Institutions Active in Technical Games Research

Universities and other institutions ranked by how active they are in the past 10 years in publishing at conferences and journals dedicated to the technical portion of games and interactive entertainment research (AI, HCI, graphics, etc.). See below the table for the list of conferences and journals. Credit is assigned to authors' current institutions. Credit for multi-institution papers is split fractionally.

To give more information than just a ranking, under each institution are its researchers who are most active in these venues, plus the venues that the institution overall is most active in. There is also a large index of all active institutions and researchers who publish in these venues.

July 2025 edition (changelog; moves).

Institution Country Papers
1.
University of California Santa Cruz
Michael Mateas, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Magy Seif El-Nasr, Adam M. Smith, Elín Carstensdóttir, Markus Eger, Jim Whitehead, Katherine Isbister, Bjarke Alexander Larsen, Zhaoqing Teng, Ross Mawhorter, Sai Siddartha Maram, Shi Johnson-Bey & 17 more
Top venues: FDG, AIIDE, ICIDS, CoG, CHI Play
USA 122.3
2.
University of Alberta
Matthew Guzdial, Vadim Bulitko, Anurag Sarkar, Nathan R. Sturtevant, Martin Müller, Ting-Han Wei, Levi Lelis, Michael Buro, Eric Kaltman, Ryan B. Hayward, Cor-Paul Bezemer, Sergio Poo Hernandez & 19 more
Top venues: AIIDE, CoG, FDG, ToG, ACG, ICGA J., CG
Canada 98.2
3.
Northeastern University
Seth Cooper, Chris Martens, Casper Harteveld, Erica Kleinman, Bob De Schutter, Mahsa Bazzaz, Rushit Sanghrajka, James Earl Cox, Stacy Marsella & 21 more
Top venues: FDG, AIIDE, CoG, CHI Play, ICIDS
USA 93.8
4.
Queen Mary University of London
Diego Perez Liebana, Simon M. Lucas, Raluca D. Gaina, Peter I. Cowling, Jeremy Gow, Simon Colton, James Goodman, Laurissa Tokarchuk, Massimo Poesio, Dominik Jeurissen, Linjie Xu, Chris Madge, Ivan Bravi & 8 more
Top venues: CoG, ToG, FDG, AIIDE, CHI Play
UK 81.8
5.
University of Malta
Antonios Liapis, Georgios N. Yannakakis, Ahmed Khalifa & 7 more
Top venues: CoG, FDG, ToG, AIIDE
Malta 46.3
6.
Google
Santiago Ontañón, Gustavo Fortes Tondello, Cristina Guerrero-Romero, Scott Lee, Stella Mazeika, Truong-Huy D. Nguyen & 22 more
Top venues: AIIDE, CoG, FDG, CHI Play, ToG
Multinational 41.8
7.
Eindhoven University of Technology
Max Birk, Erik D. Van der Spek, Jun Hu, Sebastian Cmentowski, Regina Bernhaupt, Hendrik Baier, Tengjia Zuo, Gabriele Ferri, Martijn Kors, Panos Markopoulos & 8 more
Top venues: CHI Play, ICEC, EntCom, CoG
Netherlands 40.3
8.
IT University of Copenhagen
Jichen Zhu, Sebastian Risi, Elisa D. Mekler, Paolo Burelli, Raquel Robinson & 6 more
Top venues: FDG, CHI Play, CoG, ToG, AIIDE
Denmark 40.1
9.
New York University
Julian Togelius, Sam Earle & 10 more
Top venues: CoG, FDG, AIIDE, ToG
USA 39.6
10.
University of Lisbon
Valentina Nisi, Nuno Nunes, Carlos Martinho, Paulo Bala, Rui Prada, Ana Paiva, Francisco S. Melo, Pedro Santos, Vanessa Cesário & 2 more
Top venues: ICIDS, ICEC, CoG, CHI Play, FDG
Portugal 36.5
11.
North Carolina State University
James C. Lester, Bradford W. Mott, Arnav Jhala, Jonathan P. Rowe, Wookhee Min & 18 more
Top venues: AIIDE, ICIDS, FDG, CoG, ToG
USA 34.4
12.
University of Utah
R. Michael Young, Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera, Roger Altizer, José P. Zagal, Cem Yuksel & 3 more
Top venues: AIIDE, ICIDS, CHI Play, I3D, FDG, ToG
USA 33.7
13.
University of Kentucky
