GDC 2026 Keynote - An Odyssey in Building Games That Last

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Wow!
Oh.

Please welcome executive director of innovation and growth for GDC Festival of Gaming, Mark DeLora.

Good morning. Is everybody awake? I'm glad you are. I'm I'm not quite awake yet. But I I hope you've been having a great week here at GDC and welcome to day four or 11. I lost track. Uh do you know that flow state you get into when you play a really, really good game? How many of us have lost a weekend or maybe a couple of years, maybe that's just me, playing World of Warcraft? Well, you can thank our keynote speaker Rob Pardo for that. Rob spent over 20 years at Blizzard, where he led design on StarCraft: Brood War, Warcraft III, and World of Warcraft. Games that didn't just define genres, they were cultural phenomena. On his way out the door at Blizzard, he shipped Hearthstone for good measure. In 2006, Time magazine named Rob one of

the 100 most influential people in the world. And if you've made games in the last 25 years, there's a good chance his fingerprints are on the way you think about design. His latest company, Bonfire Studios, just dropped a public demo of their debut title, Arkeron. Looks like he's about to do it again. Please welcome the man who made you a better game designer and cost you an embarrassing amount of sleep, Rob Pardo.
[applause] [music] [sighs]
Good morning, GDC. Uh I know, it's probably been a late night for everyone. Uh I'm Rob Pardo. I'm the CEO of Bonfire

Studios. Uh and it's actually really great to be back on stage at GDC. You know, GDC has always been to me such a special community, cuz it's really where game developers, you know, really share openly how we make games so that we can all be better. Uh and you know, what I'm hoping to do today is just to share a few things that I've learned from over the years trying to build games that endure and last.
[snorts]
I'm currently launching a new game with my team at Bonfire and it's called Arclands. Uh we we just ran a play test during Steam Next Fest. And we're hoping to launch later this year. You know, it's exciting and it's uh stressful. You know, and honestly, it's been a little humbling. And it's uh been a really long time since I've stood up here at GDC. I think over 15 years or so by now. You know, and then when I was trying to think of like, well, what am I even

going to name this talk? You know, I've been recently, you know, watching like the trailer for the Odyssey by Chris Nolan. So, it it made me realize something. You know, this uh year is actually going to be the 10-year anniversary of Bonfire. You know, which made it kind of oddly appropriate. You know, because the journey of building Arclands has definitely had a few Odyssey moments of its own. You know, harrowing adventures, some difficult navigation challenges, a lot of teamwork, and more than a few moments where we weren't sure if the ship would survive the trip. You know, but the truth is, the Odyssey uh didn't start just 10 years ago with Bonfire for me. You know, it started probably even even earlier in my career. So, to give you a little bit of my history, you know, I've been making games for a very long time now. Uh and it even started before this. You know, I actually started uh Interplay Productions in 1994 as a game tester.

Uh but really, I kind of consider the start of my game developer journey being when I started at Blizzard uh in 1997 on the original StarCraft. And you know, over the years, I've really had the chance to work on a lot of different projects in creative leadership roles until uh leaving Blizzard in 2014. And uh I think one thing's kind of been unusual about my career is that I've had the chance to work across so many different kinds of games. You know, I've worked on everything from real-time strategy games to MMORPGs and, you know, even a card battler. Uh and early in my time at Blizzard, you know, I was a game designer. Um but after World of Warcraft, my role shifted to building the game design discipline and leading projects more from an executive producer role. You know, and each game uh had different challenges to overcome. You know, but I've had the chance to see a lot of game development processes from different perspectives.

You know, but it hasn't all have been successes. You know, a lot of the games There's also some of the games I worked on that didn't survive. Uh and while it's always extremely painful to cancel a project, uh oftentimes those experiences uh probably taught me even more than the successes did.
[snorts]
When I look back on the journey, I really realize how incredibly fortunate that I've been that I've had in my career. You know, cuz I've had the chance to work on uh games that endured far longer than anyone expected. Uh but more importantly, I've had a chance to work with uh some really truly amazing teams. And I want to be uh really clear about something. I'm not standing up here today as an expert who can tell you how to make games that last forever. Uh I don't think anyone could do that. Uh all I can really do is share a few stories and lessons from my successes, uh some lessons from my failures, and hopefully something on that journey might prove to be helpful to you today.

