Why Make Games? Lessons from Frostpunk and This War Of Mine

[Music] hello everyone my name is Miko Kazuki and I'm creative director at 11 bit studios I'm sure like Marsha when I are director a bit yes and so we are together kind of responsible for the game development at 11 bit studios so we want to talk today about the lesson from Trust Bank and this war of mine and ask us a general question of why to make games and who is 11 bit studios we are a company from Poland that started about 10 years ago we started for person with Jagger's makovski but exhausted chanock and me as partners currently we are about 100 people our two recent project are Frost Bank and this were of mine and those are the

games that we will talk about so we like to think that what we are doing is called meaningful games and with such a word it's always a question what do we mean by that well what are meaningful games and I think there are a lot of ways to see what can be meaningful from different approach and we also understood you have some different ideas about what we call meaningful games but let us first sum up and one thing that is important for us is that we are are very emotional about games and about playing games and those emotion that especially those emotion that breed thoughts is something that we want to have in our game which means that we would like to have a motion that are not shallow but that came up from mostly decision and subject that we touch and we also think that it would be great if

games could communicate some values some some some greater values in the process of making them and and through the message they they Center the community we really look for fresh experiences and not only like fresh ideas but also things that could probably expand the game language about like for example making empathy games like this for mine which is kind of not a mechanic but something that is really important in the game and we try to make those games with kind of close to life message something which is insightful and something which is well précised we we could kind of put it in one sentence and if we look up the games that we made for this wall of mine we had like two message it was at war not everyone is a soldier and that what always happens at

somebody doorsteps which actually mean that we want to make a game about civilians with first bank that was society survival and the last city must survive which also kind of was meaning that we'll make a game about society and the cost it based for survival okay we will switch now for few minutes so why we make those games that that mijo told you about we will start with this world of mine because to be honest this presentation first forced on us to question ourselves why we made this games so I just wore mine you know when I recall from the beginning of of my every career let's say it's career or early days in in development it's probably all for you the same I just

love to make games and we all love totally to make games and we love it for the creative creativity and also to express ourselves and to stand out but and this love for games and also the innovation behind the games was behind also behind the vision why we created 11 bit studios because we wanted to express and we wanted to innovate at the time that we started working on this world of mine we are after a few games we already finished I think Anna Molitor and some other other mobile games and we after anna-molly anna-molly - we understood that we could deliver something that is well well well thought-out innovation we could do an innovative game and we started working on some other project it

was called shelter and afters I think eight months of the development we we are at this stage that okay this is good game playing this is a good game but there is something like black ink you know and we just couldn't agree to this approach that we will create mechanic gameplay based game only and we I think unconscious and conscious and consciously said the bye bar higher for us because we were looking looking for freeing off from some other health hide for us and we just scrapped the project and we we understood that we need emotions in our games we need to define an emotional games with find and emotions and find something that we would like to and would love to talk about in those games and you know we scrub the shelter and to be honest it

was visually it had almost the same camera it was also very cross a cross section what is it was completely different game and we went back to the drawing boards and we we asked all people in the team hey guys let's think of this of this game what we'd like to talk about and I think this is this is one of the moments in our development that we that we that we had luck to be honest we had luck that we had such a wonderful team and that we are open-minded and at this time Greg our CEO once came to to the company and he said guys no I was winning this I was reading this this article about civilians in Sarajevo and Bosnia Herzegovina and it was it was a really strong emotional piece and he he

told us about it and he said hey what do you think about it and when he told it we immediately understood the huge importance of what we could do and what we could achieve with this game we understood that wha-hoo before us there was a project that could change our lives and it was you know instant instant revelation so we thought ok let's do this it's a huge and risky project to be honest until the end of production until the day of the lunch we didn't know how the people will react to this game it could be just you know cool artistical peace and without any significance to the game development in as a whole but we went for it we knew the risk but also we knew knew this importance and we had this message that

make how are already told you that was easy to understand and overall I think it had value it was a huge value for us it was value personal value artistical value and emotional value and we saw this value for our next project so I think that was why we why we started working on this for mine so how we made it will just present you some some ideas when we made it but why I will start with some two basic basic concept that we follow and and the concept that agree while we are doing games first of all when you are doing something innovative when you are doing some new game in our case meaningful game it also always also you know for us it always touches you know completely new areas and of getting development so if you follow innovation you must agree that it will be a constant R&D process