Stephen G. Ware, Rachelyn Farrell, Brent E. Harrison & 4 more
Top venues: AIIDE, ToG, ICIDS, FDG
USA 30.9
14.
University of Duisburg-Essen
Maic Masuch, Jens H. Krüger, Katharina Emmerich, Andrey Krekhov & 5 more
Top venues: CHI Play, CoG, ACE, ICEC, FDG
Germany 30.1
15.
University of York
Paul A. Cairns, Ioanna Iacovides, James Alfred Walker, Alena Denisova, Ben Kirman, Simon Demediuk & 13 more
Top venues: CHI Play, FDG, CoG, EntCom, ToG, AIIDE
UK 28.7
16.
Utrecht University
Johannes Pfau, Julian Frommel, Sander Bakkes, Susanne Poeller & 8 more
Top venues: CHI Play, FDG, CoG, ICIDS
Netherlands 28.3
17.
Georgia Institute of Technology
Mark O. Riedl, Brian Magerko & 15 more
Top venues: AIIDE, FDG, CHI Play, ICIDS
USA 27.1
18.
Tampere University
Juho Hamari, Oguz Turan Buruk, Daniel Fernández Galeote, Ferran Altarriba Bertran, Nikoletta Zampeta Legaki, Mattia Thibault, Mustafa Can Gursesli & 8 more
Top venues: CHI Play, FDG, ACE
Finland 25.2
19.
Maastricht University
Dennis J. N. J. Soemers, Mark H. M. Winands, Jos W. H. M. Uiterwijk & 1 more
Top venues: CoG, ACG, ICGA J., CG, ToG
Netherlands 25.1
20.
JAIST
Hiroyuki Iida, Kokolo Ikeda, Chu-Hsuan Hsueh & 4 more
Top venues: CoG, ICEC, ACG, EntCom, ToG
Japan 25.0
21.
Aalto University
Perttu Hämäläinen, Annakaisa Kultima, Christian Guckelsberger & 15 more
Top venues: CHI Play, FDG, CoG, ICEC
Finland 24.0
22.
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Letizia Jaccheri, Michail N. Giannakos, Alf Inge Wang, Monica Divitini, Sofia Papavlasopoulou & 7 more
Top venues: ICEC, EntCom
Norway 23.6
23.
University of Southern Denmark
Anders Drachen, Alexander Dockhorn, Marco Scirea, Dávid Melhárt & 4 more
Top venues: CoG, FDG, ToG, AIIDE
Denmark 23.3
24.
Johannes Kepler University Linz
Günter Wallner, Johannes Fürnkranz & 4 more
Top venues: CHI Play, CoG, FDG, ICEC
Austria 22.7
25.
Monash University
Florian 'Floyd' Mueller, Phoebe O. Toups Dugas, Rakesh Patibanda, Aryan Saini, Yan Wang & 7 more
Top venues: CHI Play
Australia 22.6
26.
Fluminense Federal University
Esteban Clua, Daniela Gorski Trevisan, Troy C. Kohwalter, Aline Paes, Leonardo Murta, Sidney Araujo Melo & 5 more
Top venues: ICEC, EntCom
Brazil 22.6
27.
Carleton University
Edward F. Melcer, David Thue & 7 more
Top venues: FDG, CHI Play, AIIDE, CoG, ICIDS
Canada 21.1
28.
McGill University
Clark Verbrugge, Jonathan Campbell & 7 more
Top venues: AIIDE, FDG, CoG, ToG
Canada 21.1
29.
University of Coimbra
Licínio Roque, Jorge C. S. Cardoso, Rui Craveirinha & 11 more
Top venues: ICEC, CHI Play, EntCom
Portugal 20.2
30.
University of Central Florida
Anastasia Salter, John T. Murray, Mel Stanfill & 9 more
Top venues: FDG, ICIDS
USA 20.0
31.
Ritsumeikan University
Ruck Thawonmas, Febri Abdullah, Pittawat Taveekitworachai, Mury F. Dewantoro, Siyuan Chen & 4 more
Top venues: CoG, ICIDS
Japan 19.5
32.
Queensland University of Technology
Daniel Johnson, Madison Klarkowski, Cody J. Phillips, Kellie Vella & 6 more
Top venues: CHI Play
Australia 19.1
33.
University of Southern California
Andrew Nealen, Andrew S. Gordon, Emilio Ferrara, Andrew W. Feng & 19 more
Top venues: CoG, FDG, ICIDS, AIIDE
USA 19.0
34.
University of Tokyo
Tomoyuki Kaneko, Yoshimasa Tsuruoka & 12 more
Top venues: CoG, ACG, ACE
Japan 18.8
35.
Leiden University
Mike Preuss, Aske Plaat & 11 more
Top venues: CoG, FDG, CHI Play
Netherlands 18.7
36.
University of Victoria
Regan L. Mandryk, M. Brandon Haworth, Colby Johanson
Top venues: CHI Play
Canada 18.7
37.
