Notes from GDC 2026

Skye Winters
2 days ago
14 min read

In the following post, I recount my notes from my time at GDC 2026. I break down each of the talks I attended and elements that I feel will be useful in my future endeavors.

Introduction

So, as I’ve done for the past few years, I once again hopped on a plane and traveled to San Francisco for GDC. I would say the starkest difference of this GDC compared to past years was the bonds I’ve begun to form with others. In the past, I’ve been pretty much a fish out of water, going from one event to the next trying to meet and connect with others. After all that work, I’ve now managed to build up a network of people that I enjoy spending time with and was fortunate enough to have the chance to reconnect with several of them. So overall, this has felt like a very welcoming and hope-inspiring trip that if nothing else, will help carry me through the remainder of this academic semester.

However, I did not spend my time simply reaching out to people, I also had the chance to attend several very informative talks given by industry experts. While not all of them I see being of use to me at this time, several I do feel will be greatly beneficial. So without further ado, lets get into some of the presentations.

Bringing Narrative to ‘Disney Dreamlight Valley’ by Josh Labelle

In this talk, Labelle discusses how the Disney Dreamlight Valley team approaches creating new content for their live service game that remains faithful to the source material and can be outputted quickly. Some of the key takeaways are as follows

Characterization through dialogue
1. They discuss how characters can be conveyed based on whether they use
  1. Pronouns vs names
  2. Rhythm of speaking
  3. First person vs third person
  4. Word choice / vocabulary
2. They mention when adapting from source material, you should try and study the script through writing it out as you watch / consume the material to train yourself to maintain their voice
Content Pipeline
1. Creative Brief: In this step, they determine what is the core goals they are trying to accomplish so that all future progress can be in respect to these goals
2. Brainstorming: In this step, they come up with some potential ideas of what they could do to accomplish these goals and things they are interested in trying to incorporate
3. Blurbs: In this step, they write short summaries of the quests involved. They included the overall narrative of the quest as well as potential gameplay involved. These are internal and do not include creative writing
  1. Ex. {Character} needs {XYZ}. Player helps character by {gameplay action}
4. Paper Design: In this step, the initial layout of the level is made to determine potential bugs, risks, issues, and if initial goal is being satisfied
5. Kickoff: In this step, the rest of the team is brought in and provided with the pitch for the content. The team discusses any updates / adjustments that need to be made.
6. Greybox: In this step, the team begins creating the initial prototype of the idea. No story is present to evaluate if its fun without story
7. First Writing Pass: In this step, the team begins incorporating the story into the game.
8. Playtesting, Polish, and Integration: In this step, they begin to iterate on the project until it reaches a satisfying point
9. Final Reviews: In this step, they do one final check for any last remaining changes needed.
10. Debug: In this step, they perform verification to make sure that the project is at a releasable state
11. Release: In this step, they release to the public and perform any hotfixes as needed
12. Launch Lessons: In this step, they reflect on the process for things that can be improved / changed in the future
General Advice
1. Use budgets for determining what can / can’t be done and plan accordingly
2. Always reflect on if the original goals are being met
3. Automate anything that can be automated and prevent people from trying to remember steps
4. If something is unusually hard to write, something is wrong with the quest flow
5. Make checklists to prevent things from being forgotten
6. Use checklists to align team goals
7. Don’t make changes just because your bored and used to the current gameplay
8. Leave a lot of buffer for when things go wrong
9. Don’t eat your buffer with polish

Etudes and Actors: Owlcat's Tooling for Highly Branched Narrative by Alexey Drobyshevsky

In this talk Drobyshevsky presents the alternate method his studio uses for achieving highly branching narrative. The tool was made for the pathfinder games and the goal was to address the problems that occur with branching narratives. Below are some of the key takeaways

Problems with Branching Narratives
1. Not knowing where flags are used
2. Not knowing how to use the flags
3. Incorrect setting of flags
4. Game states not being set correctly
5. Difficulty debugging issues with flags due to gap between setting and evaluation
6. Difficulty fixing after gameplay began due to being in player saves
Core aspects needed
1. State tracking / viewing
2. Hierarchy for logic
3. Relationships between flags
4. Searchability of internal state
5. Ability to weight flags against each other
Etude Aspects
1. Comments
2. Parent based activation
3. Conflicts and priority rules
4. Links between nodes
5. Conditions for nodes
6. Brackets to activate world state changes
7. States: Not Started, Inactive, Active, Awaiting Completion, Completed
Update Algorithm:
1. Check nodes waiting for completion
2. Gather nodes needing state change
3. Filter out children of inactive parents
4. Order by descending priority
5. Resolve conflicts (deactivating non priority)
6. Filter out children of inactive parents
7. Deactivate etudes needing deactivated
8. Activate those that should be active
9. Repeat if convergence not met