So, uh Uh, amazingly enough, World of Warcraft turns 22 years old this year. And back when we launched it, you know, we really had no idea that it would endure this long. We were kind of figuring maybe four or five years tops. You know, in retrospect, you know, obviously sounds very naive, but back then the industry hadn't yet co- coined the term live service game yet. You know, and nowadays, there's even a newer term going around, which is called like the forever game. You know, kind of the idea that you could intentionally design a game that lasts for decades. You know, I can totally understand why that's appealing. Uh, but really when I look back on the games that I worked on that did last, it's not really how it happened. You know, I think now, uh, when executives and investors look at how lucrative,

you know, some of these games have become, they started to invest a lot of money in the industry trying to create the next big forever game. You know, and you'll see pitch decks that look something like this, you know, like game A plus game B equals massive business. You know, when I I think it's uh, you know, obviously can get studio started a lot of money, uh, but you know, I think, you know, it's a little strange to me. So, I use this example up there because, you know, Animal Crossing happens to be one of my favorite games, and World of Warcraft is a game that I've worked on. You know, and the pitch decks really make it sound really easy, uh, but honestly, I think it dramatically underestimates how hard it is to create either of those games in the first place. And as a huge Animal Crossing fan, uh, and someone that also has been designing games for a long time, I think if you handed me a team today, I'm not even sure I could authentically recreate Animal Crossing, let alone the best

combining the best parts of it and combining with another iconic game.
[snorts]
So, I think it was like over 15 years ago that I came to a GDC and I was super excited to see the talk on Animal Crossing. And you know, I I went in there wanting to hear all their design wisdom, you know, and also just being a fan. And I remember they showed one of their key pillars as Animal Crossing as a communication tool. And honestly, like my mind was kind of blown. Uh I had expected pillars to be more about the importance of collectibility or maybe something that really pointed to their non-traditional goal structure in the game. But a communication tool? Uh you know, it wasn't really something that made sense until they explained it more and more. Um but I think that's the challenge a lot of times with the games is, you know, by the time that we get to play a game, we only get to see the final result. You know, great games, you know, are

very intuitive to play and they're very simple. And really all the mistakes, the learning, and the north stars that led the team to the final product are long buried. And speaking of buried bodies, you know, I would say that uh every project that I've worked on has had a lot of setbacks, too. There's been pivots, there's been dead dead ends, and there's been moments where just things weren't working. You know, and it's off often felt like we had to build the game three different times before we finally got to the right one. Almost every project had at least one major disaster that we had to recover from. Uh so, I'll use like Warcraft III I think is a really good example. So, Warcraft III, we originally announced it at ECTS in different game back then. Uh we were trying to push beyond the traditional RTS formula from StarCraft. And we even

tried to coin a new genre term called role-playing strategy. Uh and you know, the uh we really deemphasized a lot of the resource collection. And the focus was much more on heroes and smaller groups of units. And we worked on the game for a pretty long time. Um but eventually we just had to kind of admit to ourselves that it wasn't working. And you know, we had to take a really step back step back and pivot it back into something that looked a little bit more traditional. And but we also did keep some of the ideas that did work. Heroes, leveling, items, and a lot of those did end up becoming some of the defining features of uh Warcraft III. So then the natural thing becomes like, "Okay. Well, we had these setbacks. We had these problems that happened. So, let's do the thing all the game

developers do and we're going to do a postmortem. And [snorts] we're going to really try to discover like what are the things that maybe would have helped us avoid those disasters. So, on the next project uh it can go a little bit smoother. You know, but I think what ended up happening was we go into the next project and a lot of the same patterns would still apply, but it's just the disasters would show up in very different ways. You know, you know, it'd be different problems, different setbacks, and you know, I think over time I had to learn to accept something. You know, these blow up the blow ups, the struggle, the pivots, uh they're really just part of the creative discovery process. And in fact, you know, I've kind of started using more playful metaphor of that phase of development, which is what this slide is, you know, it's like Mirkwood, you know, from The Hobbit. You know, where I feel like there's always this point in development where, you know, you just everything seems to be lost and you're there with your team and

there's really doesn't seem to be any way out. Uh but I think what I found is, you know, the teams that continue to stick together and try to find, you know, keep on answering those questions, eventually do find a way out, just not necessarily the way that you thought was the way in. Oops. All right, I need some water for this one. So, maybe there's another way to uh you know, create the Feber game because like uh my latter time at Blizzard, we really had to a point where you know, we could put all the best amazing talent on a team, we had all the resources we needed and, you know, honestly, it's been as long as we wanted to, you know, which, you know, I think should be the formula for success. But I would say that uh that didn't

solve the problems either. You know, so what Project Titan was, it was intended to be the game that was going to be more ambitious and was going to one day replace World of Warcraft. You know, didn't quite work out that way, but I think some of my most important learning from my career came from a project that never actually shipped. And, you know, I have to admit to you, you know, it's like I think I made every mistake that you can possibly make running a large game project. You know, I started by having us build the technology before we really knew what the game really was. Uh you know, I pushed for innovation and ambition in every direction. You know, we're building a new IP, we're defining new gameplay, we're designing a new world, you know, all at the same time. You know, and I I also really allowed the team to scale too quickly before we'd even really found the core fun in the fun and the core gameplay loop. And I think worst of all, you know, I really wanted to hold on to the the game

