Game Research

Sander Bakkes

Overview

Hi! I am an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. I contribute to the field of personalised game interventions.

 

In the field, (psychologically-grounded) user models are utilised to automatically tailor a game intervention to the individual user; to the end of enhancing the player experience and optimizing intervention efficacy & adherence. For this goal, I leverage expertise in adaptive video game artificial intelligence (AI), player experience modelling, procedural content generation, and game design. I have authored over 50 publications for leading scientific journals, peer-reviewed international conferences, popular media, and a seminal book series.

 

For Utrecht University, I have developed the courses Game Design and Gamification & Applied Games.

Keywords...

  • Personalised game interventions
  • Applied gaming & gamification
  • Game design
  • Video game artificial intelligence
  • Player behavioural modelling
  • Procedural content generation

 

Google Scholar...

Current Projects

Ratjetoe: An Applied Gaming Intervention for Reducing Feelings of Loneliness in Children with Chronic Illness

Principal investigator: Dio Alexandridis

Funded by: TKI Health~Holland

Ratjetoe

 

 

Dutch Police Academy: Applied Training Game for International Cooperation

Principal investigator: Max Wolterink

Funded by: ISF Internal Security Fund

Politieacademie

 

 

FuturoCube: Interactive Toy for Training Fine Motor Skills

Principal investigator: Annette Brons

Funded by: COMMIT/

FuturoCube

 

 

 

Data2Game: Crisis Management Training Game

Principal investigator: Paris Mavromoustakos-Blom

Funded by: NWO

Data2Game

 

 

 

Publications

Google Scholar...

Peer-Reviewed Publications — selection

Metehan Doyran, Arjan Schimmel, Pınar Baki, Kübra Ergin, Batıkan Türkmen, Almıla Akdag Salah, Sander C.J. Bakkes, Heysem Kaya, Ronald Poppe, and Albert Ali Salah (2021). MUMBAI: multi-person, multimodal board game affect and interaction analysis dataset. Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces.

Annette Brons, Antoine de Schipper, Svetlana Mironcika, Huub Toussaint, Ben Schouten, Sander Bakkes, Ben Kröse (2021). Assessing Children’s Fine Motor Skills With Sensor-Augmented Toys: Machine Learning Approach. Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol. 23, issue 4, e24237, p. 1, doi: 10.2196/24237

Shiyu Zhang, Sander Bakkes, Diederik Roijers, and Pieter Spronck (2020). Avatars of a Feather Flock Together: Gender Homophily in Online Video Games Revealed via Exponential Random Graph Modeling. IEEE Transactions on Games, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 86-100, March 2020, doi: 10.1109/TG.2019.2961836.

Thomas van Dam and Sander Bakkes (2019). The ACE2 Model: Refining Bartle’s Player Taxonomy for Creation Play. 20th annual European GAME-ON Conference (GAME-ON'2019)

Paris Mavromoustakos-Blom, Stefan Methorst, Sander Bakkes, and Pieter Spronck (2019). Modeling and adjusting in-game difficulty based on facial expression analysis. Entertainment Computing, Volume 31, August 2019, 100307.

Anna Dechering and Sander Bakkes (2018). Moral Engagement in Interactive Narrative Games: An exploratory study on ethical agency in The Walking Dead and Life is Strange. International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG'18).

Norbert Heijne and Sander Bakkes (2017). Procedural Zelda: A PCG Environment for Player Experience Research. International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG'17).

Maarten de Waard, Diederik Roijers, and Sander Bakkes (2016). Monte Carlo Tree Search with Options for General Video Game Playing. 2016 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG2016).

Philipp Beau and Sander Bakkes (2016). Automated Game Balancing of Asymmetric Video Games. 2016 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG2016)

Melvin Roest and Sander Bakkes (2015). Engaging Casual Games That Frustrate You: An Exploration on Understanding Engaging Frustrating Casual Games. FDG 2015, the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Nominated for the Best Paper Award

Sander Bakkes, Shimon Whiteson, Guangliang Li, George Visniuc, Efstathios Charitos, Norbert Heijne and Arjen Swellengrebel (2014). Challenge Balancing for Personalised Game Spaces. GEM 2014, the 6th International IEEE Consumer Electronics Society Games, Entertainment, Media Conference

Sander Bakkes, Chek Tien Tan, and Yusuf Pisan (2013). Personalised Gaming. Creative Technologies, #3.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Giel van Lankveld (2012). Player Behavioural Modelling for Video Games. Entertainment Computing, 3(3):71-79.

