Who We Are?

We are a group of faculties, students, and ex-students (at master and PhD level) interested in developing and doing research in video games. The heart of our community is the Game Innovation Lab @ Politecnico di Milano and the Videogame Design and Programming course for the Master in Engineering of Computing Systems.

Contacts

Pier Luca Lanzi and Daniele Loiacono

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The Game Innovation Laboratory

In the "Game Innovation Laboratory" we create innovative and playful experiences for games, entertainment, and learning. Our interests include data-driven game design, procedural content generation via machine learning, serious games for rehabilitation and behavioral change.

RESEARCH

We are interested in the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to video games and in the development of games for health applications. We applied artificial intelligence for the procedural generation of content using search algorithms, to balance gameplay in first-person shooters and 2D platformers, to board and card games, to build non-player characters, for children rehabilitation, and dyslexia.

Selected Publications

  • Erica Stella, Isabella Agosti, Nicoletta Di Blas, Marco Finazzi, Pier Luca Lanzi, Daniele Loiacono: A virtual reality classroom to teach and explore crystal solid state structures. Multim. Tools Appl. 82(5): 6993-7016 (2023)
  • Pier Luca Lanzi, Daniele Loiacono: ChatGPT and Other Large Language Models as Evolutionary Engines for Online Interactive Collaborative Game Design. CoRR abs/2303.02155 (2023)
  • Francesco Venco, Pier Luca Lanzi: An Agent-Based Approach for Procedural Puzzle Generation in Graph-Based Maps. CoG 2021: 1-8
  • Camilla Colombo, Nicoletta Di Blas, Ioannis Gkolias, Pier Luca Lanzi, Daniele Loiacono, Erica Stella: An Educational Experience to Raise Awareness About Space Debris. IEEE Access 8: 85162-85178 (2020)
  • Edoardo Giacomello, Pier Luca Lanzi, Daniele Loiacono: DOOM Level Generation Using Generative Adversarial Networks. GEM 2018: 316-323
  • Michele Pirovano, Renato Mainetti, Gabriel Baud-Bovy, Pier Luca Lanzi, N. Alberto Borghese: Intelligent Game Engine for Rehabilitation (IGER). IEEE Trans. Comput. Intellig. and AI in Games 8(1): 43-55 (2016)
  • Luigi Cardamone, Pier Luca Lanzi, Daniele Loiacono: TrackGen: An interactive track generator for TORCS and Speed-Dreams. Appl. Soft Comput. 28: 550-558 (2015)
  • Pier Luca Lanzi, Daniele Loiacono, Riccardo Stucchi: Evolving maps for match balancing in first person shooters. CIG 2014: 1-8
  • Daniele Loiacono, Luigi Cardamone, Pier Luca Lanzi: Automatic Tea Cups from Japan Track Generation for High-End Racing Games Using Evolutionary Computation. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intellig. and AI in Games 3(3): 245-259 (2011)
  • Luigi Cardamone, Daniele Loiacono, Pier Luca Lanzi: Learning to Drive in the Open Racing Car Simulator Using Online Neuroevolution. IEEE Trans. Comput. Intellig. and AI in Games 2(3): 176-190 (2010)

More papers are available on our DBLP pages here and here.

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The Course

The "Video game Design and Programming" course focuses on the design and development of video games. Students learn the basics of videogame design and programming, attend specific seminars from field experts, and form project groups to design, build and demonstrate a simple video game.

All the games developed during the course are available from our page on itch.io, some of them are also available on our Google Play page, and our iTunes page

All the trailers of the games developed since the course first edition in 2010 are available from our YouTube channel.

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Students' Games

Several of our students are currently working in video game companies. Others have founded their own studio, these are some of their games.

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