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CONFERENCE  

|    Game Design
    DESIGN

Creating compelling, immersive games requires understanding, visualizing, demonstrating, and tuning the interactions of an ever-increasing number of game tools and systems. While game designers need to understand and exploit the possibilities of new technologies such as realistic physics, facial expressions, and lighting techniques; they must also continue to master the traditional disciplines of drama, game play, and psychology.

The Design Track explores the challenges and ramifications of the interaction between new technologies and established techniques.

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2013 HIGHLIGHTED SESSIONS

The Prototype that was Banned from Halfbrick
Luke Muscat (Halfbrick Studios)
 
Tank Tactics was a simple strategy game that was played by 17 employees of Halfbrick Studios. 8 days later it was banned from the workplace. People got upset, rivalries formed, and two employees in particular still don't speak to each other to this day. So the question is, whose fault is all of this? Was it the players' fault for taking the game too seriously, or the designers' fault for creating a system that fosters such destructive social behavior? This talk will explore the story of Tank Tactics, and examine how the mechanics of this game, and many others, influence player behaviors.
Emotional Journey: BioWare's Methods to Bring Narrative into Levels
Dave Feltham (BioWare)
 
Over the years, BioWare has worked very hard at creating an enveloping narrative, and evolving how it is done. During the course of creating the final episode of the trilogy, the Mass Effect level design team identified that they would have to find new ways to help reinforce the narrative in the missions that Commander Shepard would undertake. Dave Feltham, senior designer on Mass Effect 3, will illustrate some of the methods they used to bring narrative to some of the levels' pacing and flow, measure it, and how it helped increase the level of player engagement.
Whose Design Is It Anyway? Game Designers and Development Teams
David Wessman (University of Advancing Technology)
 
This roundtable session is an opportunity for a multi-disciplinary discussion on how game designers fit into the overall process of game development, how to improve cross- and inter-disciplinary communications and teamwork, and ultimately, how to make better games! Specific topics include ownership of the vision, understanding each other's roles, agile game development methodologies, distributed development, design documentation, content development tools, training and mentorship, and much more.
The Design of New Enemies for Halo 4
Scott Warner (343 Industries)
 
Halo 4 was a massive undertaking by a brand new studio (343 Industries) to carry on the legacy of the legendary shooter franchise. Scott Warner, project lead designer on Halo 4, will take you through the design and development of a critical component of the game: the brand new Promethean enemies. You will learn, from content to ship, about every key moment in the creation of these characters, including videos and concepts showing the iterative progress along the way.
The Self, Presence and Storytelling
Thomas Grip (Frictional Games)
 
A video game typically presents the player with a system to figure out and conquer, building everything else on top of that. In this talk an alternative design approach will be discussed. Instead of having traditional game mechanics, the focus should lie on creating a sense of presence and letting the imagination do much of the work. This lecture will go over basic scientific and philosophical ideas for this approach, and then go into the concrete design decisions needed to achieve it.

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