Joris Dormans and Sander Bakkes (2011). Generating Missions and Spaces for Adaptable Play Experiences. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 3(3):216-228.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Jaap van den Herik (2009). Opponent Modelling for Case-based Adaptive Game AI. Entertainment Computing, 1(1):27-37.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Jaap van den Herik (2009). Rapid and Reliable Adaptation of Video Game AI. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 1(2):93-104.

 

Peer-Reviewed Publications — all

Dionysis Alexandridis, Sander C.J. Bakkes, Sanne L. Nijhof, Elise van de Putte, and Remco C. Veltkamp (2021). Ruby's Mission: An Applied Gaming Intervention for reducing Loneliness of Children with Chronic Illness. FDG 2021.

Max Wolterink and Sander Bakkes (2021) Towards explainable prediction of player frustration in video games. FDG 2021.

Paris Mavromoustakos-Blom, Mehmet Kosa, Sander Bakkes and Pieter Spronck (2021). Correlating Facial Expressions and Subjective Player Experiences in Competitive Hearthstone. FDG 2021.

Metehan Doyran, Arjan Schimmel, Pınar Baki, Kübra Ergin, Batıkan Türkmen, Almıla Akdag Salah, Sander C.J. Bakkes, Heysem Kaya, Ronald Poppe, and Albert Ali Salah (2021). MUMBAI: multi-person, multimodal board game affect and interaction analysis dataset. Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces.

Annette Brons, Antoine de Schipper, Svetlana Mironcika, Huub Toussaint, Ben Schouten, Sander Bakkes, Ben Kröse (2021). Assessing Children’s Fine Motor Skills With Sensor-Augmented Toys: Machine Learning Approach. Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol. 23, issue 4, e24237, p. 1, doi: 10.2196/24237

Johannes Steinrücke, Paris Mavromoustakos-Blom, Judith van Stegeren, Ymko Attema, Sander Bakkes, Thomas de Groot, Johan de Heer, Dirk Heylen, Rafal Hrynkiewicz, Ton de Jong, Tije Oortwijn, Pieter Spronck, Mariët Theune, and Bernard Veldkamp (2021). Data2Game: Towards an Integrated Demonstrator. 12th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2021).

Paris Mavromoustakos-Blom, Sander Bakkes, and Pieter Spronck (2020). Multi-Modal Study of the Effect of Time Pressure in a Crisis Management Game. International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG'20).

Paris Mavromoustakos Blom, Sander Bakkes, and Pieter Spronck (2020). Multi-modal Study of the Effect of Information Complexity in a Crisis Management Game. 21th annual European GAME-ON Conference (GAME-ON'2020) on Simulation and AI in Computer Games.

Shiyu Zhang, Sander Bakkes, Diederik Roijers, and Pieter Spronck (2020). Avatars of a Feather Flock Together: Gender Homophily in Online Video Games Revealed via Exponential Random Graph Modeling. IEEE Transactions on Games, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 86-100, March 2020, doi: 10.1109/TG.2019.2961836.

Arjan Schimmel, Metehan Doyran, Pınar Baki, Kübra Ergin, Batıkan Türkmen, Almıla Akdag Salah, Sander Bakkes, Heysem Kaya, Ronald Poppe, and Albert Ali Salah (2019). Multi-person board game affect analysis dataset: MP-BGAAD. eNTERFACE’19.

Thomas van Dam and Sander Bakkes (2019). The ACE2 Model: Refining Bartle’s Player Taxonomy for Creation Play. 20th annual European GAME-ON Conference (GAME-ON'2019)

Paris Mavromoustakos-Blom, Stefan Methorst, Sander Bakkes, and Pieter Spronck (2019). Modeling and adjusting in-game difficulty based on facial expression analysis. Entertainment Computing, Volume 31, August 2019, 100307.

Paris Mavromoustakos-Blom, Sander Bakkes and Pieter Spronck (2019). Towards Multi-modal Stress Response Modelling in Competitive League of Legends. IEEE Conference on Games (CoG) 2019.

Paris Mavromoustakos Blom, Sander Bakkes, and Pieter Spronck (2019). Andromeda: A Personalised Crisis Management Training Toolkit. In: Liapis A., Yannakakis G., Gentile M., Ninaus M. (eds) Games and Learning Alliance. GALA 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11899. Springer, Cham.

