GDC 2025 Session Viewer

In Arma's vast, open world, the path from player to creator is more than just a journey—it's a transformation that reshapes our very approach to game development and community building. This session is set to illuminate the crucial role of user-generated content (UGC) in pushing the boundaries of Arma, underlining its invaluable impact on fostering a robust community, the marvels of modularity, and ensuring the game's persistent charm.
The speakers navigate the intricate process of how UGC morphs ordinary players into architects of their own adventures. You'll get an insider look at how we craft Arma's expansive sandbox tool set and tackle the unique challenges that emerge when players tinker and toy, modding the game into uncharted territories. The goal? So that you can learn from our playbook of trials, and construct your own Lego empire for your players.

Takeaway

Delivering a moddable game strengthens its community, enhances the modularity of your technology, and ensures longevity.
Communities of architects are key to maintaining your game's popularity and profitability through modding, but be aware, that the desires of modders diverge significantly from those of regular players.
Modularity: The Good, The Bad, and The Bugs: Allowing users to express their creativity through modifying your game while keeping the product stable and performant requires adopting a modular mindset to development pipelines, designs, and code architecture.
From Oops to Ops: Provide a comprehensive sandbox tool set and nurture a community that becomes architects of their own experiences in your universe to increase your Live Ops span dramatically. Enable yourself to co-create with your modders under the banner of "Why didn't we think of that?".

Intended Audience

Producers who want to build their processes to make their games moddable, community managers planning for modding community engagement, and everyone interested in user-generated content.