from the start till the end you will constantly you know as I love to say say and sale and unexplored oceans and you must agree to this and second second concept that we also follow is we you know the studios that that make games ok let's make an the most beautiful game that we that we have or let's let's decide that gameplay is the most important part of our game or the art or something different on the music for our studio it's different because we we think for us the mood the experience is the key mode has this bound between game playing at art and also music I haven't written it down here but everything must create a mode and experience and this is what we purse when we create our first

prototype we first from the early days of the development we first to find the mood in our games and what's funny is that when we okay we when we have let's say we are in the middle of the of the production we start to do our focus tests on the other players so we our Qi is it's inviting people to the studio and we have those you know questions after after the tests we we have some let's say how would you like to value the graphics how would you like to value the mechanics and how would you like to value mood and tons of different questions for our games when I recall it was for this world of mine and Frost Bank always the highest ranked question was the mood so I think we we do it in the neck in in the right direction

okay so let's go and see a few things about the design that we did in this war of mine and it's like chammak said when you start upon a subject like the war you usually had some kind of concept in your mind you've seen some movie you read some book and it's good to kind of empty head and to make to you know like the saying that you cannot feel a glass that is not empty you have the first empty the glass and we did research and I think this is a very important part of the project the other thing that we talk later will be the core kind of system of players part and decision and I will show you also some kind of design consequences of some design choices that we made so it of it's pretty much obvious that you will better understand the reality of the game if you do the research but you will actually grab this

mood that chamak is talking about and you will grow up a lot of really a lot of detail in nuances that you haven't been aware before and I think that's very important especially when I have new people coming to the project usually they have some different approach to the game and they first have to kind of redo the research that we did read some book view some movie to kind of get better understand what was the reality at this time and the other thing that you get is you get facts about the world and what's interesting is this that this fact actually define a lot of situation that you will have in the game so if for example we have snipers that operate during the daytime and constant sharing that is also operating during the data we know that civilians will be active at night and during the night and he actually goes to the design of having people staying during the day at home

and getting active at night out of it's their home and another if you have no tap water we have no electricity then you have to get water and kind of I know create some I mean cook some food without electricity so it's goin mediately to some kind of okay so I need suburbs to scavenge to kind of get like a water collector or maybe create a storm for burning burning food and burning books so this facts are not only fact that kind of go into narrative but they go pretty much into the design and another thing that we kind of observed when we are doing research is that basically this war is not one constant narrative event that has a beginning and end but it's a situation that is made up of stories who affect certain people like a story of a mother who lost the child or

a story out of of true grandparents that they don't know what to do during the war time so the research kind of had impact on how we have structured the narrative in the game so making it like a puzzle built up many many many stories put together in one more in one picture of the war and if we go down and if we look at the corner of the gameplay we we get to a situation we were talking about the player part and the decision that means making and one thing we learned about the war is that it kind of affects very much ourselves and change us and the question is really how much of what we believe we are are we going to keep and protect Jewish during this hard time so for us it was really important that the player is free to choose his own path and that this part will kind of lead him from kind of being a villain or

being a hero doing something great or maybe something very bad so this was achieved of course through decision-making but another important thing in this decision-making in this world of mine was that he must face the consequences so he is able to do whatever he wants but he must know what was the consequences of Zach and he can see or he can be informed or he can be kind of informed by the people from the shelter because we were we wanted not to judge the player by the decision but we wanted to create a moral ward that will kind of feedback him about what he is thinking about his decision-making and this was very important to get this look okay choose your own path make your own decision but kind of face the consequences and see how the world react to your actions and

most of these feedback was actually made through kind of questions like should we have been doing this or grandpa why do other people what do people kill each other and what we wanted to achieve we wanted to achieve some kind of interaction with the player when we will ask him questions that he will have to answer himself in his head and kind of think of what he's doing kind of think of where does those action leads him and for the last I would like to show you how some initial kind lights affected some design rules because I think it's also interesting that usually when we try to define a subject we are working a sequence of ward or short sentences and then those things translate into game design and for example when we define that this will be a game of civilians we were thinking okay it will be a game about people like us normal people and