director role in that even though my role had already scaled much bigger at Blizzard, you know, and and really, you know, game director is a full-time job, not a part-time one. You know, so I think in hindsight, you know, I was overall just overly ambitious and foolish and not realistic. You know, and eventually I had to make the call to cancel Titan and it was, you know, very painful. You know, it was years of work, huge team, and a lot of ambition that just stopped. You know, and just like I get some credit for, you know, some of the amazing games and success we had at Blizzard, on this one I got to claim sole responsibility for leading the biggest project failure in Blizzard history. But something interesting did happen next. A small group, you know, from that team, you know, kind of started working with code base and, you know, a lot of all the different IP that we had, you know, and really were trying to

focus on what was working within Titan, which was kind of like a lot of the the battle ground sort of combat between all the different classes. And that prototype eventually became Overwatch. And you know, I left, you know, a couple of years before the game was able to successfully come out, but I was like super happy and proud that the team was able to take something out of Titan's ashes and launch something to the world. So, there are So, there is always a way to find your your way out of Mirkwood.
[snorts]
So, uh I probably haven't been that helpful yet cuz I feel like I'm just telling you all the things that don't work. Uh but at the time, you know, knowing what doesn't work I think is half the battle. Uh, but I think, you know, maybe also maybe start talking about some of the things that I found counterintuitive things that have helped projects be successful. And I would say, uh, one really good example is over the years, you know, like the press will sometimes come up to

me and they'll interview me and always ask that question of, "Well, how do you know when a game is going to be a hit?"
[snorts]
And I'll usually give them a very similar sort of anecdote. And I'll tell them, you know, invariably there's always this point in the development process, this moment where the team starts extending play tests. And they end up loving playing the game almost more than making the game itself. And I usually at that point have to have some version of sitting down with the team and saying, "Hey, you can't be taking those longer lunch breaks anymore because we actually need to make this thing, not just play it all the time." And I would say that, uh, that moment has kind of always been one of the truest measures to me that a game is going to be successful. And I'll tell you like on those games that ended up getting canceled, I can tell you they never were able to reach that milestone.

So, you know, why why is this so important? Well, I think it's really because when a team becomes more interested in playing their own game than anything else, uh, something really special starts to happen. You know, because there's plenty of finished games out in the world that they could be playing instead, but they're playing this development build that's not even finished yet. But what happens is you start seeing this virtual cycle because the development team is now not only playing their favorite game, but they get to make it better every single day. And they really become obsessed with improving it. They start experimenting with the new ideas, and they even get to you even see developers on the team get genuinely upset when they miss the play test. So, I think what I'm really trying to say with all of this is the most

important lesson or the most important milestone, I would say, in development is when a team deeply falls in love with the game that they're making. And you know, really it in my opinion, if developers don't love playing the game, it it's kind of hard to imagine players eventually loving the game, either. You know, and the thing is when a team does fully love the game, something really powerful does happen. They stop chasing what they think the audience wants, and really start building the game that they genuinely believe in. And that authentically is often when player what players end up responding to. So, I'll give you an example from early in my career, you know, during StarCraft going into StarCraft Brood War. Like, I was um you know, obsessed myself with playing the game. You know, I'd be you know, trying to uh compete on the ladder. I was finding like all the best players. You know, I'd watch their

games. Um they helped me really balance the game. I even uh created my own community tournament. You know, I'd like create the rule structure, you know, like on lunch during um during lunch breaks at Blizzard, all the Blizzard team would huddle around, and we'd watch the top players play. Um and it wasn't because I was trying to become a community manager or tournament organizer. You know, I just selfishly wanted to make the game better, and I knew by getting them to compete with one another, it'd kind of help me be able to do do right thing for the game. And, you know, it's like you know, making like great StarCraft balance was never like one of the big pillars. It was never like in the design document as the crucial thing to do. It really was born out of just this love of wanting to keep continuing to make the game better and better for these players. And what I think was really interesting is, you know, when StarCraft came out, you know, there was no eSports scene. But I think because of that obsession

with really trying to make great game balance, it it allowed one to grow up around it. You know, and I think it's just such a good example of like, you know, when a team really loves the thing that they're creating and play it a lot, you have these unexpected outcomes that you didn't necessarily plan for in the first place. So, the trick is, uh, how do you design a production schedule that has this milestone of falling love with the game? It's not like you can just, uh, plot it like we're going to hit that in September 2022. You know, so I think the better way really to think about it is, you you can't really schedule for it, but I do think you can try to create the conditions where something worthy, you know, of lasting might emerge. And then really the players are the one that are going to only decide if it deserves to. All right. So, that's a little bit of my