Flavors of Challenge: The 8 flavors of difficulty and How They Can Be Combined to Make Better Difficult Games by Brett Moody

In this talk, Moody presents a breakdown of difficulty in games based on his perspective designing and consuming highly challenging games. Below are the key takeaways

Flavors of Difficulty
1. Reasoning: What to do
  1. Critical Thinking: Arriving at the truth through information
  2. Deductive Thinking: Drawing conclusions from set of premises
  3. Pattern Recognition: Finding meaning in data and responding to it
2. Physicality: How to do it
  1. Hand-eye coordination
  2. Strength
  3. Balance
  4. Accuracy
  5. Agility
3. Randomness: Luck based
  1. Input: Starting state randomized and player adapts
  2. Output: Players actions are evaluated using randomness
4. Endurance: Ability to sustained concentration / skill over extended duration
  1. Sprint: Intense concentration w/ breaks
  2. Marathon: Intense concentration over extended period of time
5. Out Game Resources
  1. Money: How much money you can spend on the game
  2. Time: How much time you can play for
    1. Setup: Preparing game to play
    2. Play: Time spent engaging with challenge
    3. Tedium: Time spent doing trivial tasks
    4. Waiting: Waiting for game to respond to input
  3. Knowledge: Real-World information you know
6. Representation: What the game represents
  1. Does not align w/ values
  2. Obscene content
  3. Boredom
    1. Boredom Tax: Grinding / other tasks that make you play through boredom to progress
7. Interpersonal Skills: Interacting with other people instead of systems
  1. Opponents
  2. Team-Mates
8. In Game Resources: State of player progress at any given time based on player interactions
Advice
1. Opposite of success isn’t failure, its giving up
2. Protect player from Hopelessness or Apathy not failure
3. Pair real growth with virtual growth
4. Provide Parallel challenges to allow player to pivot
5. Make sure to provide different flavors to avoid boredom
6. Rewards should give momentum and direction
7. Reward all effort, not just victory
8. Foreshadow big challenges early
9. Make retrying easier then quitting
10. Avoid time taxes
11. Never restart from zero
12. Give suffering meaning
13. Give players a common enemy
14. Establish narrative stakes
15. Marketing should line up with the difficulty provided

How Word Games Make You Feel Smart by Rohit Crasta

This talk discussed Crasta’s insights from making word games for New York Times. This was a micro talk so not many takeaways.

Players avoid explicit clues, use implicit instead
Use gameplay driven hints
Create optional layers of challenge

Five Obstacles to Successful Generative AI Games by Jesse Schell

This was also part of the microtalk. In this, Schell presents his 5 obstacles he sees challenging LLMs from being incorporated into games at run time

Fears and Backlash
Non-Deterministic Behaviour
Gameplay emerges from limitation, no limits breaks gameplay
Requires players to interact creatively
AI’s reach of what it wants to do in a game exceeds what it can do in a game

Supporting Thousands of NPCs in 'Kingdom Come: Deliverance' & 'Kingdom Come: Deliverance II' by Petr Smrcek

In this talk, Smrcek discusses how his studio approached maintaining thousands of NPCs running at the same time during gameplay without crashing the computer. The techniques they used were:

Levels of Detail:
1. Close: Any NPCs within a set distance from players, fully simulated
2. Middle: Any NPCs within the next set distance from players, partially simulated
3. Far: All other NPCs, abstractly simulated, no images / textures, teleport based movement
Moved simulation to a separate thread

Why good games Fail: The Startup Audit Every Studio Needs by Lucien Parsons

In this talk, Parsons gives his honest takes regarding what indie studios should do to evaluate their game and game development process based on his experience as a fractional COO using an investor due diligence inspired model. His two core goals are to present an information quality framework and a studio self assessment tool.

Types of Information
1. Signal: Directly answers the question
2. Proxy: Related but one step removed
3. Placeholder: Gestures at an answer, doesn’t answer it
Categories of Studio Health (w/ example question)
1. Founders & Team Fit: Who makes decisions
2. Game Product & Market Fit: Describe your target audience in one sentence
3. Production & Operational Maturity: What’s your hiring plan
4. Go-to-Market & Community Traction: Where do your players live online? How will you reach them
5. Business Model & Financials: How many months (runway) do you have? What happens if the deal is late
6. Company Vision & Narrative: Describe the company’s mission and 3-year plan
7. Legal, Compliance, & Platform Risk: Is everything the studio needs to operate legally assigned to the studio
Self Assessment Tool: https://tally.so/r/ZjOjlo

Creating Player Expertise Microtalks by Monica Fan, Ian Schriber, John Ryan, Michael Jones, and Lauryn Ash

Below are the notes from a series of microtalks. The first two were especially engaging while the last two were less helpful.