what that mean term of game design we actually had no level apps we played the game it was really luring to kind of you know improve your skill in some place but we throw it away because this is not what's happening in real life and we also were very load but having some kind of LPG like inventory so we had like initially a few slots for for the item that you can take from the servants to your shelter and then you could have a helmet or you could have a Kevlar vest or you have some pick locks and it was very tempting to make separate slot for this but we said no we don't have separate slot like that and if you wearing a Kevlar vest is probably heavy enough and you can't drink that much stuff from the scavenge also the personality of the people they have skills some skills are very useful like someone is quick or someone is quite strong but they are also useless skills like I'm good at

maths I mean what does it give me if I'm good at design and more happens nothing we have of course personal personal belief and psychological traits of the character so not everybody's an angel there are people who are egoistical there are people who are altruistic and they all kind of give you feedback depending on the individual nature we have people able to suffer trauma trauma like the post-traumatic war syndrome in the game and for example another kind of design decision that was to be made based on the fact that there are people like us is that it's very easy to be killed in the game and it's very easy to kill and the combat is rather kind of chaotic sometimes you don't know when the build hit you and this is also kind of a reality what we were showing and the same comes for level design if you're at war and you enter somebody's house you basically an intruder you're

not so money - who came to do a quest so there are no quest in the game you you won't have a people standing at the door and saying okay great that you came there are soldiers in the back please you know get rid of them and there is also no treasure sometimes there is a scene when we have a woman who is bullied by the soldier and we can help them but if we help them she run away she she don't give us a diamond for doing that so so we also opted to not to design workarounds in the game so there is you cannot kind of satisfy both side or do things without suffering some kind of cost but we also change to choose to for example not to to have gore and violence as a way to build emotion because we told that it's not the proper way to actually do that it's it's more important to kind of have the feeling of grief or the feeling of loss of being helpless in a situation instead of having you know pictures of you know

scenes of war that we sometimes see in the movie with really strong emotional impact but a bit shallow in the term of game design and finally deficit Valley in Canada this game it's both the Deaf of of the people who who are in your in your shelter as finishing the game by failing because I mean a lot of these things even kind of contradictory to some design rules or things that we are used to to making games and the question is why love that why we did that and the answer in my opinions we did that because we wanted to allow the player to have an experience of war as a civilian instead of giving the opportunity to just win the game reading a good book with a moment of failure is also a great experience and we try to kind of mimic

that in this war of mine some of this experience we also try to do to create it via grab the art of the game so again a mood that I told you so this bound so everything art had to do was to amplify want to amplify everything we also wanted to have a distinctive character of the game have this message around the game and do it so find the wise to do it for the small team that we that we were right unbagged anthem so first of all when we when we wanted to create a style for the game we wanted you know that's what I told you just just a second ago we wanted to amplify when the to emphasis this

situation the game was about about this about this villain so we selected the color selecting the public but the palette of the of the game and really in we amplified the hopeless hope hopelessness we amplified the the serious situation you are you are then back there also we we wanted to create this there's let's say this I can I sometimes call it in drawn reality the situation when the this the this look that is not realistic and not drown it is like we call it like a like so we we like to tell we like to call it a novel another look just like reading a book we were trying to purse this this approach of something to drawn read wrong and drawn like a stories in in this game

also we selected this view to for the game to show the whole community we wanted the player to not focus on the specific one character in the game we wanted the car we wanted this the player thought to see the whole the whole community a small community and think of them as a whole and not to focus on one one single person so we heard also an inspiration for it like what you see here is from from take on me or you can solve it and like like dice writes music videos as you can see it's also real and not real we were trying to find this the this middle point with whether art art style we we also looked at how we can have this harsh look of the game this contrasts the harsh look of the game one of the inspirations was what was Banksy doing what he is right now doing with

all the colors so strong black and white and some some small touch of color some kind of mood creating approach but this as I said harsh also we we had a huge amount of research and and we we also viewed this you use a lot of gravity to to to communicate with with a player because you know words are easy understandable so that the style was one thing but the true approach was the I think even most most important for us maybe it is not understandable by the player but it was very important for us as a developer the only this way we could really feel that yes we did it the right way so thank starting with in the beginning you know first of all we thought of okay so we have the game about the civilians

and as we have said it we can war always happens at somebody's doorstep so we can happen right now we could happen just right we are here so what we did we scanned ourselves our friends the people we knew and we just scanned it dirty low poly dirty low poly scan with Kinect and just as we were standing we put ourselves into the game of course we just added some backpacks to make it all feel feel real with the scavenging but but we scant ourselves just like we will stand in there so it was true for true for us okay this is a game about civilians it can be about us we also photographed ourselves the way that we were standing we you know we we one went one day we really when we are taking photos of for the for the game we just ask people in the studio and some

