CONFERENCE  

Great, innovative games don't just magically happen; they're almost always the result of lots of trial, error, and prototyping. If you care about exploring to come up with something different and new, if you don't want to just rehash the same old tired FPS mechanics, or if you're trying to get team buy in on the new project then you need to experiment. This session will cover why it's worth spending a significant portion of development on prototyping, 8 lessons for how to do it effectively, and 8 common pitfalls to watch out for and avoid. We'll draw from the prototyping phases of Dance Central and creative indie titles Slam Bolt Scrappers and Go Home Dinosaurs for examples.

Learn about the unique polish process and nontraditional development phases timing used by Naughty Dog to create all the Uncharted games. Find out how adding more time and polish tasks to the Alpha phase, in particular, can take your next game from good to great. Senior Game Designer Benson Russell explains the Naughty Dog definition of a polished game, details the non-traditional timeframes the team allocates for development phases, and reveals details of exactly how the polish process runs internally. This session will delve deeply into: recommended timing for development phases; the "rolling finaling" process in which Naughty Dog works toward gold master candidate status level by level, rather than all at once; the intentional tiered approval system for game changes after hitting Alpha; the importance of one high level designer constantly reviewing the game and sending feedback; changing the team's mindset to support this; and more.

Naughty Dog is known for the level of polish that we apply to our shipping titles. We believe it is one of the most important aspects of the game development cycle, yet it also seems to be one of the most marginalized in our industry. This talk will go over the approach and principles that we use to make our games as polished as possible. We'll go over the methods we use internally, the approach to scheduling that we take, the level of detail that we look for, and how we strike the balance of making the game awesome while still shipping on time.

This talk discusses how to integrate back-end telemetry into an existing playtest program to create more satisfying user experiences. Specific examples, drawn from AAA titles Red Faction Armageddon and Saints Row: The Third, will highlight successes where this integration provided valuable information, as well as areas where we identified potential improvements. This talk will discuss the benefits of integrating these two methodologies and will provide tips and tricks to avoid our missteps and get the greatest positive impact on your game's user experience.