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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.

From Soldiers to Superheroes: Designing Combat for 'Marvel's Midnight Suns'

Joe Weinhoffer  (Game Director, Firaxis Games)

Location: Room 2002, West Hall

Date: Friday, March 22

Time: 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

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

Topic: Design

Format: Session

Vault Recording: Video

Audience Level: All

The superheroes of Marvel’s Midnight Suns are very different from the soldiers of XCOM. Heroes don’t hide behind defensive cover in battle, they aren’t hindered by movement restrictions, and they certainly don’t miss 95% chance-to-hit shots!

Join Joe Weinhoffer, Lead Designer of Marvel’s Midnight Suns, for an examination of the core design principles the team at Firaxis Games used to forget everything they thought they knew about designing tactical strategy games and build something totally new and different.

In this talk Joe explores the origin story of Marvel’s Midnight Suns as a project and deep dives into the iterative prototyping and development of the core tactical combat systems, with a focus on using cards to represent hero abilities, handling movement and positioning for superheroes, and balancing the management of tactical resources.

Takeaway

Attendees will examine the origin, prototypes, and development of Marvel’s Midnight Suns to learn a set of high-level guiding principles for how to approach iterative design, with a focus on strategy game development and the challenges of launching a new franchise.

Intended Audience

This talk is most valuable for individuals interested in the iterative process of developing a tactical strategy game, but it also highlights general design principles which are applicable to all developers and genres. Familiarity with Marvel’s Midnight Suns or XCOM are not required.



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