Anna Dechering and Sander Bakkes (2018). Moral Engagement in Interactive Narrative Games: An exploratory study on ethical agency in The Walking Dead and Life is Strange. International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG'18).

Paris Mavromoustakos-Blom, Sander Bakkes, and Pieter Spronck (2018). Personalized Crisis Management Training on a Tablet. International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG'18).

Yaser Norouzzadeh Ravari, Sander Bakkes, and Pieter Spronck (2018). Playing Styles in StarCraft. 19th annual European GAME-ON Conference (GAME-ON'2018) on Simulation and AI in Computer Games.

Norbert Heijne and Sander Bakkes (2017). Procedural Zelda: A PCG Environment for Player Experience Research. International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG'17).

Maarten de Waard, Diederik Roijers, and Sander Bakkes (2016). Monte Carlo Tree Search with Options for General Video Game Playing. 2016 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG2016).

Philipp Beau and Sander Bakkes (2016). Automated Game Balancing of Asymmetric Video Games. 2016 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG2016).

Yaser Norouzzadeh Ravari, Sander Bakkes, and Pieter Spronck (2016). StarCraft Winner Prediction. AIIDE-16, the Twelfth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment.

Melvin Roest and Sander Bakkes (2015). Engaging Casual Games That Frustrate You: An Exploration on Understanding Engaging Frustrating Casual Games. FDG 2015, the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Nominated for the Best Paper Award.

Mircea Traichioiu, Sander Bakkes, and Diederik Roijers (2015). Grammar-based Procedural Content Generation from Designer-provided Difficulty Curves. FDG 2015, the 10th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games.

Paris Mavromoustakos Blom, Sander Bakkes, Chek Tien Tan, Shimon Whiteson, Diederik Roijers, Roberto Valenti, Theo Gevers (2014). Towards Personalised Gaming via Facial Expression Recognition. AIIDE-14, the Tenth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment.

Paris Mavromoustakos Blom, Sander Bakkes, and Diederik Roijers (2014). Using Facial Expressions for Personalised Gaming. 26th Belgium-Netherlands Artificial Intelligence Conference.

Sander Bakkes, Shimon Whiteson, Guangliang Li, George Visniuc, Efstathios Charitos, Norbert Heijne and Arjen Swellengrebel (2014). Challenge Balancing for Personalised Game Spaces. GEM 2014, the 6th International IEEE Consumer Electronics Society Games, Entertainment, Media Conference.

Chek Tien Tan, Sander Bakkes, Yusuf Pisan (2014). Inferring Player Experiences Using Facial Expressions Analysis. IE 2014, the 2014 Interactive Entertainment conference.

Alex Rietveld, Sander Bakkes and Diederik Roijers (2014). Circuit-adaptive Rubber Banding for Racing Games. GEM 2014, the 6th International IEEE Consumer Electronics Society Games, Entertainment, Media Conference.

Chek Tien Tan, Sander Bakkes, and Yusuf Pisan (2014). Correlation between Facial Expressions and the Game Experience Questionnaire. ICEC 2014, the IFIP International Conference on Entertainment Computing.

Sander Bakkes and Shimon Whiteson (2014). Towards Challenge Balancing for Personalised Game Spaces. PCG 2014, the 5th Workshop on Procedural Content Generation in Games.

Inge Becht and Sander Bakkes (2014). meIRL-BC: Predicting Player Positions in Video Games. FDG 2014, the 9th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Accepted as Exemplary Full Paper.

Sander Bakkes and Shimon Whiteson (2014). Design Criteria for Challenge Balancing of Personalised Game Spaces. FDG 2014, the 9th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games.

Sander Bakkes, Chek Tien Tan, and Yusuf Pisan (2013). Personalised Gaming. Creative Technologies, #3.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Giel van Lankveld (2012). Player Behavioural Modelling for Video Games. Entertainment Computing, 3(3):71-79.

Sander Bakkes, Chek Tien Tan, and Yusuf Pisan (2012). Personalised Gaming: A Motivation and Overview of Literature. In Proceedings of the 8th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment (IE 2012) (eds. Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath, Charles Walker, and Chek Tien Tan), pp. 4:1-4:10.

Chek Tien Tan, Daniel Rosser, Sander Bakkes, and Yusuf Pisan (2012). A Feasibility Study in Using Facial Expressions Analysis to Evaluate Player Experiences. In Proceedings of the 8th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment (IE 2012) (eds. Daniel Cermak-Sassenrath, Charles Walker, and Chek Tien Tan), pp. 5:1-5:10.

