CONFERENCE  

The biggest difference between games and passive media storytelling is the fact that players make interactive choices. A lot of good game design rules have been written on how to create proper player choices in games, but sometimes designers should break these rules to create emotional impact on the player and tell a serious narrative. Joerg Friedrich will present three design rules that should be broken at times and how doing this will improve the emotional impact of the game on the player.

Over the past several years, while Western game developers have been busy developing for social and mobile platforms, Chinese developers have been churning out web-based browser games by the thousand. Despite having comparatively short lifespans, these games' unbelievable monetization power has led to the birth of a whole new class of "whale" spenders. Improve your own games by learning some of the successful design techniques being used in the soon-to-be world's largest gaming market!

Sine Mora is a visually stunning dieselpunk shoot'em up game that released to universal critical acclaim this March on the Xbox Live Arcade platform. It was co-developed by Digital Reality (Hungary) and Grasshopper Manufacture (Japan), and hailed by many as the future of East-West collaborations. Theodore Reiker, who designed, wrote and directed the title will guide you through the development process of the title, the challenges represented by a co-production, and will try to solve one of the oldest mysteries of the industry: glowing reviews aside, how can a game that was tailored to succeed from start to finish ultimately fail.

In the 35+ years of the games industry, no other shift in business model or platform has had such a great impact on game design as free-to-play (F2P) games. The evolution is forcing us to redefine the role, focus, and skill set of the game designer. Coming straight from Bigpoint's game design nerve center, this talk will define what free-to-play actually means when you break it down to the core. Richter will open up a treasure chest of free-to-play design secrets, cover the latest design evolutions, and will illustrate why it is addictive to be a pioneer in the field.

Do the terms 'Themepark' and 'sandbox' mean anything to you? While to many an MMO is an MMO, for designers and veteran players alike there is a fast growing search for the next frontier in virtual worlds. How do we balance accessibility with the wish to create dynamic and evolving worlds where players can forge their own stories? Funcom's Craig Morrison will explore the complex relationships that players have with virtual worlds, and how designers need to understand the forces at play.

As a cost-effective means of diversifying the emotional range of a game, supporting interpretation and understanding, and widening the feel of the presented world beyond visible assets, story is a vital tool in every game designer's kit.
Despite a lack of interaction and traditional gameplay, Dear Esther still succeeds in creating a powerful, engaging game. This session focuses on Dear Esther's unusual story and examines how very different narrative experiences can be created. It focuses on both the storytelling devices the game utilizes, and the story itself—how it handles plot, emotion, character, symbolism and ambiguity to help the player construct a complex and largely self-generated story experience.

Pinchbeck will introduce specific examples from the game and explain how ambiguity and abstraction were used as specific design techniques in the game's story, to counterpoint the experience design being leveraged in the environment, audio and soundtrack. This session will also explore the relationship between emotion, story and player experience and offer thechineseroom's understandings of why Dear Esther's story hit home with so many players despite its uncompromisingly problematic content and delivery.