GDC 2025 Session Viewer
Thriving Players Summit: Expanding Player Impact in Social Spaces
Andreia Goncalves (Senior Social Systems Designer, EA)
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Track: Advocacy
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: All
Multiplayer games often face a fundamental challenge: balancing player agency within social systems, which can foster deep and meaningful interactions and wonderful player creations, against the potential for abuse and disruptive behavior.
How can developers empower players to have a greater impact on their experiences while ensuring these spaces remain safe?
This talk explores the different ways players can impact the game world and each other. It introduces a framework for evaluating game features to determine the level of player impact they allow, along with the benefits and risks of various design choices. The talk also includes prosocial best practices to enable higher player impact while minimizing risks.
Based on a Polaris Game Design paper, this session aims to equip developers with the tools necessary to intentionally empower players while mitigating risks, to build more creative and self-sustaining social environments.
Takeaway
Attendees will walk away with a framework to analyze game features and designs by breaking them down into individual components to help assess the impact players can have when using them. Additionally, they will learn a set of prosocial best practices to mitigate potential risks.
Intended Audience
This talk is intended for game developers interested in creating multiplayer games and social spaces where players have ways to create, interact and impact each other’s experiences.
