This year’s 25th ICEC – IFIP International Conference on Entertainment Computing took place in Paris from October 6 to 9.

Head of the lab Prof. Dr. Rainer Malaka and research associates Leon, Johanna, Leandra and Laura, together with our alumnus Dr. Nima Zargham and other contributors, organized the workshop “Collaboration with NPCs Through Natural Language Interaction”. The workshop brought together researchers and game developers to examine collaboration between players and GenAI-based NPCs, with a particular focus on the role of natural language in coordination, task allocation, and players’ perception of NPCs as collaboration partners.

In addition, Leon Drazidis presented his paper “Talking to the Game: A Review of Natural Language Interaction in Video Games.” Prof. Dr. Rainer Malaka presented the paper “The Impact of Virtual and Physical Fourth-Wall Breaks on Gameplay” on behalf of Dr. Nima Zargham. Gen Yue, also from our lab, presented the paper “From Discriminative Pipelines to Collaborative Generative Agents: A Scoping Review of AI-Driven Adaptive Serious Games.”

We thank everyone involved for the great exchange in Paris and look forward to building on the workshop discussions in our continued research on collaboration between humans and AI-driven NPCs