Tilburg University
Pieter Spronck, Paris Mavromoustakos Blom, Gianluca Guglielmo, Michal Klincewicz & 5 more
Top venues: FDG, ToG, CoG
Netherlands 18.4
38.
University of Waterloo
Lennart E. Nacke, Mark S. Hancock & 8 more
Top venues: CHI Play
Canada 18.1
39.
Delft University of Technology
Rafael Bidarra, Frances M. T. Brazier, Mijael Bueno & 8 more
Top venues: FDG, ToG, ICIDS
Netherlands 18.1
40.
Purdue University
Dominic Kao, Christos Mousas & 4 more
Top venues: FDG, CHI Play
USA 17.9
41.
University of Tsukuba
Junichi Hoshino, Yoichi Ochiai & 9 more
Top venues: ICEC
Japan 17.9
42.
University of Twente
Marcello A. Gómez Maureira, Robby van Delden, Dennis Reidsma & 5 more
Top venues: FDG, CHI Play, ACE
Netherlands 17.2
43.
King's College London
Michael Cook & 1 more
Top venues: CoG, FDG, AIIDE
UK 17.0
44.
modl.ai
Sam Snodgrass, Christoffer Holmgård, Niels Justesen, Gabriella A. B. Barros & 1 more
Top venues: AIIDE, CoG, FDG, ToG
Denmark 16.9
45.
Meta
Sam Devlin, Philip Bontrager, Olivier Teytaud & 14 more
Top venues: AIIDE, CoG, FDG, CHI Play, ToG
Multinational 16.8
46.
Australian National University
Jochen Renz, Penny Kyburz & 4 more
Top venues: CoG, FDG, CHI Play, AIIDE, ToG
Australia 16.0
47.
RMIT University
Fabio Zambetta, Rohit Ashok Khot, Xiaodong Li & 9 more
Top venues: CHI Play, ToG, CoG
Australia 15.9
48.
Trinity College Dublin
Mads Haahr, Rachel McDonnell & 6 more
Top venues: ICIDS, MIG
Ireland 15.8
49.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Gillian Smith, Mark Claypool, Max Chen & 4 more
Top venues: FDG, AIIDE, CHI Play
USA 15.4
50.
Carnegie Mellon University
Jessica Hammer, Erik Harpstead, Maria José Ferreira & 12 more
Top venues: CHI Play
USA 15.3
51.
Ontario Tech University
Pejman Mirza-Babaei, Loutfouz Zaman, Bill Kapralos & 5 more
Top venues: CHI Play
Canada 15.2
52.
Paris Dauphine University
Tristan Cazenave
Top venues: ACG, CG, ToG, CoG
France 14.9
53.
Northwestern University
Ian Horswill & 6 more
Top venues: AIIDE
USA 14.8
54.
Smart Toys & Games
Cameron Browne
Top venues: CoG, ACG, ICGA J., CG
Belgium 14.6
55.
Nvidia
Alexander Zook & 13 more
Top venues: MIG, FDG, ToG
Multinational 14.6
56.
Malmö University
José M. Font, Alberto Alvarez, Steve Dahlskog & 1 more
Top venues: FDG, CoG
Sweden 14.4
57.
University of Skövde
Henrik Engström, Rebecca Rouse & 5 more
Top venues: ICIDS
Sweden 14.3
58.
University of Bremen
Rainer Malaka & 7 more
Top venues: CHI Play, ICEC
Germany 13.8
59.
Midjourney
Max Kreminski & 2 more
Top venues: AIIDE, ICIDS, FDG
USA 13.4
60.
Electronic Arts
Linus Gisslén, Alessandro Sestini, Fernando de Mesentier Silva, Joakim Bergdahl, Konrad Tollmar & 2 more
Top venues: CoG
USA 13.3
61.
University of Würzburg
Sebastian von Mammen & 8 more
Top venues: CoG, FDG
Germany 13.1
62.
Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences
Michael Lankes, Martin Kocur & 3 more
Top venues: CHI Play, ICEC
Austria 13.0
63.
KU Leuven
Vero Vanden Abeele, Lucca Geurts, Katrien Verbert & 6 more
Top venues: CHI Play
Belgium 13.0
64.
University of Vienna
Helmut Hlavacs, Barbara Göbl, Fares Kayali & 1 more
Top venues: ICEC
Austria 13.0
65.
University of California Davis
Joshua McCoy & 7 more
Top venues: FDG, AIIDE
USA 12.7
66.
Södertörn University
Hartmut Koenitz & 1 more
Top venues: ICIDS
Sweden 12.3
67.
Technical University of Munich
Johanna Pirker & 5 more
Top venues: CoG, FDG
Germany 12.3
68.
American University
Mark J. Nelson, Mike Treanor & 4 more
Top venues: FDG, CoG, AIIDE
USA 12.2
69.
University of Turin