other people hey could you just stand behind this wall and open your eyes and close your eyes and that was it we did it we did it instantly without any makeup it was just as we were standing so there were no preparations no as I said makeup no you know direction we just hey stand close your eyes open your eyes and that's it was just like an in natural real world just like now and as you can set see we will choose Church which we've chosen different people the people we knew our security guard at the office when our accountant is also in the game the designer because you know Edward there are random people and random stories random deaths and one random tragedies and at the end I think we delivered the message we the civilians at war and and I've and to be honest I'm

really happy that we did this game and I'm also happy to this stage that I don't think I would change anything in this world of mine I'm not saying it's perfect but this simplicity and this message is I think should be untouched right now okay so let's move to Frost Bank so why would why did we make frost Park at the you know at the moment that we were working on this world of mine we already we still haven't finished this world of mine and our second team already started working on our next game and the history repeat itself because we were doing something called industrial me how we told you more about it but at the end the story short this game sucked but it's fact because we were tired after this war of mine we were very

mentally tired we didn't want it to do this hard mentally you know mentally tired game about such strong emotions about the stories about the strategy we didn't want it to do a next game about it so we thought hey maybe we will do something gamers some gamers game with what a cool idea cool gameplay but you know at the end it's just sucked and we not I think it was very important moment for the for our MV studios because this was the moment that we realized hey from now on we will do meaningful games this was the moment that changed the company change 11 with studios we understood that hey we can't do another game without having this message inside because it's just isn't our DNA and we shoot for any other new project we should purse for this message and first for this meaningfulness so

have this goal of telling something to the players and having this value I was already talking to you so we found the game and we found the message it was about society survival and it was setting mood so perfectly you will see it some of course this game was also really well tailored for for the studio as the studio was back then because we weren't also that huge I think that the dev team was about in 20 to 30 people back then and we knew that we should pick a project that will learn us a lot that we will scale us but also we will be able to deliver it the games also had some cool cool things about being very understandable and the last thing is I think it's also why we decided to do two to make this the game even bigger is

that we really learned a lot on this world of mine and our marketing was really getting so strong that we believed we will deliver the message and even even putting much more money into the production and making this game even better we knew not hey we know we have the message we have the great team the whole team was really really great and you have the great marketing so we will communicate everything to the player okay so how first bank and again after after after the kind of failure with an industrial we we went back to the drawing board and we focus on the mood on what this game will be about and a stomach set it's bond between gameplay and art fellas oh you can have a screen shot of frost bank it's for those of you who don't know this is a

kind of a sim game in in a survival environment of very Frost and cold winter is practically the last city on earth but the game is actually not only about surviving economically but mostly about how you will shape the society and how the society will survive so kind of getting a bit back to redefine the game we had to scrub the first proton this was very good decision but what we were looking for and what actually we find we were looking for strong emotion we couldn't find that in a previous prototype a very big sense of involvement in gameplay and a sense of purpose something that will make us wanna play this game over and more and we were looking for a meaningful subject to talk and we kind of had a brainstorm in the company a lot of concept but what we kind of defined is we have an extreme winter we have the last city we have

tough people and we have survived war and adaptation and deer's is basically what answer the strong emotion and sense of the involvement and all the other hand we have this society we have its adaptation again we have the decision that we will make with consequences the way it we will shape it but the variant question is okay so how much we will sacrifice to survive with this society and again we have strong dimensional and a meaningful subject so that was basically the kind of redesign of the game that we made at the first step okay there was just some more few steps to find out the problem is we were a small studio and we couldn't go for many prototype at the same time so we had to kind of map all the system in the game like the society economy but also the decision making process the temperature level etc and start building y21

and we go for some very first prototype of first bank which was played on this kind of cards with d1 is for example house one so shaping the society is basically all first point is about and what does it mean shape shaping means kind of changing giving it some different characteristic that it has initially and it's back to this key question of how much are we willing to survive or maybe if surviving at all costs is really vaulted and there are a few things I will talk it's just a bit of the the whole design and the whole mechanics that's in the game with regards to society but I think these are the most important concept hence let's look at the trees trees of adaptation the tree of Hope and the tree the tree of fate and the tree of order and what you can

