As I am writing this, I am currently on the flight back from the AI and Games Conference 2024 in London. The first of, hopefully, many!

At this venue, I had the great fortune to talk with people from both academia and industry, make valuable connections and, perhaps most importantly, get an insight into what is going on in the industry.

The AI and Games Conference 2024 was a first in many ways, shapes, and forms. It was the first time this conference was arranged, it was my first international conference, my first time in London (and the UK at large), and it was my first international travel without my wife. That’s actually where I am going to start this blog post, with my wife.

My Wife

My wife is the love of my life. Right now, as I am working on my PhD – fulfilling my dream – she is at home with our 14 months old son, taking care of him. Every week when I travel to Malmö, she handles our son and takes care of everything at home. And the days I am home in Skövde, this incredible woman goes to work to help making sure that we have the economy to push through this. Oh, and did I mention that she is also four months pregnant, as we are expecting our second child. I feel like, and I think this is the proper English term for it, like a proper twat for pursuing my PhD at this time. All this woman does through thick and thin is to give me her unyielding support, especially emotionally as I am a wreck at times. I love her to death, and I really have to step up my husband game for life for this. My love, if you read this, I will be better at letting my action speak for my love and not my words – something I am currently very bad at!

The Beginning

So, short story first. When Tommy Thompson announced the AI and Games Conference (August 16), I had more or less just been accepted to my PhD position at Malmö University. I emailed José, my main supervisor, on the spot, asking for the possibility to secure a ticket seeing that it all sounded highly relevant for my PhD. He agreed of the relevance, and quickly helped me fix all the bureaucracy around the ticket. About two weeks later, I had secured my ticket to the event, and one of the first things I did after having formally started my PhD position was to fix tickets for the airport and book a Hostel. Now, back to the main story.

Pre-Conference

My trip to London was – all in all – uneventful. I left home early (the Swedish railways are not always reliable, and I did not want to miss my flight), arriving at Arlanda about four hours before my flight. Getting caught up in the security screening (as I almost always do), I finally made it to the waiting area. After some work and food, I boarded my flight, flew over that little pond of water, and arrived at a stereotypical cloudy and foggy London Gatwick Airport. With some help from the railway station personnel, I got on the right train to London Bridge. At London Bridge, I changed to New Cross and made my way to the Hostel where I was staying (quite the rundown place in a few ways, but it was cheap). Having checked in, I made my way over the street to a local pub where – perfectly planned by Aji, one of the community members of the AI and Games channel and a lovely fellow swede – an informal pre-conference meetup was taking place. During this meetup, I got to talk with a lot of interesting people, but most important for my story are Aji and Liam. Remember Liam, he will be very important later!

After a night of okay sleep (sharing room with 5 others + a busy street with emergency services all the time) I took a cold shower (probably my own non-understanding of the concept of British showers, but there were only one knob!) and went hunting for food. I found a nice little coffee place just down the street, got some coffee and a sandwich, and was at the AI and Game Conference venue well in time for the conference.

At the Conference

From the get-go, I felt at home at this conference. I exchanged a few words with the – as I have understood it afterwards – main on-site whirlwind of getting-everything-up-and-ready, Sally Kevan – an absolutely lovely person that had so much energy around her. As the conference had sold out, it was a lot of badges to sort and people to accommodate at the venue. Sally, on the off chance that you are reading this: fantastic work! I met up with a few of the people from yesterday, exchanged some words and pleasantries, and then went our separate ways for the first talk. As Tommy welcomed everyone – streamed into the room I sat in – it finally clicked; I was actually here.