Vincenzo Lombardo, Rossana Damiano & 4 more
Top venues: ICIDS, CHI Play
Italy 11.9
70.
National University of Singapore
Alex Mitchell & 3 more
Top venues: ICIDS, CHI Play
Singapore 11.2
71.
Stockholm University
Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari & 3 more
Top venues: ICIDS, FDG
Sweden 11.2
72.
Bournemouth University
Charlie Hargood, Christos Gatzidis & 7 more
Top venues: ICIDS
UK 11.0
73.
University of Technology Sydney
William L. Raffe, Peta Wyeth, Elise van den Hoven & 5 more
Top venues: CHI Play, CoG
Australia 10.7
74.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
D. Fox Harrell & 10 more
Top venues: FDG, CHI Play
USA 10.5
75.
University of Melbourne
Eduardo Velloso, Melissa J. Rogerson & 8 more
Top venues: CHI Play
Australia 10.4
76.
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
Ben A. M. Schouten, Mirjam Vosmeer & 2 more
Top venues: ICIDS
Netherlands 10.2
77.
NOVA University Lisbon
Nuno Correia, Teresa Romão & 7 more
Top venues: ACE, ICEC
Portugal 10.2
78.
Federal University of Minas Gerais
Luiz Chaimowicz, Lucas Ferreira & 4 more
Top venues: AIIDE, ToG
Brazil 10.2
79.
ETH Zurich
Robert W. Sumner, Markus Gross, Barbara Solenthaler, Fabio Zünd & 6 more
Top venues: MIG
Switzerland 10.1
80.
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Kathrin Gerling, Dmitry Alexandrovsky & 2 more
Top venues: CHI Play
Germany 10.1
81.
Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology
Kyung-Joong Kim & 3 more
Top venues: CoG
South Korea 10.1
82.
Microsoft
Daniel Gopstein, Darren Cosker & 10 more
Top venues: ToG
Multinational 10.1
83.
Flinders University
Matthew Stephenson
Top venues: CoG, AIIDE
Australia 10.1
84.
Complutense University of Madrid
Pedro A. González-Calero, Pedro Pablo Gómez-Martín & 9 more
Top venues: ToG, EntCom
Spain 9.9
85.
York University
Anne Sullivan, Petros Faloutsos, Muhammad Usman & 1 more
Top venues: FDG, MIG
Canada 9.9
86.
Deakin University
Stefan Greuter & 8 more
Top venues: CHI Play
Australia 9.8
87.
University of Athens
Akrivi Katifori, Yannis E. Ioannidis, Maria Roussou & 2 more
Top venues: FDG, ICIDS, CHI Play
Greece 9.8
88.
California Polytechnic State University
Rodrigo Canaan, Foaad Khosmood & 6 more
Top venues: FDG, AIIDE, CoG
USA 9.7
89.
Institute of Science Tokyo
Katie Seaborn & 6 more
Top venues: CHI Play
Japan 9.5
90.
Concordia University
Jonathan Lessard & 6 more
Top venues: FDG, ICIDS
Canada 9.4
91.
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica
Riemer van Rozen, Vanessa Volz
Top venues: FDG, CoG
Netherlands 9.1
92.
National Chiao Tung University
I-Chen Wu & 3 more
Top venues: ToG, ICGA J.
Taiwan 9.0
93.
Rochester Institute of Technology
Justus Robertson & 5 more
Top venues: AIIDE
USA 9.0
94.
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
Bruno Feijó, António L. Furtado & 1 more
Top venues: EntCom, ICEC
Brazil 9.0
95.
Rutgers University
Mubbasir Kapadia, Samuel S. Sohn & 1 more
Top venues: MIG
USA 8.8
96.
Aalborg University
Henrik Schoenau-Fog, Luis Emilio Bruni & 4 more
Top venues: ICIDS
Denmark 8.6
97.
University of São Paulo
Julian R. H. Mariño, Seiji Isotani, Wilk Oliveira & 3 more
Top venues: CHI Play, AIIDE
Brazil 8.5
98.
Imperial College London
Sebastian Deterding & 2 more
Top venues: CHI Play, FDG
UK 8.4
99.
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Amy K. Hoover, Donghee Yvette Wohn & 4 more
Top venues: FDG, CHI Play
USA 8.3
100.
University of Geneva
Nicolas Szilas & 3 more
Top venues: ICIDS
Switzerland 8.3

