Talks: Two games related speakers next week: Gillian Smith & Brian Magerko

Folks,
Two games related talks in our department next week, both in EB2 3211:

Talk Title: Procedural Content Generation for Game Design
Speaker: Gillian Smith, Center for Games and Playable Media, UC Santa Cruz
Talk Date: Tuesday February 28, 2012, 12:30PM
Abstract: Computer game design has always been driven by technology, from advances in graphics to new user interfaces such as the Wii and Kinect. The future of game design lies in the development of technologies that enable new player experiences and game genres. This talk describes two ways in which procedural content generation stands to influence the future of games: as a tool that supports players designing their own content for games, and as a means for allowing meaningful player choices that change the game environment.


Talk Title: Creativity, Cognition, and Computation in Digital Media
Speaker: Brian Magerko, Georgia Institute of Technology
Talk Date: Wednesday February 29, 2012, 12PM
Abstract: This presentation will focus on the integration of studying human creativity and cognition with the purpose of creating digital media experiences that have a key computational component.  It will present two current works on this theme of creativity, cognition, and computation: the Digital Improv Project, an NSF-funded multi-year effort focused on the cognitive study of professional improvisational actors to inform interactive narrative technology practices; and EarSketch, a software and curriculum approach that leverages student creativity to learn computing principles through the remixing of music with code.  These two projects will be used as exemplars of Dr. Magerko's research in leveraging human creativity for the design of digital media technologies and experiences.  This talk will conclude with a description of the long-term trajectory for this research in entertainment and educational digital media applications with examples of upcoming projects.