Duygu Cakmak

About

I'm the co-founder of Second River Games, where we work at the edges of simulation, narrative, play and AI. We're making worlds that feel alive and are driven by deep simulation. Alongside building games, I consult with studios and technology companies on AI strategy, game AI, and how to adopt emerging AI technology in practice.

Before that I spent a decade at Creative Assembly. I joined as an AI Programmer in 2015 and went on to build and lead teams across battle AI, campaign AI, and wider game technology. I was Project Technical Director on an unannounced historical Total War title, leading technical direction across multiple programming teams, before founding the studio's R&D team.

As R&D Director I set research and AI strategy across the Total War series and beyond: game AI development on the titles themselves, machine learning and player-facing AI systems, and AI-assisted development tools built out of emerging research.

Beyond the studio, I build the communities, events, and platforms where game AI developers across industry and academia meet, learn, and grow. I co-founded and continue to co-organise the world's largest independent AI and Games developer conference, chair the IGGI industry board, advise the GDC AI Summit, and serve as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Games.

Talks & Papers

Selected talks

• 2026 AI, Leaning into the Future (panel). BAFTA Connect, London.
• 2026 Building an AI Assistant for Total War: PHARAOH — NVIDIA ACE Developer Deep Dive (with Ambrish Dantrey, NVIDIA). GDC, San Francisco.
• 2026 Charting a Course for the Next Decade of Gaming With AI (panel, with John Spitzer, Kangwook Lee, Dean Leitersdorf, Trotter Cashion). NVIDIA GTC.
• 2025 Conquering Complexity. Summer School on AI and Games, Cambridge.
• 2023 The Future of AI for Games (panel). Summer School on AI and Games, Cambridge.
• 2021 Technical Direction & AI Complexity in Total War (keynote). IGGI Conference.
• 2021 Intrigue and Betrayal: Diplomacy AI in 'Total War: Three Kingdoms'. GDC AI Summit.
• 2019 How developers analyse AI behaviour in Total War games (with Csaba Toth). IEEE Conference on Games (CoG).
• 2018 Modern C++ in Embedded and Real-Time Systems (with Guy Davidson). ACCU Conference, Bristol.

Interviews & features

• A Games Industry Perspective on Recent Game AI Developments · KI – Künstliche Intelligenz, 2020
• Creative Chronicle: Analysing AI behaviour in Total War · GamesIndustry.biz
• Creative Chronicles: How to become a programmer · GamesIndustry.biz

Papers

• 2026 Onboarding Advisor (auxiliary paper). IEEE Conference on Games (CoG).
• 2025 From Code to Play: Benchmarking Program Search for Games Using Large Language Models (with Eberhardinger et al.). IEEE Transactions on Games, Special Issue on Large Language Models and Games.
• 2025 Learning Combat Outcomes in Creative Assembly's Total War (with James Kwan). AIIDE 2025.
• 2024 Playing NetHack with LLMs: Potential & Limitations as Zero-Shot Agents (with Jeurissen et al.). IEEE Conference on Games (CoG).

Editorial & service

• Co-founder and co-organiser, AI and Games Conference (London) since 2024
• Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Games since 2024
• Chair, IGGI Industry Advisory Board since 2023
• Advisor, GDC AI Summit since 2022

Awards

• 2023 Software Engineer Award, everywoman in Technology Awards UK.
• 2019 Technical Impact of the Year, MCV Women in Games Awards.

Released Games

Contact

LinkedIn  ·  Bluesky

For speaking and consulting enquiries, please reach out via LinkedIn.