The next hours were an onslaught of information, new ideas, and discussions. A proper smörgåsbord, if you will. I had the good fortune to listen to:

• Arya Subramanyam from Amazon Web Services, giving a strong talk regarding Harnessing Multi-Agent Systems for Task Execution, a talk that gave me a lot of new ideas in how to look at handling the complexity I will most likely meet during my studies,

• Monica Villanueva Aylagas from EA Seed gave the talk Avalon: Can we Improve the Validity of Match-3 Games Level Generation, which gave me an entire new view of how the information from a testing suit can be presented, and that we can introduce constraints to help guiding the system to create valid content,

• – Break, talked to a lot of people, got to know a few of them better, and shared stories and interesting anecdotes,

• Anna Poulter-Jones from Sheridans gave a talk regarding Navigating AI and IP: A Practical Toolkit for Devs which, even if perhaps not directly related as of now, gave me information I will most likely have to seek out soon anyway,

• Raluca Gaina and Diego Perez from Tabletop R&D gave one of the most relevant talks for me, Empowering Game Designers with Automatic Playtesting showcasing their own work with tabletop games and giving me a ton of ideas for my own PhD studies and how to look forward,

• Brendan Mulcahy from Epic Games discussed the experimental framework Learning Agents in Unreal Engine, giving a few insights in how one of the industry giants are working with related technologies for their Player-Bots,

• Alessandro Sestini and Luca Ballore from Electronic Arts and Electronic Arts Seed respectively discussed AgentMerge: Enhancing Battlefield Automated Issue Management with LLMs, giving a rare insight in how an repetitive and non-intuitive part of the QA pipeline and debugging work could be assisted with tools driven by LLMs, with only a 4 % false positive rate and a ticket handling speedup of nearly 3x,

• – Lunch, and a lot of discussion with many people; both presenters and attendees. Liam, my saviour, supported me and helped looking out for my bag as I was running around like a headless chicken,

• Sam Devlin from Microsoft Research turned it all on its head, as he presented the process for the AI when they’re Learning to Play, Imitate, and Collaborate with Pesky Humans: Some Lessons from the AI’s Perspective, an interesting talk giving me great insights!

• Jaden Travnik from Sony AI probably held the presentation I felt most influential, as he made the case that RL Agent Training is Property Based Training. Deriving from this presentation, and piecing together bits and pieces from all the talks I attended, I think I have a better idea of how automatic Playtesting and automatic Quality Assurance can co-exist and help each other out, at least to a degree

• Following this was a panel with representatives from Amazon Web Services (Andrei Muratov), Unity Technologies (Changed from the program, I forgot your name, sorry!), Arm (Roberto Lopez Mendez), and Kinetix (Yassine Tahi). Hearing they talk and discuss The Future of AI for Games was a treat!,

• – Afternoon break, more talks and discussions with presenters and new friends alike!,

• Laurent Couvidou from Build a Rocket Boy gave the only “back to basic” AI agent talk I attended: Tethering Agents for the Greater Good, a great talk regarding keeping agents in specific areas without the player noticing all too much, and how this was implemented in different games he had worked with,

• Christoph Salge from the University of Hertfordshire talked about ten years of The AI Settlement Generation Challenge in Minecraft, a competition I think I have to get into at some point!,

• Lastly, the event was for me ended with Eric Jacopin from Hawkswell, talking about how Analytic Geometry is your Friend, a heavy and well conducted talk my head was not ready for. I really must get back and look at the recording for this once it is up!

Unfortunately, I could not attend the Closing Remark by Tommy, instead opting to call home and say goodnight to my wife and kid. But what a venue! It was a lovely experience all around, and I just loved every second of it!

Going Forward

A quick note here regarding the impact this event had on how I see my studies going forward. As I have just started working on my PhD, I feel like I am easily influenced and wish to explore so many venues, nooks, and crannies. However, after these talks, I think I am starting to see a pattern regarding the usage of AI techniques, training, data, and game code. There are a lot to bone out still, and I will most likely contact all of the people in the above list and try to prick their brains a bit in the following months – after I have done some reading and gotten all of the PhD position formalities out of the way. I took a lot of notes, and I will make sure to rewatch a few of these talks for a few key points I think I heard, but I think I have an idea regarding how to playtest in a more general capability – maybe.

I have five years to figure this out, right?

Post-Conference

Now, remember Liam from earlier? If not, he is this cool dude, a junior programmer, that have been an absolute delight to hang out with. For my visit, he was important for this next part.