see over here is a tree of order is basically some kind like a skill tree or a decision tree that you make you you kind of sign-off orders and that will become laws in your city and it's built around a kind of progression that the most basic law that you undertake they are pretty much in both system very positive stuff if you go with order you start giving protection you start making some kind of morning gathering to inform the people and get better organized if you start with faith you have four chapels you have all kinds of prayers and these are good this is the beginning of making the system and these are all positive and then when you go a bit up you're kind of in the middle of the tree you have things that doesn't look so bad sometimes the name may be scary like I

don't know fate gods but on the other hand we have guards at the shopping mall they are not scary and you have things like prisons which are pretty much okay we all have prisons right now and this is kind of a middle ground one the decision is not yet very bad in terms of influencing the society but it's kind of up to you how you will use it later in the game and when we go even further we started getting things like propaganda certain like a pledge of loyalty or a forceful persuasion so this tree is kind of going the dark side from the light part to the dye the dark part and it's up to you I mean this is a bit counterintuitive because in games usually when you have a skill tree at the very end you receive a big prize it's not like that in France back at the

end of the tree you receive a very strong tool to influence the society but it's actually something really really nasty and we're coming to a statement that actually in frost Bank not signing a law that push the system further is quite a valid decision to be made it's quite valid to stop at the level that you feel comfortable with and try not to go further so it's not matters only what law your sign but it also matters whether how you use them if you use them or if you abuse them and this is kind of a mechanic that we introduce that for example if you have guards you can stop this person doodle crow each time the people protest but doing that means that your guards will feel kind of allowed to perform the peaceful operation or on the

own behalf so we kind of during the game measure how you are using the abilities and the shaping of the society actually happened at a moment when the law you have introduced the concept that you have introduced in your society starts to kind of live their own life and it all begins by kind of creating some kind of split into society so for example on the screen you have a woman who was assaulted it's after the signing of a law pledge of loyalty and it's a woman that has been assaulted by her neighbor who accuse her of informing on him but she hasn't signed the pledge of loyalty so he is not guilty but the trick is that the society is already split into two different sides those who like the kind of law and those who don't like and this go further and further until

people's the society start to shape to get a shape that you kind of might not accept or will not be comfortable with and what I wanted to talk more also is that we try to by addressing all this hard subject we try to be conscious about the message and we try to kind of being very careful about how we shaping the the communication what we are saying and there were months of polishing the message during the company but they were also this question of hard subjects like should we talk about cannibalism this is something very nasty but on the other hand it happens it happens for example during wartime during long siege of the city in winter and soldiers started eating horses and they start eating rats and did maybe earth sometimes somebody eats some other people so the question was not how to not to talk if not to

talk or sweep it under the carpet but how to talk about them how to make this similar to real life and for example as it go for cannibalism it kind of made it a kind of event that happened in your situation where the people are really starving for a long time and they really kind of forced to do so and this is a small event that you can actually close your eyes and say okay I didn't see that or we can protest and say no that won't happen in my city and because Frost Park is also a game that kind of touch all those objects it's still a dystopian game of kind of fictional reality but we felt compelled to kind of make an end quote and kind of sum it and if they play a kind of cross the line covered or gone too far with with with shaping the society and paid up to high price for the society survival we wanted to stress that up we wanted to say hey guy across the line

that's a bit too far but this is also a moment when we think that many people may kind of ask the self question why why why do you say that why did I really and they start to kind of remember and and find out if they did oh they did not so again we have this in the art the art art section in game as it is so important here for us so how we approach it we first of all we looked at our at our game we thought about our game and we we created a list of objectives what is it for this is our this was the situation we were thinking about this way okay so let's let's say this

hypothetical situation what we would like our gamer to say when he sees our screen screen of our game and we wanted to imagine okay what we want him to see in our game and then what he want to want what we wanted for him for his for this player to tell us about this game and those were the objectives so what I'm seeing I'm seeing cold I'm seeing city I'm seeing serious game and so on and so on so we've listed the things that we wanted at the end to have on the screen on each screen of our game you wanted to see this maybe not only each but as a whole we wanted this player to see those you know key words we call them ejectives we also also had some kind of course product guidelines and stuff like this so we we we had this Bible of how we

