image

Younès Rabii [ Yooness · Rabee ]

Younès is a game designer and AI researcher, currently studying for a PhD at Queen Mary, funded by the IGGI Centre for Doctoral Training.

Their research is concerned with the relationship between a game's rules, and its narrative, and how to build AI systems that can understand these relationships, manipulate them, and invent new ones.

Younès also has been a game developer for the past 10 years. They specialize in making strange ludic experiments and pitching new game ideas like a conspiracy theorist. Their work has been previously exposed in the French libraries and embassies.

Younès' nindo is to make games that can surprise both you and them!

Twitter: @pyrofoux

Email: younes at knivesandpaintbrushes.org

itch.io: Play Younès' games at pyrofoux.itch.io

Awards

  • 2023
    Best Paper Award – FDG 2023
    image
    Best Paper Watch (Youtube)

    Our paper "Why Oatmeal is Cheap: Kolmogorov Complexity & Procedural Generation" was awarded Best Paper at the Foundation of Digital Games Conference 2023.
  • 2022
    The Game Awards – FUTURE CLASS 2022
    image TGA Future Class

    Florence Smith Nicholls and Younès Rabii were selected to be in The Game Awards Future Class 2022, among "50 inspiring individuals who represent the bright, bold and inclusive future of video games".
  • 2021
    The Humble Bundle Game Creators of Color Award - Gamedev of Color Expo 2021
    image image
    GDoC Expo Award Ceremony (Youtube)

    The Humble Bundle Creators of Color Award provides one game dev $25,000 to create a game to be distributed as a Humble original. The Gamedevs of Color Expo granted this award to Younès in 2021, following their work on making mashup games to explore new designs and connect communities.

Publications

  • Paper
    Why Oatmeal is Cheap: Kolmogorov Complexity and Procedural generation
    image
    FDG 2023
    Best Paper Award
    Best Paper Watch (Youtube)
    Full Paper + Slides + Interactive Demo

    This paper formally proves a theorem linking together various qualities of a generator. Then it illustrates how this impact the various trade-offs that human designers face when designing procedural generation systems.
  • Paper
    Revealing Game Dynamics via Word Embeddings of Gameplay Data
    image
    AIIDE 2021
    Poster Presentation (Youtube)
    Full paper

    This paper shows that word embedding techniques such as Word2Vec can be applied to gameplay data, helping show possible relationships between elements of a game's design. We apply Word2Vec to chess and show how it rediscovers interesting strategic knowledge about the game.

Talks

  • 2023
    Roundtable: The Love Story Between the Video Game Industry and the Militaro-Industrial Complex
    Collectif Mauvaises Herbes
    Soon online! Check our other talks below.
  • 2022
    SUPER IS HOT – Designing Games By Breaking and Combining Others
    A MAZE./Berlin 2022
    Full Talk (Youtube)

    Crossovers fanarts such as "Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright", can become so popular that they actually bring forth their own games. In this talk, Younès guides you through the development of "SUPER IS HOT": a crossover between the universally acclaimed games Baba is You and SUPERHOT. From the design challenges of mixing two games together to handling its reception by diverse audiences, come learn how making a crossover game can help you grow as a game developer.
  • 2022
    Le Futur Du Game-Design Assisté par l'Intelligence Artificielle
    GAMECAMP 2022
    Full Talk [FR] (Youtube)
  • 2022
    "La Horde du Contrevent": A Novel That Didn't Know It Was A Roguelike
    Roguelike Celebration 2022
    Full Talk (Youtube)

    Younès presents to the audience a science-fiction novel named "La Horde du Contrevent" and how it actually borrows code from roguelikes, without even realising it. The fiction's universe, its story, its characters and even the way it uses the "screen" of a book has a lot in common with traditional roguelikes; while being developed absolutely independently.
  • 2021
    Choose Your Own Misadventure: AI-Powered Futures for Game Design
    Games Developer Conference 2021 /
    Full Talk (Youtube)

    Florence and Younès give their GDC talk about the future of AI, game design and ethics, with bonus Q&A at the end.
  • 2021
    SUPER IS HOT: Making Games By Breaking & Combining Others
    GDoCExpo 2021
    Full Talk (Youtube)

    Crossovers fanarts such as "Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright", can become so popular that they actually bring forth their own games. In this talk, Younès guides you through the development of "SUPER IS HOT": a crossover between the universally acclaimed games Baba is You and SUPERHOT. From the design challenges of mixing two games together to handling its reception by diverse audiences, come learn how making a crossover game can help you grow as a game developer.
  • 2021
    Pokemon Glitch - Story of A Roguelike With No Author
    Roguelike Celebration 2021
    Full Talk (Youtube)

    In this lightning talk, Younès will tell you about the unique experience of making and playing a Pokemon game that has been randomly corrupted. They will guide you through the world of "Pokemon Glitch" by giving you a tour of its never-seen-before creatures, its haunted places, its unique game mechanics and emerging story-telling. Come discover a roguelike that nobody has played before and, even more bizarre, a roguelike that nobody designed.
  • 2021
    Q&A "Where Are Muslim Cultures and Peoples in Video Games?"
    Collectif Mauvaises Herbes
    Full Talk [French] (Youtube)

    Younès shares their experience looking for games that feature muslims without murdering, fetishizing or orentializing them.
  • 2020
    There's a Skull in my Garden: Simple interactions give new meanings to generated things
    Roguelike Celebration 2020
    Full Talk (Youtube)

    In this lightning talk Younès discuss surprising emergent phenomena they encountered when designing a simple game containing items with generated visuals. This explains how very simple game mechanics (eg: carrying an item) and generative system (eg: generating a symmetric image) can interact to create a context where players give their own meaning to found artifacts (eg: is that a cowboy hat on my head ? or from the title : There's A Skull in My Garden)