AI in action: From ML models to games

Important update for those who registered for the in-person part of the event. Due to the fire and safety constraints we only capable of accommodating reduced amount of people this time. We will let people in on the "First come - first served" principle. If you have doubts for joining in-person, please, update your RSVP and join the online stream. The stream starts at 18:20.
Thank you for your understanding.

Let's dive together into the fascinating world of artificial intelligence in game development. This event is a joint effort with PyData Amsterdam community.

Agenda:
18:00-18:20 - Arrival + food
18:20-18:30 - Welcome note
18:30-19:00 - Generating natural landscapes for Go Wayback with pysheds and ML by Joey Faulkner
19:00-19:05 - Break
19:05-19:35 - How to create 'sentient' but coherent NPC with AI by Alisa Dammer
19:35-19:45 - Break
19:45-20:15 - Playing Fair?: GenAI, Game Design, and Inclusion by Siân Brooke
20:15-21:00 - Networking and closing

Talk 1 - Generating natural landscapes for Go Wayback with pysheds and ML
In this talk we will take a deep dive into how we setup and train our guided generation system for our upcoming game Prologue: Go Wayback!. Our guided generation system allows creative people to design rough outlines of levels which then create landscapes which retain natural features. This allows us to generate near-infinite varied landscapes but still include creativity from level designers (and even players!). We will go over data preparation with pysheds, training with hugging face diffusers and shipping to users with ONNX.

Speaker
Joey Faulkner
Joey Faulkner is a Senior Machine Learning Research Engineer at PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions, currently focusing on delivering landscape generation in Prologue. After 10 years working on various Machine Learning focused startups from agriculture to green energy, he has started working in game development, firstly at Epic Games and now at PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions.

Talk 2 - How to create 'sentient' but coherent NPC with AI
Main focus of the talk will be on ensuring coherent behavior of the NPC using (pretty much any) LLM. Technology agnostic, this talk presents general problematic and a simple solution.

Speaker
Alisa Dammer
Alisa loves coding, technology and data. MLE and MLOps by day, developing her own projects by night. Favorite languages: python and rust ;)

Talk 3 - Playing Fair?: GenAI, Game Design, and Inclusion
As generative AI (GenAI) becomes increasingly embedded in the game development pipeline, from character creation to procedural world-building, it brings with it both exciting possibilities and ethical challenges. This talk explores how GenAI tools are shaping the future of games, and asks: Who might be left out of what we are designing? Focusing on issues of gender, queer, neurodiversity and intersectional inclusion, this talk will examine how bias can enter at every stage of the development process and how these biases can impact both players and creators.

Speaker
Siân Brooke
Dr Siân Brooke is an Assistant Professor and MacGillavry Fellow at the DLab, Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the social implications of AI and digital technologies, with an emphasis on gender, neurodiversity, and inclusion in the field of computing. She earned her PhD from the University of Oxford, where she explored how gendered dynamics shape collaboration in hackathons and open-source software, and her current work investigates how generative AI can be integrated into programming environments to better support neurodiverse women.

GitHub Repo:
https://github.com/pyladiesams/ai-in-action-from-ml-models-to-games-jul2025

Stream:
https://youtube.com/live/ODnQutDs4Ao

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