Designing great games is tricky business, and as a developer there's no better way (other than hands-on experience) to sharpen your design skills than swapping stories and techniques with your peers.
With that in mind, Game Developers Conference 2015 officials are excited to highlight another great set of sessions incorporated into the perennially popular Design track of talks that you'll want to keep on your radar.
While you're at GDC, join Fantasia: Music Evolved (pictured) lead designer Jonathan Mintz for a look at how the game turns players into creators. During his talk, "Insipring Player Creativity in Fantasia: Music Evolved," You'll see methods for getting players into a creative mindset, how the interactions in the game are set up to give players confidence, and how the game celebrates players' creations to keep them engaged.
You'll also get a behind-the-scenes look at prototypes and failed experiments that helped define the final game structure. Specific case studies will explore both the musical play and realm exploration portions of the Fantasia, illustrating how these techniques can be applied to different styles of gameplay.
Also, don't miss Ubisoft's Jason VandenBerghe design-minded presentation on "Engines of Play: Toward a Universal Model of Player Motivation." In an unholy psychological fusion, the Ubisoft creative director has merged the 5 Domains of Play (Big 5) with Scot Rigby's PENS model (SDT). The result is a startlingly *usable* model of your player's motivational journey through time.
Knowing which of your proposed game design features fit with what part of your player's motivational journey is what this talk is all about - but as a bonus, this semi-unified motivation model *also* works as a fantastic tool to communicate your project's answer to the timeless questions: "Who are our players? What do they want?" on your team, in your company, and even to your players. Don't be scared. It's just science.
Of course, there's also a bunch of other great talks available for your perusal the online GDC 2015 Session Scheduler. There you can begin to build your conference week and later export it to the up-to-the-minute GDC Mobile App, coming soon.
Also, conference officials look forward to announcing more GDC 2015 sessions spanning a diverse array of game industry issues in the months ahead.
For now, don't miss the opportunity to save money by registering early -- the deadline to register for passes at a discounted rate is this week, January 21, 2015. GDC 2015 itself will take place March 2-6 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
For more information on GDC 2015, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.
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