historical journey and a few things. Uh, I want to head back to the Odyssey. You know, and I'll tell you, you know, you know, we didn't know we're going to be spending this long making our Chiron. You know, I I certainly would never stand up here and say, "Oh, you know, you really want to have 8 to 10-year-long development cycles. That's what it takes." Far from it. You know, I think it was, uh, more that, you know, we're just want to make sure that we end up with something that we're really proud of.
[snorts]
You know, and I think uh you know, if I even looking back now you know building a lasting game feels a lot less like executing plan and more like navigating a journey. You know, and this is where I think the the Odyssey metaphor lands again cuz there really are storms and there is wrong turns and there are discoveries you didn't expect. You know, because game development rarely follows a straight

path. You know, and this is where I do think it is much more like the Odyssey or at least it has been for Archon. So um I'm going to talk now about some of the ways we approached building Archon and uh maybe some of the principles we had along the way. So the first one I would say is really starting with the team. So when we uh went out to try and to find investment, this is actually uh the title slide. You know, so we so I used uh some artwork from Hearthstone. And you know, we very intentionally weren't really starting with a game pitch. You know, cuz to me uh that was really intentional. You know, I've seen too many projects start with you know, this big idea and then you just try to hire people to execute it. But I think the challenge is when you're trying to make something new you know, I think the order should be

reversed. You know, and when we pitched the company for investment uh you know, my co-founder Min was actually quite surprised that we weren't going to pitch a game at all. You know, I told him that pitching a game without a team you know, was going to really set us up for challenges for two major reasons. You know, first you know, it just may not be the best game for that team. You know, and second, I also knew that invariably whatever game we pitched was going to evolve and change. And it's really better if our investors are aligned on the company vision, not the game vision. So, early on, there weren't a lot of us, you know, so we really did kind of spend our time on recruiting, but also, you know, really trying to decide what kind of company that we wanted to build. And then this kind of now leads me to the next part. Which is what you really want to do is uh

find the idea that the team is most suited to create.
[snorts]
So, what we did uh when we were building that early team and we didn't have enough of a team yet to fully start development, we still started generating ideas. And uh we called them seeds. And what happened was uh we really encouraged everyone at Bonfire to pitch ideas. It didn't really matter what discipline you were. Uh and you know, the ideas kind of were all over the place. You know, we would have uh artists that you know, might just show 200 pictures of reference art, but you really couldn't understand what the gameplay loop was. Uh you know, making fun of men a little bit who had never really uh pitched, I think, games before. Like, he started pitching a game through a music video and took us on an emotional journey. But again, like, really hard to compare it to the art reference deck. Uh so, we finally had to formulate a

little bit of a structure so we could at least compare all the ideas against one another. So, we created like this uh this short deck, which this is what we called the seed. And really each slide you're just answering one question. So, one was really just, you know, the kind of the core concept of what is the game. Uh there was like a reference DNA slide for whatever inspirations you might be taking. Uh you know, what is like just the very most simple part of the gameplay loop. And then something about like the world and the setting and the fantasy of the IP. And that was really it. So, we ended up with a lot of pretty interesting ideas. So, we ended up with everything from a vampire survival game to a game that was kind of a riff off of the movie Gladiator. Like imagine that Maximus, you know, retired, went back, and became a farmer, but then had to defend his farm from zombies. And then one that blew my mind was one

of our engineers, you know, pitched the idea that was least likely to come out of him, which was a dance-off game where you bought cosmetic shoes.
[snorts]
It's fun time. And all told we ended up with around 35 of these game seeds. And I think it hit it really showed the full creative range of the studio. Uh but then we had to figure out, okay, well, how do we start whittling this down? And what we ended up doing is very scientific. I gave uh everyone on the team five post-it notes, and they had to sign their name. And one of the rules was you couldn't wait at the end so you can make sure that your votes counted the most. You just had to authentically put the post-its on the on the seeds that you were most excited about. And uh you know, really all the conversation was really interesting because they really started showing like where the product values in the studio were. You know, like there was cuz it wasn't really there was the ones that had lots

of post-its, the ones that had very few, but the ones that were in the middle created the most interesting conversations. Cuz like I think what we started learning was uh you know, we wanted to for one thing make games that had interesting imaginative worlds. So, eventually, we kind of settled on seven of these seeds that we just wanted to spend a little more time with. And to uh stick with the metaphor of farming and gardening, we're going to grow the seeds into saplings.
[snorts]
So, what we did with uh each of these now, we went from a single authorship approach, you know, because each of the seeds was pitched by an individual. Now, what we had to do was we're going to work as a team and kind of in like two to three week sprints build out a much longer pitch deck, you know, with kind of the concept of hey, we could pitch this to publishers, but what was really cool for us was we're actually making

