GDC 2025 Session Viewer
Game Career Seminar: STR, DEX and INT: A Genre-Spanning Way to Think About Gameplay
Joseph Shely (Senior Game Director, Blizzard Entertainment)
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, Indie Games Summit Pass, Friday Only Pass - Get your pass now!
Track: Game Career Development
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: All
Join Joe Shely as he presents a simple framework for classifying games based on the way players interact with them. This framework uses the well-known RPG shorthand for character attributes Strength, Dexterity, and Intellect to describe gameplay more specifically than genre labels such as Action Adventure, Metroidvania, or ARPG. The talk also explains how to use the framework as a lens to evaluate your game and your audience, whether to add particular features, and to think about what kind of gameplay your players expect.
Takeaway
Attendees will gain a new way to describe and contrast games within the same genre and across genres, and tips for using this framework to make decisions about prospective features for their games.
Intended Audience
The talk will be useful to new game developers for any discipline, press, marketing, and anyone else who talks and thinks about games and the industry.
