CV

Publications

Automated Game Design Learning

  1. C. Kim, J. Kim, and J. C. Osborn. Synthesizing retro game screenshot datasets for sprite detection. In Workshop on Experimental AI in Games, 2020.

  2. A. Summerville, A. Sarkar, S. Snodgrass, and J. C. Osborn. Extracting physics from blended platformer game levels. In Workshop on Experimental AI in Games, 2020.

  3. A. Sarkar, A. Summerville, S. Snodgrass, G. Bentley, and J. C. Osborn. Exploring level blending across platformers via paths and affordances. In Artificial Intelligence and Digital Entertainment Conference, 2020.

  4. G. Bentley and J. C. Osborn. The videogame affordances corpus. In Workshop on Experimental AI in Games, 2019.

  5. J. C. Osborn, B. Samuel, A. Summerville, and M. Mateas. Towards general rpg playing. In Workshop on Experimental AI in Games, 2017.

  6. J. C. Osborn, A. Summerville, and M. Mateas. Automated game design learning. In IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, 2017.

  7. J. C. Osborn, A. Summerville, and M. Mateas. Automatic mapping of NES games with Mappy. In Workshop on Procedural Content Generation, 2017.

  8. A. Summerville, J. C. Osborn, C. Holmgøard, and D. W. Zhang. MARIO: Mechanics automatically recognized via interactive observation. In Foundations of Digital Games, 2017.

  9. A. Summerville, J. C. Osborn, and M. Mateas. CHARDA: Causal hybrid automata recovery via dynamic analysis. In International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2017.

Mechanizing Game Design Theory

  1. M. Kreminski, M. Dickinson, J. C. Osborn, A. Summerville, M. Mateas, and N. Wardrip-Fruin. Germinate: A mixed-initiative casual creator for rhetorical games. In Artificial Intelligence and Digital Entertainment Conference, 2020.

  2. J. C. Osborn, M. Dickinson, B. Anderson, A. Summerville, J. Denner, D. Torres, N. Wardrip-Fruin, and M. Mateas. Is your game generator working? evaluating Gemini, a purposeful generator. In Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference, 2019. Best Paper Nomination.

  3. A. Summerville, C. Martens, S. Harmon, M. Mateas, J. C. Osborn, N. Wardrip-Fruin, and A. Jhala. From mechanics to meaning. IEEE Transactions on Games, 11(1):69–78, March 2019.[ DOI ]

  4. A. Summerville, C. Martens, B. Samuel, J. C. Osborn, N. Wardrip-Fruin, and M. Mateas. Gemini: Bidirectional generation and analysis of games via ASP. In Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference, 2018.

  5. J. C. Osborn, N. Wardrip-Fruin, and M. Mateas. Refining operational logics. In Foundations of Digital Games, 2017. Best Paper Honorable Mention.

  6. C. Martens, A. Summerville, M. Mateas, J. C. Osborn, S. Harmon, N. Wardrip-Fruin, and A. Jhala. Proceduralist readings, procedurally. In Workshop on Experimental AI in Games, 2016.

  7. J. C. Osborn, D. Lederle-Ensign, N. Wardrip-Fruin, and M. Mateas. Combat in games. In Foundations of Digital Games, 2015. Best Paper Nomination.

  8. K. Compton, J. C. Osborn, and M. Mateas. Generative methods. In Workshop on Procedural Content Generation, 2013.

  9. J. C. Osborn. Procedural minimalism. In DiGRA Conference, 2011.

Game Design Support Tools

  1. Y. Zeleke, J. C. Osborn, and R. Sanfelice. Analyzing action games: A hybrid systems approach. In Foundations of Digital Games, 2019.

  2. J. C. Osborn, J. Ryan, and M. Mateas. Analyzing expressionist grammars by reduction to symbolic visibly pushdown automata. In International Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies, 2017.

  3. J. C. Osborn, B. Lambrigger, and M. Mateas. HyPED: Modeling and analyzing action games as hybrid systems. In Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference, 2017. Best Student Paper.

  4. J. C. Osborn, B. Samuel, and M. Mateas. Visualizing the strategic landscape of arbitrary games. SAGE Journal of Visual Analytics, 2017. Special Issue on Visual Game Analytics.

  5. J. C. Osborn and M. Mateas. Evaluating a solver-aided puzzle design tool. In Workshop on Mixed-Initiative Co-Creative Interfaces, 2017.

  6. J. C. Osborn and M. Mateas. Against forward models. In Workshop on What’s Next for AI in Games?, 2017.

  7. J. C. Osborn and M. Mateas. Programming interactivity requires both semantics and semiotics. In POPL Off the Beaten Track Workshop, 2016.

  8. J. C. Osborn, B. Samuel, and M. Mateas. Playspecs: Regular expressions for game play traces. In Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference, 2015.

