Workshops
Each Workshop runs during a multi-track sessions in parallel with other Workshops or Panels.
To attend any of the Workshops, please put your name down on the (physical) sign-up sheets at the Reception Desk.
iGGi Workshops - Tuesday
Tue 15 Sep 14:30-15:30
Lead: Philip Smith
TRACK 2 >> Gamifying Citizen Science
Abstract: This workshop will provide participants with an opportunity to hone their game design skills in a rarely invoked context, as well as contribute to citizen science gamification research.
Citizen science projects tend to lack meaningful long term engagement from their participants. While gamification has helped, it still faces similar pitfalls to non-gamified counterparts. A generalized design framework that can guide game designers towards practicing engaging citizen science game design could be a solution. I am conducting a design workshop that aims to identify the benefits and drawbacks of a proposed game design framework. Participants will work together in teams to create their own conceptual design of a citizen science game based on a given prompt and utilizing the design framework. Through working with the framework, participants will practice learn new techniques to bring gamified fun into the most unlikely of circumstances.
Tue 15 Sep 17:00-18:00
iGGi Workshops - Tuesday
Lead: Nicole Levermore
SINGLE TRACK >> Building an Alumni Network: Have Your Say in Its Legacy
Abstract: As the iGGi PhD programme has entered its mature stage, sustaining its diverse, interdisciplinary community becomes both a key priority and a unique opportunity. This workshop brings together participants of this year’s iGGi Conference, including current iGGi Researchers and Alumni to celebrate, (re-)connect, share pathways past and present, and collaboratively brainstorm about the long-term future of the iGGi Alumni Network.
The first part of the session starts with a very short, relaxed and not-too-serious networking exercise during which you get the opportunity to engage in conversation with three or four other conference attendees. The second part shifts into an interactive co-design discussion focused on sustainability: How do we keep the iGGi Network running and active, independent of funding? We want to hear your ideas! Such as, for example, ideas for best communication channels and platforms (e.g., Discord, LinkedIn, community-driven Slack) to establish light-touch, community-led governance beyond iGGi’s funding end.
While we are looking at input mainly from the iGGi Alumni and iGGi Researcher participants, since they are arguably crucial for the success of the project, we also highly value the opinions and ideas from all the other voices. We welcome everyone who attends BiGGi Con on this day to join this workshop, and in as active a way as possible: You will contribute to building the foundation for iGGi’s enduring legacy!
iGGi Workshops - Wednesday
Wed 16 Sep 16:45-17:45
Lead: Laura Helsby
TRACK 3 >> Research Ideas Workshop
Abstract: This workshop will be run as a 'research ideas generation' event. Similar to modules, people will be placed into small groups and given a series of short tasks/problems to tackle. People will be encouraged to pair up with those who use different methods and have different approaches to foster creativity. No previous research experience is necessary.
iGGi Workshops - Thursday
Thu 17 Sep 11:10-12:30
Lead: Simon Lucas
TRACK 1 >> Agentic AI for Games
Abstract: Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly evolving from standalone chat systems into agentic AI systems that can reason, plan, use tools, execute code, and iteratively improve their outputs. These capabilities are opening new possibilities for game research and development, from the creation of game-playing agents to procedural content generation (PCG) and automated game design.
This 80-minute hands-on workshop provides an accessible introduction to agentic AI in the context of games. We begin with a concise overview of the core concepts behind agentic systems, including tool use, iterative refinement, code generation, and evaluation loops. We then demonstrate how these techniques can be applied to game-related tasks with examples in Game AI agent development and PCG.
The session includes practical experimentation. Participants will work with a set of prepared examples and workflows (available in advance), allowing them to run live experiments and explore how modern LLM-based agents can generate, test, and refine game artefacts. Setup instructions will be provided before the conference to ensure that attendees can participate fully during the workshop. The session concludes with a discussion of lessons learned, current limitations, and emerging opportunities for agentic AI in games research. Participants will be encouraged to share experiences, identify promising application areas, and discuss future directions for combining LLMs with simulation, search, evaluation, and game design tools.
Requirements: those wishing to execute examples should bring a laptop with Python 3.12 or later installed.
Thu 17 Sep 11:10-12:30
Lead: Daniel Gomme
TRACK 2 >> Collaborative Writing with Typst & Jujutsu
Abstract: We'll create a collaborative zine using Typst for typesetting, and jujutsu for version control. Pick a topic that electrifies your brain, and find out there are nicer tools than LaTeX and git.
Thu 17 Sep 11:10-12:30
Lead: Luiza Gossian
TRACK 3 >> Designing Seriously Casual Games
Abstract: Design frameworks for serious games tend to focus exclusively on their serious, applied, or transformative aspects, while those for entertainment games tend to focus on fun, engagement, and immersion. Those that attempt to bridge the divide do so by taking elements of both without presenting principles that are specific to seriously casual games, that is serious games with a ludic focus. Through the development of Detachment Undone, an abstract arcade game based on the ten stages of genocide, several potential principles have emerged. These principles are specific enough to apply to ludic-focused serious games about difficult themes yet general enough to be used for the development of games beyond Detachment Undone. The workshop will invite game designers to engage in co-creation activities to help develop and solidify these principles into a format that can be useful and effective for game designers in the development of their own seriously casual game projects.
Thu 17 Sep 11:10-12:30
Lead: Nathan John
TRACK 4 >> DevOps for Games Researchers
Abstract: DevOps is, admittedly, a bit of a dirty word. It sounds like the sort of thing that involves several dashboards, three cloud accounts, a YAML file you copied from Stack Overflow, and a quiet sense that everything is about to become more complicated than it was before.
This workshop is not that.
Instead, we’ll look at the useful bits of DevOps for game researchers: the bits that stop your Unity build only working on your laptop, help you share playable experiments with participants, and make sure your precious gameplay data actually arrives somewhere sensible. We’ll talk about hosting WebGL builds with tools like GitHub Pages, S3, or similar static site hosts, collecting remote experiment data with lightweight databases or serverless endpoints, and keeping enough version information that future-you can work out which build produced which results.
The focus is practical, researcher-friendly, and only mildly cloud-flavoured. By the end, you should have a clearer idea of how to take a game experiment from “it works on my machine” to “people can play it remotely, the data is captured, and I might even be able to reproduce this later.”
Organisers:
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General Chairs: Laurissa Tokarchuk, Jeremy Gow
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Programme Chair: Filip Sroka, Toby Best, Ruizhe "Jay" Yu Xia
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Outreach & Marketing Chair: Prakriti Nayak
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Poster & Workshop Chair: Dien Nguyen
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Local Chair: Karl Clarke
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Tech/Media Chairs: Karl Clarke, Prakriti Nayak
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Alumni Chair: Nicole Levermore
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General Management: Susanne Binder, David Hull
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Admin Support: Shopna Begum, Helen Tilbrook, Oliver Roughton
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Website/Industry Liaison: Susanne Binder