would like the player to receive the visuals of the game so the second thing is okay we wanted to understand what does the code mean we for the for the whole time we were researching it and and stuff like this but you know we during the production it wasn't made on purpose but it just told us a lot about the situation so which we understood what cold is about I personally like hiking and like I like hiking in winter and during during the production we've also been to the you know rather high mountain in Poland and there was where there were really really nasty temperatures then and the cold was so terrifying and it was such it was the situation you you could couldn't do much with it and it was so overwhelming

around you we had frost bites and stuff like this and when we then came to the studio we said oh wow we were really again are doing a really serious game and it's called you know you can imagine what cold is so it's also a plus for a game to be easily imaginable so then we thought okay from the visual standpoint how we would like this game to be what what is also important for us we wanted to to have this distinctive look for for for our game and wanted to have this look for the whole time and wanted this player to remember Frost Bank is this game and wanted have the situation would have the situation when when he sees the screen display er says wow this is frost man so as you saw Michael already showed you the the the paper prototype then we've made concepts then it was our

first playable prototype as you can see it's very different from where the game ended but still the whole kee-kee art element was there and and this and in the center we had this generator and that's how it finished we have again we have the hall we have the center of a generator we have this radial system and stuff like this so we have this key art and key look for the game we have this ejectives we knew what we would like to feel at the end how what we'd like what the player would like to feel at the end when he sees the game and then we then we have this this problem okay we aren't that huge and we won't be able to do everything with this game we won't be able to have this this the the option to for example zoom the camera totally close and see all the people walking around in frost Park so

we had to decide we had to had create a conscious decisions or how we'd like to split the game and how we'd like to approach the game and on each of these approaches on the three layers we wanted to have the purpose so first of first view was the CT view for of the game and as you can see it was for the building management and world changes and how we realize it we wanted the player to see called steampunk wanted to see CT and wanted to have this see our unique art system so as you can see the camera is set in the in the certain point we never go back to come too close to the to the to the characters in the game we have the city it's a city builder game you can manage this you can you can operate on this you can see the city changing you can see the architecture so this this layer of this of the of the art was for the city

the second layer was for talking about the society and its problems and this is the layer that we that we decide okay this is the layer where we will show people the real people but we will approach it with this way so we it won't be so heavy in production so we did so we find out the style for it we realize we want to be able to do it real time and we focused on showing the emotions of the people on showing the situation's the the game has to has for you ready for you and the the third layer was a what was a map layer and it was we want to have this feeling that this game is not just a small hole but there was a whole world around it and there is this epic world you can also explore and it was

for this and and and this world was for you to to have a bigger breath and to you know can rest a bit go out and rest a bit and we found the look for it the way we could emphasize the cold and loss of the scale so I think we also delivered the message and I think this this game is of course you can tell if if we if we did it well but I think we we at the end we have the Society's rival game from the design and gameplay standpoint and also from the art standpoint so you already know why we made those games and how we made those games but I would like to tell you a bit more and just to spoil you just to give you some let's say maybe influence on you and tell you some some another idea behind my personal idea on how can you approach your your

own wise and why to make games so there are many wise you can approach the games from totally different perspectives you can make the games for your own joy you can make games for to talk about real life for fish experiences there are all wise but I will like to only tell you about one way that I'm finding very very close to me right now and it's how it's an idea of responsible development so where do I start we you all know that we are we aren't IT we are an entertainment so if you are in the entertainment we have movies we have books and we have games and all of these fight for one time because the you know this this user won't be able to stretch the time some when he decides that he

wants to have a love story this display we decide if you will pick the book on if we will pick the video a movie or he will and ultimately pick the PD game and it's not only my observation because you may be seen it but like Nintendo of America said recently I compete for time not against Xbox or Playstation so you know the huge players understand we are you know we aren't competing for the word about something we are just competing for this time and we need to have the value in what we give so if you look at this this way games I think would explore at the end on all genres of values or expel experiences to feel different users times and if we look at this games movies and books you know

look at ok let's deliver our origins values and experiences we can go further and ok so say maybe in the future games might be new books so you could pick the genre pick a love story pick a drama you get picket Rada G and and read it so played and if we emphasize the value in this statement we can go even further we can say that games might be new school readings and not only school readings for the students that's already what's already happening but we could it could also be in elementary goals we have those Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Alex wrote what a lot of the rings' a lot of school readings what if in the future gone home will be played on lessons and we will discuss about love and expect acceptance what if the last