  9. J. C. Osborn, B. Samuel, J. A. McCoy, and M. Mateas. Evaluating play trace (dis)similarity metrics. In Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference, 2014.

  10. J. C. Osborn and M. Mateas. Visualizing play traces of arbitrary games. In Foundations of Digital Games, 2014.

  11. J. C. Osborn, A. Grow, and M. Mateas. Modular computational critics for games. In Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference, 2013.

Game Scholarship Support Tools

  1. E. Kaltman, J. C. Osborn, and N. Wardrip-Fruin. From the presupposition of DOOM to the manifestation of code. Digital Humanities Quarterly, (pending minor revisions), 2019.

  2. E. Kaltman, J. C. Osborn, and J. Aycock. S4LVE: Shareable videogame analysis and visualization. In Foundations of Digital Games, 2019.

  3. H. Lowood, E. Kaltman, and J. C. Osborn. Histories of Performance Documentation: Museum, Artistic, and Scholarly Practices, chapter Screen Capture and Replay: Documenting Gameplay as Performance. Routledge, 2017.

  4. E. Kaltman, J. C. Osborn, and N. Wardrip-Fruin. Getting the GISST: A toolkit for the creation, analysis and reference of game studies resources. In Foundations of Digital Games, 2017.

  5. E. Kaltman, J. C. Osborn, and N. Wardrip-Fruin. Game and interactive software scholarship toolkit (GISST). In Foundations of Digital Games Demonstrations Track, 2017.

Pedagogy

  1. A. Summerville and J. C. Osborn. Model assignment: The Minecraft projects. In AAAI Conference on Educational Advances in AI, 2019.

  2. M. Greenberg and J. C. Osborn. Teaching discrete mathematics to early undergraduates with Software Foundations. In Fifth International Workshop on Coq for Programming Languages, 2019.

Other Projects

  1. D. Fava, D. Shapiro, J. C. Osborn, M. Schaef, and E. J. Whitehead. Crowd-sourcing program preconditions via a classification game. In International Conference on Software Engineering, 2016.

  2. A. S. Kahn, C. Shen, L. Lu, R. A. Ratan, S. Coary, J. Hou, J. Meng, J. C. Osborn, and D. Williams. The trojan player typology: A cross-genre, cross-cultural, behaviorally validated scale of video game play motivations. Computers in Human Behavior, 2015.

  3. H. Logas, R. Vallejos, J. C. Osborn, K. Compton, and E. J. Whitehead. Visualizing loops and data structures in Xylem: The code of plants. In Foundations of Digital Games, 2015.

  4. H. Logas, E. J. Whitehead, M. Mateas, R. Vallejos, L. Scott, J. Murray, K. Compton, J. C. Osborn, O. Salvatore, D. Shapiro, Z. Lin, H. Sanchez, M. Shavlovsky, D. Cetina, S. Clementi, and C. Lewis. Software verification games: Designing Xylem, the code of plants. In Foundations of Digital Games, 2014.

  5. A. S. Kahn, C. Shen, L. Lu, R. A. Ratan, S. Coary, J. Hou, J. Meng, J. C. Osborn, and D. Williams. The trojan player typology: a cross-genre, cross-cultural, behaviorally validated scale of video game play motivations. In Annual meeting of the International Communication Association, 2013.

  6. M. Copier, C. Swain, L. van den Berg, J. C. Osborn, and B. Taylor. So happy together: Tips and tricks for global collaboration between universities and the industry. In Game Developers Conference IGDA Education Summit, 2010.

  7. M. Bolas, J.L. Olson, J. C. Osborn, and N. Bolas. Design approach for multi-touch interfaces in creative production environments. In Engineering Patterns for Multi-Touch Interfaces Workshop, ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computer Systems, 2010.

Invited Symposia

  • 2018 CRA CCC Early-Career Researcher Symposium, Washington DC
  • 2016 BIRS Workshop 16w5160, Computational Modeling in Games, Banff, Canada

Invited Talks

  • 2019-11-08 Reclaiming Personal Computing: or, Your Life in Plain Text, Digital Humanities @ the Claremont Colleges Research Studio Series
  • 2017-11-07 Modeling and model-checking videogame characters as hybrid systems, UCSC Hybrid Systems Lab
  • 2017-11-20 Hybrid planning in the videogame domain, USC IDM Lab

Awards

  • 2019 Best Paper Nomination

J. C. Osborn, M. Dickinson, B. Anderson, A. Summerville, J. Denner, D. Torres, N. Wardrip-Fruin, and M. Mateas. Is your game generator working? evaluating Gemini, a purposeful generator. In Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference, 2019. Best Paper Nomination.

  • 2017 Best Student Paper

J. C. Osborn, B. Lambrigger, and M. Mateas. HyPED: Modeling and analyzing action games as hybrid systems. In Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference, 2017. Best Student Paper.