these decks to pitch us on the tail end of the whole process. It was a fun time, you know, like good example is we actually even created all these mood inspiration boards for each of the saplings. Uh you know, because everyone is able to kind of apply their disciplines, you know, to the pitch deck, whether or not figuring out like what the tech stack might end up being, what are the deeper gameplay loops, uh what are things that, you know, might players want to you know, keep them engaged for 10, 100, 1,000 hours. Uh man, all that all that went into the decks over the two to three weeks. And then, you know, again, we had to figure out well, how are we going to make a decision? So, one of the first things I did was um I had everyone on the team go and stack rank the the game the saplings in the order that you thought Bonfire should develop them. And this don't include the saplings that you didn't think we should develop. And this uh ended up being a real showing a lot of really

interesting data because uh there There a lot of enthusiasm across all of them. Matter of fact, I think um I think six of the seven had at least one number one vote, and I would say a minimum of four showed up across all of them. So, it still was not very clear how were we going to decide which of these games were going to make. So, you know, we spent a couple days, and one of the things that everyone had to do was really defend their stack ranking. You know, and this was uh very, very interesting because people took very, very different approaches. So, some people would do the stack ranking that, "Hey, this is going to be the biggest commercial opportunity." Uh which A, I don't know how any of us know which games were going to be the most successful commercial opportunity, but I thought it was a fair way for people to approach it. Uh some came out of it from a place of game they were either most passionate to make, or maybe just most

passionate to play. Uh we also had an engineer that had the really smart technical strategy approach to build this tech stack, you know, in order of the games that we would build. Uh you know, but ultimately, I think everyone was really surprised to hear all the different perspectives. And I think you know, as a team, we learned a lot about one another, but we also kind of learned a lot about where everyone's passions and skills were. Um so, before we actually took all the saplings in the Thunderdome, uh I wanted them to stack rank one more time with all this new information, but this time I gave everyone a prompt. And the prompt looked something like this. And it it really is this concept of you know, out of all these different ideas, which one of these could the team you know, knock out of the park, so to speak. You know, and I think that's goes back to one of my fundamental beliefs about

giving you the best chance to make a game, is you know, make the game that already leans into all the skills and passions that your team already has. You know, like why go off and try to build a game that, you know, may sound great on paper, but the team isn't enthusiastic or, you know, doesn't necessarily have the skills to make it.
[snorts]
So, we did land on a game and this was the seed version of the game. So, so I'll show you the sapling as well, but the seed version was a dungeon royale and this was kind of you know, some of the wording that we had in there, which is this whole twist on the traditional dungeon crawler. So, the idea is that you're end up as this prisoner of this demon and you're fighting to survive and escape this dungeon. So, very Diablo-esque, right? And you would [snorts] explore the dungeon, gather loot, and then decide if you're going to cooperate with the other players or betray them and then reach the over

theme first. So, kind of this crazy betrayal PvP PvE game. When it moved to the sapling phase, it became cult. You know, because now all the team has put in their own creativity into it. And you know, it still had a lot of the similar elements, but now it was a procedurally generated dungeon crawler and the idea now was players must escape from the clutches of an evil cult and find a way to stop it from summoning a demon. And then along the way, players would find weapons and loot that would grant them powers. And then when all when all players have the same goal, they may choose to cooperate. Sometimes the right choice is to band together to defeat the demon. Other times players may increase their odds of surviving by killing a fellow prisoner and taking their loot. But players must decide who and when to when to trust in the end only a handful of players will

survive, escape, and emerge victorious. And this was just kind of you know, kind of the theory of maybe what the camera angle would look like.
[snorts]
So at this point, you know, because it was nearly unanimous, the team was really excited and we're really ready to move forward and start making this game. But there is one thing I always know about when you're starting a game, the game that you start with a vision is not going to be the game you finish with.
[snorts]
So if you're making a really new game with a new vision, I think one of the trickiest things to do is where to start. Uh you know, I think and I think one of the real challenges is if you're doing something really new and not derivative, uh you can't really just start with the waterfall schedule and imagine that

you're going to get there and plan out all the features in some sort of order. So really uh I've kind of started thinking about it in a different way over the years. So what I think the first approach is is to really try to find the minimum lovable game.
[snorts]
And another way to maybe think about it is like if you can really look at the entire vision of the game, like how would you build it from the inside out? Is another way to think about it? So like if you imagine this whole game one day working, you know, what's the core experience that everything else is going to build on top of? You know, and it's and it's really got to be able to think about it cuz if if that one part isn't great, then you know, everything else that layers on top of it isn't really going to work either. You know, I know this approach is maybe a little bit different than the vertical slice, you know, which I think is more helpful if you're pitching a game, less

