GDC 2024 is part of the Informa Tech 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.

View, browse and sort the ever-growing list of sessions by day, time, pass type, topic, and format. With this Session Viewer, you can view session and speaker details for Game Developers Conference 2024.

You will be able to build your schedule with the GDC Mobile App. The GDC 2024 app will be available for download in Apple Apps and Google Play late February 2024.

Sessions do fill up and seating is first come, first serve, so arrive early to sessions that you would like to attend. Adding a session to your schedule does not guarantee you a seat.

Design at Record-Breaking Scale in 'Sky: Children of the Light'

Nicolas Oueijan  (Senior Technical Game Designer, thatgamecompany)

Location: Room 301, South Hall

Date: Thursday, March 21

Time: 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm

Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass - Get your pass now!

Topic: Design

Format: Session

Vault Recording: Video

Audience Level: All

When bringing together over 10,000 players, the task of creating a coherent—let alone emotionally resonant—shared experience can seem impossible. What does it mean to assemble so many concurrent players, and how do developers design for them? At this scale, even the smallest decisions have colossal repercussions.

To create a journey that everyone enjoys, not in spite of but rather thanks to, the presence of thousands beside them, everything from player mechanics to game visuals needs to be reshaped to harmonize when resonating en masse. These were the unprecedented challenges that thatgamecompany faced when creating the record-breaking AURORA concert in Sky: Children of the Light.

This talk walks through the design process from conception to ship, highlighting major design challenges, solutions, and learnings that can inform similar large-scale projects.

Takeaway

Attendees of will leave with design strategies for how to effectively design for supermassive group sizes of over 10,000. As dealing with concurrent player counts of this scale remains a largely unexplored area of design, this information will help attendees gain first-mover advantage by learning from thatgamecompany's experience.

Intended Audience

This is for game developers of all skill levels and curiosities, though it primarily caters to designers and teams who aim to design emotional experiences for large groups. Fans of AURORA's concert in Sky: Children of the Light and newcomers alike will enjoy learning how such an unprecedented event was created.



Connecting the Global Game Development Community

GDC Vault icon
Game Developers Choice Awards icon
Independent Games Festival (IGF) icon
GameDeveloper.com icon