Our Team

Meet the Quantum Gaming team.

Dr. rer. nat. Fabian Schrodt

CEO & AI Researcher

fabian@q-gaming.com

My background in computer modeling of cognitive systems began, viewed benevolently, when I was around eight years old, programming a hearing test via PC speaker output in Q-Basic on my father’s computer. I think after this double success (it worked and I had very good ears) computers were my thing. After school years and a few semesters of orientation, I studied cognitive computer science in Bielefeld and ultimately computer science with a focus on machine learning and a minor in economics in Tübingen.

In Tübingen I also became a scientific assistant at the Chair for Neurocognitive Modeling, where I wrote my master’s thesis on imitation learning and finally completed my doctorate on “mirror neurons” — or more precisely, the neurocomputational principles of social intelligence. In addition to my dissertation studies, I led a research and teaching project in which the character “Super Mario” was equipped with artificial intelligence. This project gained international attention in social and online media.

The public discussion about our project was very inspiring for my insight into how the media can convey scientific content and what reservations, expectations and interpretations society can have about AI. For my research in the field of AI in games and the mental development of social intelligence, I ultimately received academic prizes and financial support and was invited to give several lectures in industry and science.

Through these developments, in 2018 I set myself the goal of founding a company with funds from the University’s Innovation Grant and with my own small group, to show a large and most diverse audience in practical ways what intelligence is and what artificial intelligence can be.

Francesco Catania

Company AI Tech Specialist

francesco@q-gaming.com

I’ve always had an incredible passion for video games and their development. I’m a gamer who loves to be immersed in the stories of games, and I truly appreciate it when a game communicates a message or teaches something meaningful, as Applied Games do. To pursue my goals, from 2017 to 2020 I attended the Event Horizon Game Programming Course at TheSign Comics & Arts Academy in Florence, where I trained my skills in C# and Unity to become a game programmer. Throughout my career, I have programmed several games in different teams and contexts.

I am a seasoned Game Jam programmer: I took part in the Global Game Jam in Pisa in 2019 and 2020, the Adventure Game Jam 2020, and several Game Jam exams during my training. I am fascinated by emerging technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and by how mobile gaming can act as a gateway to make these technologies accessible to a wider audience. Since 2021, at Quantum Gaming I have been designing and implementing multiplayer systems and virtual markets for a game that I believe could represent an important step forward in the application of artificial intelligence. Starting in 2023, I also became an AI Tech Specialist within the Company. In this role, I contribute to the development of internal APIs and taking responsibility for setting up the technical environment that enables our AI to perceive and understand in-game mechanics.

I am convinced that AI will become an increasingly integral part of our everyday life, and I want to contribute to this process in a meaningful – and playful – way.

Our Challenge: Self-learning AI games

At Quantum Gaming, we’re pursuing a new genre: Self-Learning AI Games.

Game characters are expected to appear intelligent and believable, yet game AI rarely draws on human cognition. Bots remain old-fashioned, their “intelligence” is mostly elaborate scripting, and difficulty is typically achieved through cheating. Virtually no perception, learning, adaptation, or decision-making. In short: no cognition.

There are reasons for this. Game AI must run on consumer hardware and behave predictably. But the competencies exist – modern AI already handles procedural content generation. Learning characters are absent because it’s hard to define what they learn, when, and how it affects gameplay.

We address this by applying the latest findings in cognitive science and breaking with the structures of classic genres, creating intelligent, simulated life forms and novel game concepts.

Our Technology: adaptive game AI from Tübingen

Everyone's own AI!

brAIn engine models how the human brain works. It’s not a monolithic, data-hungry system that determines statistical coherences from massive datasets, nor one that needs supercomputer hours to learn or reason. Instead, it’s a recurrent interplay of specialized neural network modules that reproduce aspects of the mind and regions of the brain, including their mental development.

Built for consumer hardware, brAIn engine powers the first cognitively plausible AI for game characters that are empathic, motivated, have realistic motor control, and can imagine, abstract, and plan. Most importantly, they learn everything from scratch, just like a newborn would.

The way you play creates your own personalized AI.

From Tübingen with Love!

Tübingen is a university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany, with about 90,000 residents and one of Europe’s oldest universities, founded in 1477. Academic life shapes the city: over 27,000 students, 18,000 university employees (including university hospital staff), and more than 2,000 researchers at institutes such as the three Max Planck Institutes. Spared destruction in World War II due to its minor military importance and last-minute designation as a hospital district, Tübingen’s old town remains largely intact today.

Tübingen is now an international hub for machine learning research. The University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute collaborate on numerous AI initiatives, giving rise to Cyber Valley — Europe’s largest AI research consortium, aimed at fostering technology transfer through a new model of science-industry cooperation.

Quantum Gaming is a University of Tübingen spin-off, founded with support from the university’s Innovation Grant of Excellence Initiative and part of the Cyber Valley Startup Network. Our mission: transferring cutting-edge AI research into games.