helpful for building a game. Um but with this approach, I'll just give you a couple other examples from past projects. So, I think Hearthstone is really easy example to pick out because it already is kind of 2D. So, you know, they were really able to find the game so much in a flash prototype. You know, so they created all the card rules, were able to really to play it in flash, um and really found what was really fun about the game. And I wouldn't say an easy way, but a let's say an easier to explain way. Uh but then you know, if you get to let's say a much more complicated game like World of Warcraft, you know, we knew that was going to be a really huge world. So, in that case, we were really kind of looking for um what was the core quest adventure loop, you know, and there's this area in the you know, in the human lands called Northshire Valley. So, we really wanted to make sure that was working really well before we started building all these lands, you know, across the entire game.

[snorts]
With uh what was with our game, you know, Colt, which one day would be Arcanum, you know, I think what we really identified was the combat was going to be super super key. You know, especially since, you know, we knew we were going to have dungeon crawling elements, but we really wanted team-based PvP. So, we went on a journey of very different prototypes. You know, I think at first we started with much more of a Diablo-esque top-down point and click. Uh but you know, we really just couldn't get the responsiveness and the fast-paced team coordination that we thought was going to be key to making the game great. Uh we evolved it to more of a Battlerite kind of moba esque sort of control scheme and you know it was better but it just still didn't feel like it was going to be great. And then we also experimented a little bit with Dark Souls. You know, that was like on the zeitgeist at the time

but I think while we got some interesting ideas from it, it clearly wasn't going to be the foundation either. But then one of the days are someone on the team actually hacked the camera a little bit so it was more top-down and then made it so you could spin the camera on the axis and that's really when we found something really interesting and special.
[snorts]
And we started playing around with the new camera and controls and the responsiveness, you know, we kind of knew that this was it. You know, and we felt like okay, you know, I guess fourth time's the charm. But the thing was, you know, we've been prototyping for a long time and our engineers have been building a network model for that early product, you know, the first approach. And the engineers came and explained to us that they would actually have to need

to rewrite the entire network layer to be more of a predictor predictive client server architecture similar to OverWatch. Um which was obviously going to be a lot of work. So, you know, they they asked the question of well, what would you guys do if we couldn't get the combat to work from a network standpoint? Uh and then really without skipping a beat, our designer said, we'd pick a new game.
[snorts]
So, they went out and uh did the estimates on how long it was going to take and they said, well, it's going to take 9 months not just to rebuild the network layer, but it also we said take down our whole engineering team. So, it meant none of the rest of the team would be able to have engineering support for 9 months while they did this work. So, again, without really having to to think too long about it, we said, "Well, can you guys start tomorrow?" And we made the hard decision.

Um but I honestly think sometimes this is where teams can get in trouble, you know, because uh I think it'd be very easy for us to say, "You know what? We're just going to try to make it better as we go along. You know, we don't really want to bite off that year. Uh you know, maybe we can maybe it'll be good enough, or maybe we'll be able to polish it in alpha." You know, but I think what often happens is if you don't do the hard things first and you do the hard thing, you're not going to be able to catch up later. And I think, you know, even going back calling back to Titan for a second, I mean, I think that was one of the big core missteps that we made was not making sure that we found a core game loop before we started scaling the team.
[snorts]
So, a lot of what I think this this kind of phase of a project is uh is almost instead of calling it pre-production, I almost think of it as you have to imagine the same game

together with your team. So, you're having to like make game references, writing design documents, all kind of this effort so that we're working towards this the same vision of a game that doesn't exist yet. Uh but I really like getting away out of that phase as soon as possible and moving into the next phase, which I really think what I like to call is like playing the game to make the game phase. And once we, you know, were able to finish that rewrite, we're able to now start playing the game and starting to get that sense of it. And this is really when we started our uh daily play test ritual.
[snorts]
And what's really kind of cool about this phase of development, you don't really need design documents anymore because the game itself is a design document. You know, you're just you know, if you have an idea, you can just put it in and you know, it really cuts through, you know, all the to be honest and all the noise because if there's any debate, you just put it in the game and test it out.

