Editors

Alex Champandard is the founder of AiGameDev.com, the largest online hub for artificial intelligence in games. He has worked in the industry as a senior AI programmer for many years, most notably for Rockstar Games where he worked on the animation technology of Max Payne 3. He regularly consults with leading studios in Europe, most notably at Guerrilla Games on the multiplayer bots for KillZone 2 and 3. Alex is also the event director for the Game/AI Conference, the largest independent event dedicated to AI in games.

Kevin Dill is a member of the group technical staff at Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training, the chief architect for Lockheed’s Game AI Architecture, and the lead developer for the True Game-Based Learning project. Prior to coming to Lockheed, he worked as an AI engineer on seven published titles, ranging the gamut from strategy games (Master of Orion 3, Kohan II: Kings of War, and Axis & Allies) to simulation games (Zoo Tycoon 2: Endangered Species and Zoo Tycoon 2: Marine Mania) to action games (Iron Man) to open world shooter/adventure games (Red Dead Redemption).

Kevin is a prolific author and speaker and has spoken at the Game Developers Conference on several occasions. He has served as technical or section editor for five books, including the volume you hold in your hands, and has taught game programming and game AI at Boston University, Northeastern University, and Harvard University. He is also a veteran, having served for 4 years as an infantryman in the U.S. Army.

Damián Isla has been working on and writing about game technology for over a decade. He is president and cofounder of indie outfit Moonshot Games, purveyors of fun and innovative downloadable and mobile gaming fare. He is the creative director and project lead on Third Eye Crime, the innovative stealth/puzzle/telepathy game for PC and iOS. Before Moonshot, Damián was AI and gameplay engineering lead at Bungie Studios, where he was responsible for the AI for the mega-hit first-person shooters Halo 2 and Halo 3. He also contributed to the AI on Bioshock: Infinite.

A leading expert in the field of artificial intelligence for games, Damián has spoken on games, AI, and character technology at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), at the AI and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE) Conference, and at SIGGRAPH and is a frequent speaker at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC). Before joining the industry, Damián earned a master’s degree with the Synthetic Characters group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. He holds a BSc in computer science, also from MIT.

Neil Kirby is the author of An Introduction to Game AI, and his other publications include articles in volumes I, II, and IV of AI Game Programming Wisdom. He cowrote “Effective Requirements Traceability: Models, Tools and Practices” for the Bell Labs Technical Journal. His 1991 paper, “Artificial Intelligence without AI: An Evolutionary Approach” may well show the first use of what is now known as “circle strafing” in a game. His other papers and presentations can be found in the proceedings of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) from 1991 to the present as well as the 2003 Australian GDC.

Neil Kirby is a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories, the R&D arm of Alcatel-Lucent. He currently develops .NET solutions used to support requirements traceability. He also provides software architecture consulting services. His previous assignments have included building speech recognition software and teaching at the university level. He has been a judge of the Ohio State University’s Fundamentals of Engineering Honors robot competition for many years on behalf of Alcatel-Lucent.

Neil Kirby cofounded the IGDA Foundation and serves on its board. He oversees the Eric Dybsand AI Memorial Scholarship to GDC that is awarded each year.

Neil holds a master’s degree in computer science from Ohio State University. He lives with his spouse in central Ohio. There he chairs his local village planning commission and volunteers for the historical society.

Steve Rabin has been a key figure in the game AI community for over a decade and is currently a principal software engineer at Nintendo of America. After initially working as an AI engineer at several Seattle start-ups, he managed and edited seven game AI books in the Game AI Pro series and the AI Game Programming Wisdom series. He also edited the book Introduction to Game Development and has over two dozen articles published in the Game Programming Gems series. He has been an invited keynote speaker at several AI conferences, founded the AI Game Programmers Guild in 2008, and founded the Game Developers Conference (GDC) AI Summit, where he has been a summit adviser since 2009. Steve is a principal lecturer at the DigiPen Institute of Technology, where he has taught game AI since 2006. He earned a BSc in computer engineering and an MS in computer science, both from the University of Washington.

Nathan R. Sturtevant is a professor of computer science at the University of Denver, working on artificial intelligence and games. He began his games career working on shareware games as a college student, writing the popular Mac tank game Dome Wars in the mid-1990s, and returned to the game industry to write the pathfinding engine for Dragon Age: Origins. He has spoken at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) AI Summit twice, and his students have presented their games at the E3 college pavilion. Nathan is currently working on tools to help design more compelling puzzles for games.