As the conference came to an end, I had a dilemma. As I mentioned earlier, I stayed at New Cross, at a place that got a few of the attendees raise an eyebrow. The area did not feel particularly safe, and with the after-conference reception being half-an-hour walk away, and the fact that I was discouraged by a few people from taking a cab that late, I would either have to re-accommodate or skip the reception. After having discussed it with my wife, she said I should go for it and re-accommodate – making sure I took all opportunities I could as I was away. Said and done! Teary eyed (remember that emotional support from earlier? Yeah, she does not know half of it…), I saw the people swarming out from the wrap-up and caught Liam – the hobbit (his own words, not mine). I explained the situation to him, and he was happy to follow me back to the hostel, check out, and guided me and Aji to the reception – keeping us safe in the weirdness that is London. Liam “Sam” Snow may not sound the hero I paint him up to be here, but there and then I was eternally grateful for having this hobbit (once again, his words not mine) with me!

At the reception it was a lot of mingling about, getting to know people in a more relaxed environment. Here, I remembered that I had brought with me my business cards (as one do) and started handing them out to people I had talked with during the event and presenters. As the night progressed I went between the table where Aji and Liam had parked and around the reception, anchored (or tethered) to the safety of Aji and Liam. During the reception, I also booked a room and checked into the hotel, feeling safe and warm.

As the night progressed, I realized that there was a person that I had yet to speak with; Tommy himself. I have long been a fan of his work, often using it as a starting point when it comes to my own curiosity and as one of my most recommended ways to understand AI for my students – often linking to his channel in different courses. Where Julian has been a research hero for many years, Tommy has been a true inspiration when it comes to brining academia and industry together – highlighting how the symbiotic relationship can work. As he said himself as the night progressed; this conference was 80 % industry, 20 % academia. In fact, I have Tommy to thank for my understanding of AI from “the other side”, giving me invaluable tools when dwelling deeper into research and industry discussions. I would have been amiss if I did not speak to him, but I really did not want to bother him – I always feel a bit too much in the way on these events!

Towards what I thought would be the end of the night, I finally got to exchange a few words with Tommy, thanking him for the event and introducing myself. However, the night had a few other plans. I joined Tommy and a few of the organisers and attendees for a late dinner, a pub visit, a long talk in the hotel bar (not leaving before 2 in the morning). It was just a great ending, one I could not have hoped for, to a long conference day – sharing laughs, a beer or two, and stories with these lovely people – in a way that just felt natural.

The day after, I sat down and had breakfast with a few of the organisers and attendees again. I heard background stories about the conference, how things shaped up, and thoughts about the possibilities at large. As I left the group to prepare for check-out and making my way to the train station, I felt like I left something great behind. But I also felt extremely welcomed and embraced by this community, regardless of whom I spoke with.

The trip home

Now, the trip home was not the best I have done. As I enjoyed my time at breakfast, I kept a close look on my watch – knowing that the trip from the hotel to the airport would take about an hour, I set out to be two hours early for my flight. What I did not know was that the trains did not go from London Bridge to Gatewick (despite the lovely lady at Greenwhich station saying they did). So… I panicked. A lot. Luckily, the informant at London Bridge helped me plan a route, I was able to check in to my flight online, and I ended up being cleared through security about an hour before departure. I do hope my writings in the conference social channel brought a few smiles at least. Quoting myself as the panic released it grip on me:

I just realized that this chat quickly turned into “Swedish man panicking overseas, bringing shame to his Viking heritage”, so I do hope you enjoyed that!

As I am writing this, I am on the last ledge on my journey; on a train between Stockholm and Skövde. I am coming home tired, filled with ideas, and just feeling content. As I come home, I am going to take a shower, hold my wife close, and just let this all sink in.

One thing is for certain, I am looking forward to see you all at the next AI and Games Conference, or, if you are going to it, the International Summer School on AI and Games in Malmö, Sweden, next summer!