of us will be at you elementary school and it will learn something I'm not saying it it's right now what I wanted to say is I would like to ask you and think you know I'm a father of three boys and at this stage I'm asking myself what the games what my kids will learn from from my games will it be meaningful will there be a part of the value would I like my kids to play my own games this is a question for you would you like your kids to play your your games will there be a value this is one of my personal personal why's why I think about new games I would like my kids to play games I create but you know this is my approach so I think you should all

think of why where is the value in what you are creating and why there is a value for you is it for fun right is it for your love for making games that's awesome but at the end think of the huge audience that's behind the games the whole games the whole world is playing all people around around this plane so there is a huge responsibility responsibility in games that you all are creating and make your own mark thank you very much do have any questions please ask

good hi thanks for the talk is great how much do you guys consider replayability when you're making your games considering how you have placed your values and such okay good question we do consider it but we not make a priority we think if we go for example with Frost banked and to replayability lies basically in kind of different scenarios you have a different path of choice like all the Fate and we also supply to endless mode thanks hello thank you for the talk when you guys were talking about the researching part to really get the mood of the game I was wondering how how many researches of like the current war do you have to

do to really get the mood what was that okay Rachel yeah sure it was basically all the designers we kind of make a collection of books that we want to kind of read of things in YouTube that we only watch of interview that we want to kind of do and we like splitting between all the designers in the team and kind of getting back with notes and comparing them and trying to you know get whole perspective trying to get out the essence of our findings together so the designers got together and they all kind of agreed okay this is the mood and everybody kind of agreed direction or is it I think with this war of mine yes it was exactly the case I mean we we will achieve this mostly to discussing between ourselves but there were also situation when for example I mean the

designers have definitely different personalities and we have some designers which were kind of very gentle and they created some level that a unique mood like the old cap level so it was like a mix of people putting together their ideas yeah thank you thank you hello I'm sure like anybody else here who's played Frost Punk my first playthrough went very badly but the second playthrough went surprisingly well at one point my first like person died and I got a message for it and it was actually that he had died of old age and he was thanking me for like making his life so good and I was really surprised by that because before then it

was a somewhat depressing game but I got that to that moment I was I didn't expect that to ever be in there so what made you want to put like moments like that in there good moments yeah yeah yeah we you know we have hope in frost bank maybe it can get big but I we made those because mostly there are some positive things that happen even if a very hard situation and maybe replying from another perspective I was kind of seeing some kind of documents on the war where there were people who experienced the water actually this was filmed during the war that was making joke of situation a very hard situation and I think this kind of you know positive elements of kind of humor maybe if it's

a dark room or these are things that keep us being alive and human even in the most hard times thank you hi I'm a Chinese player I tried to I think you might you might actually notice it's like four mostly from Chinese player community they like to gain but there is one part we really don't like it's the ending so some Chinese players toy like very detective Lee and crow maybe but in the end they make everyone survive and maybe you are judging like oh it's is that worse that and actually Chinese think some of Chinese think it's worth it I mean it's that sometimes we have to organize people that goes through that kind of decotis and then we can assemble something else but they don't like how they you judged in the end so what do you think about this I mean we were not aware I mean we were aware of that after

just we released the game that there is such kind of impression from Chinese people well I think it's kind of our voice as designers of the game and kind of a communication kind of a message that's you as well might not agree with so we didn't know the Chinese people won't accept that sorry that you did but for us what actually it was it was important to stated that for us it's crossing the line maybe that's a kind of cultural difference that we were not aware of well I mean it's like we are survivors of a lot of bad things and we call the night's the widow count so that's how we were made and this kind of people is seeing it differently anyway it's interesting hi so my studio

is currently work on a game that life this war of mine and Frost punk has to do with love making difficult decisions we've actually been playing your games as reference for our design philosophy recently so one thing that really struck us about the games is how well they make you care about playable characters and non playable characters you've just met so quickly is there any sort of strategies to employ to make sure that would happen I'm sorry can you please repeat the last part of your question question yeah so like how would you make players care about other characters so quickly well I think we don't have a recipe like we don't have kind of technological recipe together but I think the answer lies mostly in that we want to in our games create a sense of immersion in a sense of mood that we kind of make the

player care about what's happening and the other stuff is that most of the consequences as we are showing in the games they are they try to base of empathy they try to show some kind of SAP to influence that you have on other people's life and we kind of stick to that thank you [Applause]