  • 2017 Best Paper Honorable Mention

J. C. Osborn, N. Wardrip-Fruin, and M. Mateas. Refining operational logics. In Foundations of Digital Games, 2017. Best Paper Honorable Mention.

  • 2017 Outstanding TA Award 2016–2017
  • 2015 Best Paper Nomination

J. C. Osborn, D. Lederle-Ensign, N. Wardrip-Fruin, and M. Mateas. Combat in games. In Foundations of Digital Games, 2015. Best Paper Nomination.

  • 2011 Best Presentation

J. C. Osborn and M. Sennott. Ensemble: Incremental character story generation for interactive media. In Annenberg Graduate Fellowship Program Research and Creative Project Symposium, 2011.

  • 2010 IGDA Student Showcase

L. van den Berg, M. van Hooren, B. Teunisse, G. Nishikawa, S. Farmer, and J. C. Osborn. Paper cakes. In Independent Games Festival Student Showcase, 2010.

Fellowships & Scholarships

  • 2012–2013 University of California Chancellor’s Fellowship
  • 2009–2011 USC Annenberg Fellowship
  • 2004–2009 RIT Presidential Scholarship
  • 2004–2009 National Merit Scholarship

Education

  • 2012–2018 Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • 2009–2012 M.F.A in Interactive Media, University of Southern California
  • 2004–2009 B.S. in Software Engineering and Computer Science (Double Major), Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)

Employment

  • Fall 2018–Present Assistant Professor, Pomona College Computer Science
  • Winter 2017–Spring 2018 Research Assistant, NSF Scenario Generation Project
  • 2015–2016 Research Assistant, GAMECIP Game Metadata Citation Project, University of California, Santa Cruz—Bridged C emulator cores and video transcoders with JavaScript UI
  • 2013–2015 Research Assistant, CHEKOFV Crowd-Sourced Formal Software Verification Project, University of California, Santa Cruz—ActionScript programming connecting formal verification goals to citizen science games
  • 2011–2012 Research Assistant, Annenberg Innovation Lab, University of Southern California—JavaScript multitouch interface prototyping and exploration
  • 2010–2011 Research Assistant, Game Innovation Lab, University of Southern California—Lua game scripting in PlayStation Home online environment
  • 2009–2010 Research Assistant, Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California—Python multitouch interface prototyping and exploration
  • 2006–2007 Game Designer/Scripter, Vicarious Visions (Activision)—Created boss encounters and dynamic mission system using in-house tools (Spiderman 3 PSP/PS2/Wii)

Service

  • 2020–2021 Committee Member, Pomona College Teaching and Learning Committee
  • 2019–2020 Committee Member, Pomona College Information Technology Services Advisory Committee
  • 2021 Program Committee, Educational Advances in AI
  • 2020 Workshops and Tutorials Chair, AAAI Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE)
  • 2020 Doctoral Consortium Evaluator, Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing
  • 2019–2020 Program Committee, Artificial Intelligence in Interactive Digital Entertainment
  • 2019 Doctoral Consortium Chair and Career Panel Facilitator, AAAI Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE)
  • 2019 Chair, Foundations of Digital Games 2019 Game Educators’ Symposium
  • 2019 Program Committee, Foundations of Digital Games User Experience of Artificial Intelligence Workshop (UXofAI)
  • 2019–2020 Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Games (ToG)
  • 2017–2019 Chair, AAAI Workshop on Knowledge Extraction from Games (KEG 2018, 2019)
  • 2017, 2019–2020 Program Committee, Foundations of Digital Games Workshop on Procedural Content Generation
  • 2017 Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence in Games (TCIAIG)
  • 2017, 2020 Program Committee, Foundations of Digital Games
  • 2016, 2017 Program Committee, Workshop on Experimental AI in Games (EXAG 2016, 2017)
  • 2013–2014 UCSC Computer Science Department Graduate Student Council

Courses Taught

  • CSCI 51a PO Intro to Computer Science with Topics in AI
    A Python introductory course with assignments motivated by neural networks, adversarial search, and other AI topics.
  • CSCI 054 PO Discrete Mathematics and Functional Programming, Pomona College
    Introductory course (second in sequence) teaching discrete math concepts in the context of functional programming, with both informal proofs and formal proofs in the Coq proof assistant.
  • CSCI 151 PO Artificial Intelligence, Pomona College
    Advanced elective in AI covering automated decision making from constraint satisfaction and planning to optimization and prediction.
  • CSCI 190 PO Senior Seminar
    Senior exercise; a discussion-based class driven by student presentations on research papers in computer science. Students learn how to read, write, and present on CS research.
  • Computational Media 80K Foundations of Video Game Design, University of California, Santa Cruz
    Introductory game design, development, and critique class; three different game-making tools in five weeks