EXAG 2026
AIIDE Workshop on Experimental AI in Games
November 9th and 10th, 2026
EXAG 2026 Program Schedule
⏰ All presentation times are provided in Brazilian Time (BRT) (UTC/GMT-3).
Download or print the schedule.Overview
Detailed Schedule
Monday, November 9th
| 9:30-10:00 AM | Opening Remarks Led by Fiona Shyne Opening Remarks from the EXAG committee |
| 10:00-10:45 AM | Paper Session 1 Led by ravyn Hardcastle Behavior Cloning of Human Play in osu! Mohamed Amine Kebouchi In the Balance: A Multidimensional Taxonomy of Game Balance for Design and Research Samuel Shields and Edward Melcer Local Target Reaching in Games with VLM-Based Initial Detection and Online Object Tracking Ken Kidokoro and Hiroshi Iwasaki |
| 10:45-11:15 AM | Break Enjoy coffee and conversation |
| 11:15 AM-12:15 PM | Birds of a Feather Led by Fiona Shyne Break into small groups to discuss the important topics to the EXAG community |
| 12:15-1:45 PM | Lunch Refuel for more EXAG, Lunch not provided |
| 1:45-3:45 PM | EXAG Et Al. Led by Fiona Shyne Celebrate works outside of traditional research, followed by an informal demo session |
| 3:45-4:15 PM | Break Enjoy coffee and conversation |
| 4:15-5:00PM | Paper Session 2 Led by Kaylah Facey Hybrid LLM–Deterministic Game Agents: Bounded Reasoning with Selective Escalation Aakash Bajpai Reinforcement Learning for the Game of Balatro: A Fast Simulator and Two-Policy Training Approach Ajay Vikram Periasami, Anjaneya Gupta, Ethan Cheng and Ivan Rosales Adaptability of Unity ML-Agent Sensors for Dynamic Game Environments Lauren DeMaio and Carmine Guida |
Tuesday, November 10th
| 9:30-10:00 AM | Opening Remarks Led by Fiona Shyne Opening Remarks from the EXAG committee |
| 10:00-10:45 AM | Paper Session 3 Led by Ross Mawhorter A Rational Reconstruction of Ensemble Social Physics Ian Horswill and Samuel Hill Tandem Tales: A Paired Storytelling Research Platform Stephen Ware, Lasantha Senanayake and Molly Siler Dragon Babble: Utilizing an Extremely Small Language Model for NPCs on Constrained Hardware Andrew Dinspechin, Michael Layne, Jaskarn Mann and Carmine Guida |
| 10:45-11:15 PM | Break Enjoy coffee and conversation |
| 11:15 AM-12:45 PM | Mini Game Jam Led by Fiona Shyne Sketch out a game in small groups with a given theme |
| 12:45-2:30 PM | Lunch Refuel for more EXAG, lunch not provided |
| 2:30-3:15 PM | EXAG Paper Session 4 Led by Kaylah Facey Terrain-Adaptive Settlement Placement in Minecraft Aakash Bajpai Conner Tuso, Raymon Sadhra and Markus Eger Generate, Repair, and Validate: A Hybrid Pipeline for Voxel-Based 3D Platforming Environments Luis Eduardo Rasch, Daniel Barretos and Anderson Ferrugem AIPAGE: The AIIDE Paper Generator Markus Eger |
| 3:15-3:45 PM | Break Enjoy coffee and conversation |
| 3:45-4:30 PM | Community Session Led by EXAG committee Dicuss how EXAG went and how to improve for future years |