GDC19 Flash Forward: Design Philosophies and Lessons from Developing Merge Dragons!

hi We're dragons is this game that came from seemingly out of nowhere to define its own genre with his strange mashup of puzzle like gameplay level simulated creatures and building up a camp and then it takes this concept of merging and jams it very intentionally directly into the game world what's up with that how the session will answer what's up with that and where did emerge dragons come from and then we'll look at some of the design philosophies that help shape it into the unique and wonderful experience that it is from how we think about merging everything to why the design team worships discovery to the idea that merge dragons should actually be more of an activity than it is a game and why and since it's free-to-play we'll also talk a bit about how the game makes money including one balancing adjustment we made which was pretty simple but that fundamentally changed how players consume the game and in effect rocketed it from mere failure to great financial success and that for me as a designer

was both astounding and somewhat unnerving so we'll talk about all that and plenty more but my main goal for the session is for you to leave inspired if by the end you are inspired to think about design in new ways and you're even more inspired than you already are to make fantastic games then the talk has succeeded so I hope to see you there it's Friday 10:00 a.m. bring your friends let's pack the room it'll be great