"Wolff" Daniel Dobson

Bio

"Wolff" Daniel Dobson received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Northwestern University, specializing in artificial intelligence and intelligent interfaces for educational software. He worked as a post-doctoral researcher on educational software and distributed visualization systems before taking a job with Visual Concepts in Marin County. At Visual Concepts, he worked on emotional behavior on NBA2K for Dreamcast, and then became co-lead for artificial intelligence on NBA2K1 (which went on to be named Sports Game of the Year by Electronic Gaming Monthly). He co-founded AiLive Inc., a startup devoted to next-generation artificial intelligence in games. Working as a designer, producer, engineer, and artist, Wolff has been instrumental in bringing ground-breaking, real-time machine learning technology to the computer entertainment industry. He was a key developer on the Wii MotionPlus controller extension. He is now lead gameplay engineer at A Bit Lucky, Inc.

Resume

Game Industry

• Lead Gameplay Engineer at A Bit Lucky, Inc.
  First product: LuckyTrain (2010)
• Designer of Little Green Guys With Guns, an online strategy game
• Founding member of AiLive. Products:
  • The Wii MotionPlus (2009), (20 million+ units sold)
  • LiveMove 2 (2008),
  • LiveMove Pro (2007),
  • LiveMove (2006),
  • LiveCombat (2005), and
  • multiple patents.
• Co-AI lead on Visual Concept's NBA2K1 for Dreamcast (Reviews)
• Progammer on Visual Concept's NBA2K for Dreamcast

Academic Publications and Talks

Talks:

• Featured speaker at the 2007 Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment conference.
• Gamasutra article on talk
• Panelist at Stanford's 2003 Media X: Gaming to Learn workshop.
• Plenary speaker at 2002 AAAI sympoisum on artificial intelligence and interactive entertainment.
• Invited speaker at NPUC 2001: Games and Interaction at IBM Almaden research. (abstract)
• Speaker at 2001 AAAI symposium on artificial intelligence and interactive entertainment.
• Co-chair for the 2000 AAAI symposium on artificial intelligence and interactive entertianment.
• Co-chair for the 1999 AAAI symposium on artificial intelligence and computer games.

Publications

• A paper with Ken Forbus from the 1999 symposium about articulate game engines.
• Paper with Chris Riebseck presented at Intelligent User Interfaces '98. This describes the workings of the INDIE 2.0 critiquing mechanism.
• Paper with Chris Riesbeck presented at Computer-Human Interaction '98. This describes, roughly, how our interface builder works.
• Demonstration with Brendon Towle presented at Hypertext '96. This describes our work on hypertext fiction,

INDIE

My PhD thesis project was INDIE, a tool for creating AI-rich educational software.

• Chris Riesbeck (my PhD advisor) has a page INDIE
• List of all of the projects made with INDIE, including screenshots.

Random Whatnot

I run this nifty email wargame I wrote called Little Green Guys With Guns. Play today!

I have a lovely daughter.

From 1993 to about 2001, I kept a long list of all the movies I saw. It's sort of obsessive-compulsive, but I can't take it offline now. Too many people are depending on it!

A long time ago, I worked as an editor/reviewer for a science fiction magazine. I have a handful of dusty old book reviews at this location.

I wrote a moderately popular FAQ for Age of Empires: Age of Kings for the Nintendo DS.

I draw sometimes.