Joris Dormans and Sander Bakkes (2011). Generating Missions and Spaces for Adaptable Play Experiences. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 3(3):216-228.

Marije Kanis, Sean Alizadeh, Jesse Groen, Milad Khalili, Saskia Robben, Sander Bakkes, and Ben Kröse (2011). Ambient Monitoring from an Elderly-Centred Design Perspective: What, Who and How. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Joint Conference on Ambient Intelligence (AMI-11) (eds. David V. Keyson, Mary Lou Maher, Norbert Streitz, Adrian David Cheok, Juan Carlos Augusto, Reiner Wichert, Gwenn Englebienne, Hamid K. Aghajan, and Ben J. A. Kröse), pp. 330-334.

Brahim Gacem, Robert Vergouw, Harm Verbiest, Emrullah Cicek, Tim van Oosterhout, Sander Bakkes, and Ben Kröse (2011). Gesture Recognition for an Exergame Prototype. In Proceedings of the BNAIC 2011, the 23rd Benelux Conference on Artificial Intelligence (eds. Patrick De Causmaecker, Joris Maervoet, Tommy Messelis, Katja Verbeeck, and Tim Vermeulen), pp. 457-458.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Jaap Van Den Herik (2011). A CBR-Inspired Approach to Rapid and Reliable Adaption of Video Game AI. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR-2011), Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning for Computer Games (eds. Belen Díaz Agudo and Amelie Cordier), pp. 17-26. (Presented at the ICCBR-2011)

Sander Bakkes, Richard Morsch, and Ben Kröse (2011). Telemonitoring for Independently Living Elderly: Inventory of Needs & Requirements. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare - Pervasive Health 2011 (eds. Julie Maitland, Juan Carlos Augusto, and Brian Caulfield), pp. 152-159.

Sean Alizadeh, Sander Bakkes, Marije kanis, Marijn Rijken, and Ben Kröse (2011). Telemonitoring for Assisted Living Residences: The Medical Specialists' View. In Proceedings of the Med-e-Tel 2011; The International eHealth, Telemedicine and Health ICT Forum for Educational, Networking and Business (eds. Malina Jordanova and Frank Lievens), pp. 75-78.

Tim van Oosterhout, Sander Bakkes, and Ben Kröse (2011). Head Detection in Stereo Data for People Counting and Segmentation. 6th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Application (VISIGRAPP 2011). In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Appication (VISAPP 2011) (eds. Leonid Mestetskiy and José Braz), pp. 620-625.

Sander Bakkes and Ben Kröse (2010). Pervasive Healthcare Technology for Assisted Living Residences. Gerontechnology, 9(2):191-192.

Sander Bakkes and Joris Dormans (2010). Involving Player Experience in Dynamically Generated Missions and Game Spaces. 11th International Conference on Intelligent Games and Simulation (GAME-ON'2010) (eds. Aladdin Ayesh), pp. 72-79. EUROSIS.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Jaap van den Herik (2009). Opponent Modelling for Case-based Adaptive Game AI. Entertainment Computing, 1(1):27-37.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Jaap van den Herik (2009). Rapid and Reliable Adaptation of Video Game AI. IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games, 1(2):93-104.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Jaap van den Herik (2008). Rapid Adaptation of Video Game AI. (Extended Version). 2008 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG'08) (eds. Philip Hingston and Luigi Barone), pp. 79-86. IEEE XPlore, Catalog Number: CFP08CIG-CDR, ISBN: 978-1-4244-2974-5.

Marcel van der Heijden, Sander Bakkes, and Pieter Spronck (2008). Dynamic Formations in Real-Time Strategy Games. 2008 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG'08) (eds. Philip Hingston and Luigi Barone), pp. 47-54. IEEE XPlore, Catalog Number: CFP08CIG-CDR, ISBN: 978-1-4244-2974-5.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Jaap van den Herik (2008). Rapid Adaptation of Video Game AI. 9th International Conference on Intelligent Games and Simulation (GAME-ON'2008) (eds. Vincente Botti, Antonio Barella, and Carlos Carrascosa), pp. 69-76. EUROSIS. Winner of the Best Paper Award.