And you know, we really became, you know, very play test driven. You know, so what would happen is we would start with the morning play test and then we'd have a post game huddle. We everyone would give feedback and then you know, the developers could go back, make some tweaks, some changes and the next morning you're playing a better version of the same game. And this really just kind of starts becoming the cycle for a very long time. Um but then something very unexpected happened. And there is this global pandemic. And overnight, you know, we went from an in-person studio to being a remote studio. And uh you know, that was
[snorts]
very very challenging for us. But I think one of the uh things that really saved us was the game itself because we were already in this morning play test loop. So it really was a way for us to really stay connected to one another because every day you would get matched with a couple people across the project that maybe used to be right next to you,

but now we're in kind of separate work streams and you barely got to see anymore. Um so I think it really was the thing that allowed us to continue to develop the game even during that really tough time period. And it was kind of sometime during the pandemic before we'd really gone back to the office at all that you know, there's this subtle shift that was starting to happen on the team. You know, the team started becoming upset when we canceled play tests. And you know, it wasn't like it was on any specific day. Um but you know, it was kind of this thing that started as a whisper, but eventually became more and more unmistakable for us. You know, we had the sign it, you know, the thing had happened. The team had fallen in love with the game. And I think it was really at this point we started gathering a lot more momentum and a lot more alignment. You know, because now we were kind of in that loop of the team was now working on and playing their favorite game every day.

So, you know, to go back to my Odyssey metaphor for a second. Uh there is a lot of things that obviously happened since then because that was back in probably like 2021. Uh and we still had a lot of things to overcome. You know, there's plenty of challenges, pivots, evolutions. Uh I don't imagine this is the slide where the future, you know, Archon postmortem will go one day that gets more into the details. But today I actually want to just fast forward now to where we're actually at. So, you know, like I have mentioned, the game is now called Archon, uh which is by the way, I could probably do a talk just on the journey of finding that name, but I'll leave that for later. Uh and I'm not going to pitch to you guys the whole game today because we we have videos up, you know, that does a much

better job than I would do anyways. Uh but if you want to go up there and wish list for us, that'd be well appreciated.
[snorts]
Uh but what I will do is just because I've shown you guys now a kind of some of those seeds and saplings, you know, I'll just maybe show you some of the things that have changed since then.
[snorts]
So, now instead of escaping a dungeon, you know, like it was in Colt, you actually ascend a mysterious tower. So, each match begins with 15 teams of three entering the tower at the same time. And then to move forward, your team has to survive the floor, claim a beacon, which usually means winning a PvP showdown with one or more teams. And then this process will continue until there'll be only two teams that reach the top and will resolve in a final 3v3 showdown. So, maybe another way to think about it is it's like a big deadly game of musical chairs.

And then also, you know, making a new IP is very, very hard. You know, originally Colt was in kind of this moody living fantasy world. Uh but we had this moment in development where one of our artists posed this question, what if everyone was dead? And it actually took us in a completely different direction for the franchise. And where we landed was, as a player, you play as an echo, which is a soul bound here to this afterlife because of unfinished business. You're carrying a memory that anchors you to this place. And those anchors are what recreate the tower each cycle, pulling fragments of people, places, and moments from the living world into existence. And then all the weapons and relics and artifacts are actually tied to, you know, choices that matter deeply in

another life. And those memories manifest as the powerful abilities of the player in the tower. And the world within the tower is always shifting, you know, because memory itself isn't stable, so neither is the tower. And then we've kept the dungeon crawling elements, but we've definitely shifted it and evolved it to being very PvP first. So, as you move through the tower, you are constantly looping looting and shaping your build. And you get items by fighting monsters, completing quests, opening chests, buying items from shrines, and and often by taking them from other players. But, you know, the PvE is not the goal of Arcron. You know, it really just exists to create pressure between teams. You know, in an RPG you might complete a quest safely with a group, but in Arcron that same quest might draw another team to get stolen or turn into an ambush.

And then, instead of players starting as heroes, we turn the heroes into items. You know, and most of these items uh belong to our world heroes, which we call Eternals. Uh and each of them have a special ability ability, but are also imbued with the memories of those Eternals. But, what it means is like each game a player can create a new play style on the fly. But, also from a world standpoint, if you collect four items that belong to the same Eternal set, you can actually transform into one of them for a brief time within that game. And this is like our current lineup of Eternals. So, you can kind of see you know, a little bit of Colt still in Arcron, but you can also just kind of see how much things evolved and shift just through kind of all the the odyssey of discovery that we've had along the way.
[snorts]

So, you know, this might be where I could end the talk, right? Because we've survived Mirkwood, you know, we've gone on our odyssey, so this would just be normally the happy ending. Uh but, I did leave an important part out.
[snorts]
Uh we're not actually to the finish line yet. You know, this might be a little bit of what development look like, uh but the thing I haven't really talked about yet are players. So, uh another concept that I like to bring up cuz, you know, we obviously are very play test driven, and developers are great play testers because uh you know, we really care about the game. We can look at things through the lens of developer eyes. Uh but we also know exactly how the game works, and we tend to play very nice with one another in a PvP game. So, we end up also being a very broken audience.

