and in particular of videogames, present good scenarios for exploring the social skills of AI agents, in particular by interacting with humans. This thematic track brings together leading researchers to discuss recent advances and explore future directions in the applied field of Artificial Intelligence for Games.

Topics of Interest
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Learning in games
• Decision Making
• Search-based approaches for games
• Neural-based approaches for games
• Player/Opponent modeling
• AI based game design
• Procedural content generation
• Intelligent interactive narrative
• Character development and narrative
• AI for virtual cinematography
• AI for non-player characters
• Multi-agent and multi-strategy learning in games
• General game playing
• Theoretical or empirical analysis of AI techniques for games
• Comparative studies and game-based benchmarking of AI algorithms
• Applications of artificial intelligence in (non-inclusive list):
  • Digital games (any platform)
  • Board and card games
  • Economic or mathematical games
  • Serious games
  • Realistic games for simulation or training
  • Augmented and mixed-reality games

Paper Submission Instructions
All accepted papers will be published by Springer in a volume of Springer’s Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) corresponding to the proceedings of the 18th EPIA Conference on Artificial Intelligence, EPIA 2017.

Submissions must be original and not published elsewhere. Papers should not exceed twelve (12) pages in length and must adhere to the formatting instructions of the conference. Each submission will be peer reviewed by at least three members of the Program Committee. The reviewing process is double blind, so authors should remove names and affiliations from the submitted papers, and must take reasonable care to assure anonymity during the review process. References to own work may be included in the paper, as long as referred to in the third person. Acceptance will be based on the paper’s significance, technical quality, clarity, relevance and originality. All accepted papers must be presented orally the conference by one of the authors and at least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference.

Important Dates

Paper submission deadline: April 15, 2017
Notification of paper acceptance: May 31, 2017
Camera ready papers deadline: June 15, 2017
Conference dates: September 5-8, 2017

Organizing Committee

Rui Prada, INESC-ID / IST, Lisbon, Portugal
João Dias, INESC-ID / IST, Lisbon, Portugal
Frank Dignum, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Pedro Nogueira, FEUP / LIACC, Porto, Portugal
Alberto Simões, IPCA, Barcelos, Portugal

Program Committee

Alexander Zook, Georgia Institute of Technology, US
Antonios Liapis, University of Malta, Malta
Carlos Martinho, IST, Universidade de Lisboa, PT
David Carneiro, Universidade do Minho, PT
Diego Perez, University of Essex, UK
Duarte Duque, Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave, PT
Ian Horswill, Northwestern University, US
Joost Broekens, TU Delft, NL
José Valente de Oliveira ,Universidade do Algarve, PT
Mike Preuss, University of Dortmund, DE
Penousal Machado, Universidade de Coimbra, PT
Sandy Louchart, Glasgow University, UK
Stavros Vassos, Sapienza University of Rome, IT
Stefanos Kollias, National Technical University of Athens, GR
Matthew Bedder, University of York, UK