GDC Festival of Gaming is part of the Informa Festivals Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

March 9-13, 2026
Moscone CenterSan Francisco, CA

Agenda

Crafting an Ever-Expanding Jianghu: Open-World Design and Sustainable Update Pipelines in 'Where Winds Meet' (Presented by Everstone Studio)

Beralt Lyu  (Lead Producer of Where Winds Meet, Everstone Studio, NetEase Games)
Location: Room 2009, West Hall
Date: Tuesday, March 10
Time: 12:45 pm - 1:45 pm
Pass Type: Festival Pass, Game Changer Pass - Get your pass now!
Audience Level: All
Track: Design, Production
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: Video
Audience Level: All
EVERSTONE STUDIO

Where Winds Meet aims to create engaging open-world play in a wuxia setting, a Chinese martial arts fantasy genre. While building free, immersive exploration, the game blends a romantic sensibility with a grounded sense of historical realism, shaping its audiovisual direction and overall player experience. As an open-world wuxia game, Where Winds Meet features several distinctive design approaches. Having both solo and multiplayer modes enables a flexible and uncommon gameplay experience. Meanwhile, such a long-term live operation model with frequent updates places huge demands on both content design and the production pipeline.

Join Lead Producer, Beralt Lyu, for a deep dive into how the Where Winds Meet team tackles the challenges of crafting wuxia immersion while integrating solo and multiplayer experiences. Discover how the team builds a production pipeline to support long-term live operations.

Takeaway

Attendees will gain insight into content design processes for crafting wuxia immersion, as well as strategies for supporting rapid updates within a long-term live operations model.

Intended Audience

This talk is for anyone who interested in tackling immersive Wuxia open world development and sustaining rapid content updates through live operations. It does not cover technical implementation.