So, like something I I have always thought is really important important is starting to really iterate as well with your future players in your community. So, and this can again take shapes in different ways on games. So, if you think about like the inside out concept, there's another way you can kind of look at it. So, for us, uh you know, like few years ago now, we actually found um some play testers that were very highly skilled just so we could see what highly skilled players would do with our combat and item system, so we could really build the competitive depth of the game. And then we've kind of slowly exposed the game to widening circles of players. But the thing is, when you start to doing this, uh players are going to be pretty vocal, you know, and they're going to have opinions, and they're going to expect, you know, their opinions going to be heard, and they don't always have the uh

the best way of explaining themselves. So, uh one example once heard I think is kind of funny, is happened during like World of Warcraft. Which um you know, during the World World of Warcraft like alpha beta test, we were testing the game like well over a year before we eventually launched it. And one of the things that we did, much like I mentioned in Archon getting competitive players, in wow, we were really connected to a lot of the high-end uber guilds in EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot, and we invited them all over. So they created you brought their guilds over and you know, played the crap out of World of Warcraft. And you know, one story I thought was really interesting is there is this very influential player in one of the guilds and his character name was Indalamar. And uh you know, he was you know, the best warrior kind of in the alpha and would create these videos

showing, you know, his techniques and showing how good he was at the game, but also how powerful warriors were. And you know, [snorts] I had to think long and hard about if I was going to make a nerf to the warrior or not. Which eventually I did. Uh and then Indalamar was so angry and indignant, he wrote a 16-page blog post uh with all the all the reasons why this was a mistake and then didn't just want to call my boss, the CEO of Blizzard, but his boss at our parent company to get me fired. So, you know, I I think what's We just kind of got to realize about players if, you know, you make something you really love, um they're going to love it, too, and they're going to care really deeply deeply about it. Uh in this particular case, you know, I got to know him and I ended up hiring him as a designer at Blizzard. And he had a

very long successful career. Uh they even made a uh wow trading Card Game character out of him.
[snorts]
So, you know, I I just think you know, you really got to respect the players in your community, you know, because they're going to form opinions. They're going to talk about the meta. They're going to complain when things are off. They're going to teach one another. They're going to criticize your game, and they're also going to defend it publicly as well. You know, and and this is kind of the framing I really like to think about it is, you know, you know, the game, when it really works and becomes part of someone's life, uh you know, they're they don't really experience it as your product, they experience it as as theirs. And, you know, that's really uh what we want for Orc Run.

So, present day, you know, is Orc Run going to be a forever game? Uh I would never in a million years stand up here and say that is going to be so. Because it's it's not up to me, and it's uh honestly not up to my team as well. And, it's also, you know, a very different market nowadays. You know, there are hundreds of great games competing for attention right now. Players are skeptical, attention is fragmented, and the bar is sky high. And, if you're building in a a new PvP live service game, that's even harder. You know, ultimately, it's up to players. You know, there's hundreds of great games out there competing for their attention, and we have to prove that we're worthy. Uh and you know, but we do believe in the game that we're building. And, this is the year we're going to give it our best shot to find out if

player find the players who love it. And, we have a long road still ahead of us. And honestly, you know, we're excited to see where it leads. So, um I think something that I've had to come to terms with over my long career is that you only get to make so many games. You know, and the journey that Arc Run has been on has been extremely long one. You know, I've learned much about game development and more importantly, I've grown so much as a leader for my own team. You know, what I hope for everyone here at GDC is that you get to make something that fills you with the same sense of pride when it gets out into the world. You know, something that you love dearly, something you're willing to expose to reality, and something you're humble enough to let evolve. As game makers, we don't get to decide if a game lasts. At best, we get to earn the right to find out. And I know the industry has changed. It's a lot harder to break in.

And development costs have gone are going up. And we've all seen how many layoffs have happened in the AAA space. So, to those of you who are maybe executives or business leaders, I'll leave you with one final thought.
[snorts]
And that is that if you actually are incredibly if if you actually create a game that truly endures, it's really incredibly difficult. And if you're fortunate enough to launch one of those games, the rewards can be extraordinary. But in my experience, if you built a game like that, it also means that you've built an incredible development team. And personally, I think the game team is more valuable than the game itself. So, treasure that team, nurture that team, give them the autonomy to keep taking care of the players. Because the thing that made the game special in the first place was the

people who built it. So, thank you all and have a great GDC.
[applause] [applause]
Thank you for joining us this morning. Please start making your way over to South Hall. The Festival Hall will open at 10:00 a.m.
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Mhm.