Guillaume Chaslot, Sander Bakkes, István Szita, and Pieter Spronck (2008). Monte-Carlo Tree Search: A New Framework for Game AI. Proceedings of the BNAIC 2008, the twentieth Belgian-Dutch Artificial Intelligence Conference (eds. Anton Nijholt, Maja Pantic, Mannes Poel, and Hendri Hondorp), pp. 389-390. University of Twente, Twente, The Netherlands.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Jaap van den Herik (2008). Rapidly Adapting Game AI. Proceedings of the BNAIC 2008, the twentieth Belgian-Dutch Artificial Intelligence Conference (eds. Anton Nijholt, Maja Pantic, Mannes Poel, and Hendri Hondorp), pp. 9-16. University of Twente, Twente, The Netherlands.

Guillaume Chaslot, Sander Bakkes, István Szita, and Pieter Spronck (2008). Monte-Carlo Tree Search: A New Framework for Game AI. Proceedings of the Fourth Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (eds. Michael Mateas and Chris Darken), pp. 216-217. AAAI Press, Menlo Park, CA.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Jaap van den Herik (2007). Phase-dependent Evaluation in RTS games. Proceedings of the 19th Belgian-Dutch Conference on Artificial Intelligence (eds. Mohammad Mehdi Dastani and Edwin de Jong), pp. 3-10. Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Sander Bakkes, Philip Kerbusch, Pieter Spronck, and Jaap van den Herik (2007). Predicting Success in an Imperfect-Information Game. Proceedings of the Computer Games Workshop 2007 (CGW 2007) (eds. Jaap van den Herik, Jos Uiterwijk, Mark Winands, and Maarten Schadd), pp. 219-230. MICC Technical Report Series 07-06, Universiteit Maastricht, The Netherlands.

Sander Bakkes, Philip Kerbusch, Pieter Spronck, and Jaap van den Herik (2007). Automatically Evaluating the Status of an RTS game. Proceedings of the Annual Belgian-Dutch Machine Learning Conference (Benelearn 2007) (eds. Maarten van Someren, Sophia Katrenko, and Pieter Adriaans), pp. 143-144. University of Amsterdam.

Sander Bakkes and Pieter Spronck (2006). Gathering and Utilising Domain Knowledge in Commercial Computer Games. Proceedings of the 18th Belgium-Netherlands Conference on Artificial Intelligence (BNAIC 2006) (eds. Pierre-Yves Schobbens, Wim Vanhoof, and Gabriel Schwanen), pp. 35-42. University of Namur, Belgium.

Frederik Schadd, Sander Bakkes, and Pieter Spronck (2007). Opponent Modeling in Real-Time Strategy Games. 8th International Conference on Intelligent Games and Simulation (GAME-ON'2007) (ed. Marco Roccetti), pp. 61-68.

Laurens van der Blom, Sander Bakkes, and Pieter Spronck (2007). Map-Adaptive Artificial Intelligence for Video Games. 8th International Conference on Intelligent Games and Simulation (GAME-ON'2007) (ed. Marco Roccetti), pp. 53-60.

Sander Bakkes and Pieter Spronck (2005). Symbiotic Learning in Commercial Computer Games. CGAMES 2005, 7th International Conference on Computer Games (eds. Quasim Mehdi, Norman Gough, and Stéphane Natkin), pp. 116-120. University of Wolverhampton, School of Computing and Information Technologies, UK.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Eric Postma (2005). Best-Response Learning of Team Behaviour in Quake III. IJCAI-05 Workshop on Reasoning, Representation, and Learning in Computer Games (eds. David W. Aha, Héctor Muñoz-Avila, and Michael van Lent), pp. 13-18. Naval Research Laboratory, Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence, Washington, DC.

Sander Bakkes, Pieter Spronck, and Eric Postma (2004). TEAM: The Team-oriented Evolutionary Adaptability Mechanism. Entertainment Computing - ICEC 2004 (ed. Matthias Rauterberg), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3166, pp. 273-282. Springer-Verlag.

 

Ph.D. thesis

Sander Bakkes. Rapid Adaptation of Video Game AI. Tilburg University, The Netherlands. March 3, 2010.

Contact

Dr. ing. S.C.J. (Sander) Bakkes

Utrecht University
Dept. of Information and Computing Sciences
Buys Ballotgebouw, room 4.22
Princetonplein 5
3584 CC Utrecht
The Netherlands

s.c.j.bakkes@uu.nl

Sander Bakkes, drawing by Gitte van Helden