Workshop on Roles of Planning in Games (RPG)

ICAPS 2026 Workshop
Dublin, Ireland June 28-29, 2026

RPG Website

Aim and Scope of the Workshop

Games and virtual environments have long served as test beds for Artificial Intelligence (AI), providing research challenges and benchmarks for assessment of intelligent systems performance. The specific application of Automated Planning and Scheduling (APS) technologies in games has been gaining popularity for uses both within the gameplay experience and for designing them.

The Roles of Planning in Games (RPG) workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners to explore the unique challenges and contributions that rise from applying APS techniques to games. The focus is specifically on the aspects that directly interest the ICAPS community such as reasoning, resource management, hierarchical goal decomposition, and search-based methods. The focus on games will also encourage designers and developers to present their needs, wants, and challenges to the ICAPS community while having an opportunity to learn more about the APS resources available to them. This workshop will provide a dedicated space at the intersection of APS research and game applications, fostering collaboration between both communities and ideally connecting industry with academics.

Please send any inquiries to: rpg26@easychair.org

Important Dates

  • Paper submission deadline: May 4th, 2026
  • Notification of acceptance: June 11th, 2026
  • Workshop date: June 28/29 (TBD), 2026

The reference timezone for all deadlines is UTC-12. That is, as long as there is still some place anywhere in the world where the deadline has not yet passed, you are on time!

Topics of Interest

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Decision Making in Games: Domain-specific heuristics, knowledge representation, search methods, and planners for playing and understanding existing games.
  • Real-Time Planning: Techniques for interleaving planning and execution under strict time and memory constraints.
  • Planning for Quality Assurance: Using automated planners to generate test coverage, detect soft-locks, and validate playable content autonomously.
  • Neurosymbolic AI in Games: Combining neuro-inspired models with symbolic planning to create NPCs that are both conversational and goal-directed.
  • Hierarchical Planning: Advances in hierarchical planning (e.g. Hierarchical Task Networks) tailored for controlling agent behaviours or developing structured game content.
  • Plan, Activity, and Goal Recognition: Inferring player intent to adapt game difficulty or content dynamically.
  • Procedural Content Generation: Constraint-based planning for generating game content such as solvable levels, puzzles, and narratives.
  • Planning for Game Design: Applications of APS to game or level design for videogames and/or tabletop games.

Submission Instructions

Submit papers via EasyChair using the ICAPS 2026 paper template.

  • Regular papers: up to 8 pages + unlimited references
  • Short / position papers: up to 4 pages + unlimited references
  • All submissions must be in PDF format

At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the ICAPS 2026 workshop day. Accepted papers will be made available on the workshop website.

Organizing Committee