The 307 researchers listed with their institutions above are those who (co-)authored more than 5 papers, sorted within institution in descending order. The venues are the top venue for each institution, plus any additional venues where the institution has at least 2.0 paper-shares. These cutoffs are obviously arbitrary, and intended just to illustrate who is where and where they're active, while keeping the table readable.

The following 17 journals and international peer-reviewed conference proceedings are included:

Journals:

Conferences:

Workshops held at the above conferences are included if they published peer-reviewed proceedings that are indexed in DBLP under the conference's entry. The list of venues is occasionally modified (see changelog).

Is a simple paper count useful? Well, don't read too much into the exact rankings. But it's a decent proxy for which institutions are active in the research community (or communities) that's constituted by the above venues, in the sense that you regularly see them represented at conferences and in journals. I've found it especially useful as a way of discovering researchers and institutions who I didn't know were active in this field, because they go to a different set of conferences than I do.

There are of course limitations to this kind of list. Different venues have different sizes, quality thresholds, external impacts, etc. I could normalize or weight by any of those measures, but I'm not convinced it would make the result more useful, and it would give me a bunch of power to reorder things just by tweaking weights. As an additional caveat, this list focuses on the technical games research community's own venues, and doesn't reflect those who do technical games work but publish it in other ways. For example, some people who come from a specific discipline such as AI, HCI, or graphics may prefer to publish in that discipline's general venues, such as AAAI, CHI, or SIGGRAPH. Other researchers with an industry focus may prefer to present at GDC instead of at academic conferences.

Data from DBLP as of the 2025-07-10 data dump, processed using a few scripts. Affiliations are maintained manually by me, and may have errors or omissions. I'm currently tracking 2636 researchers at 858 institutions (!); see the full list for details.