Cognitive Load

Key Points
1. People can usually focus on 7 things +- 2 things
2. Types of Load
  1. Intrinsic: What you are trying to remember / focus on
  2. Extrinsic: What you also need to remember / focus on for the intrinsic load
  3. Germane: Trying to figure out what to do
3. Aim to increase Germane load and decrease extrinsic load
4. If you exceed load capacity, players can temporarily function before experiencing cognitive fatigue. This often is followed by rage quitting / anger / frustration
Advice
1. Use just-in-time tutorials to minimize amount of load demanded
2. Simplify mechanics / control
3. Pay attention to symptoms of cognitive overload while playtesting

The Game Tutorial Matrix

Key Points
1. Aim not for less tutorials, but the right tutorial at the right moment
2. You failed at teaching a mechanic if a player doesn’t understand why they failed / died
3. Importance
  1. High: Elements core to central gameplay loop / unique to game
  2. Low: Elements that enhance the gameplay loop without drastically changing it
4. Urgency
  1. Now: Gameplay progress blocked without knowing it
  2. Later: Gameplay progress is not blocked without knowing it
5. Matrix
  1. Now - High: Learn through doing
  2. Now - Low: Reinforce / Remind players
  3. Later - High: Show the players how to do it
  4. Later - Low: Cut / Hide, let world / menu / items teach it

Burnout

Keep in mind players are probably burned out from life so take it easy on them.

Narrative Coherence

Players who are confused / disengaged will stop playing

Spreadsheet Microtalks by Guillaume Pierre, Tyler Coleman, Ridima Ramesh, Everest Pipkin, Mike Rossmassler, Tomo Moriwaki, and Cheryl Platz

Honestly, not much super useful stuff, just was a fun talk to go and see.

Key Points:
1. Online games can load spreadsheet data at runtime using API calls
2. You can use keywords in spreadsheet data to modify behaviour
3. You can make prototype cards using spreadsheet data to speed up process

Rules of the Game 2026: Revealing Techniques from Resourceful Designers by Richard Rouse III, Xalavier Nelson Jr, Ashley Ruhl, Theresa Duringer, Joel Burgess, and Steve Meretzky

The following are my notes from a series of talks from senior designers. Honestly, each of them were very cool to watch!

Interpret Trust as a Currency

Key Points
1. Think of trust as a currency you have with players
  1. Gaining trust
    1. Following conventions of other games
    2. Providing Difficulty levels
    3. Adding Accessibility Features
    4. Backwards Compatibility features
    5. Undo buttons
    6. Honor Systems
    7. Support Lists
  2. Spending Trust
    1. Mechanics players may not like but that benefit the game
2. Make unclear game rules as visible as possible to players
3. Some genres have different trust starting points (ex. F2p games with low trust)

Don’t Drown in Innovation

Key Points
1. Start with the question of how much innovation you want to include
2. Aim for about one third the same, one third improved, and one third new
3. New Stuff
  1. Benefits:
    1. Different
    2. Exciting
    3. Can own a new genre
  2. Cons
    1. Unfamiliar,
    2. High Learning Curve
    3. Unproven Gameplay
4. Ask who do you expect to play your game, that influences how much innovation you can include
5. Newness doesn’t just come from gameplay, can also be factors like release platform or input modality

Ask the Question, Better or Different

Key Points
1. When bored by gameplay loop, you are prone to change it and usually not for the better
2. Distrust your discontent
3. Steps
  1. Question the urge to change
  2. Evaluate the change
  3. Escalate the idea appropriately
4. Use the double it / cut it in half trick for tuning

Create “Fake” Choices that Matter

Key Points
1. Choices matter if they feel meaningful in the moment that you make them
2. Choice Types
  1. Diverging: Presents choice that makes a major change in the game
  2. Illusion: Presents choice that doesn’t make a change in the game
3. Illusion choices can be strengthened by allowing room for player imagination / roleplay or to subvert diverging system expectations
4. Choices can inspire reflection, that allow player head cannon by leaving space for player

Let Your Players do the Cool Thing

Key Points
1. Developers are in marketing now
2. Algorithms are causing people to filter their world
3. New information may now be treated hostilely not neutrally
4. If people don’t give a shit, they won’t spend time / energy on it
5. Communicate w/ players what the experience and intention is
6. Get player on board with what’s going on
7. For players to care about spoilers, they need to give a shit about it in the first place
8. Atomized Design: For every aspect, ask if this is something people care about and should be told about

QA is Your Strongest Design Ally by Carey Littlefield

In this talk, Littlefield discusses how QA can benefit a design team and what they need to do their job properly.

Key Points
1. Too many developers incorporate QA too late in the process for any changes to be made
2. Three principles
  1. Qualified Analysts: Need trained QA team members that your team can trust and that know what you’re trying to do
  2. Integration w/ project: QA needs to be evolved early and often to help with iteration and understanding
  3. Integration Impact: QA will determine if goals are being accomplished and that its actually fun to play
3. Aspects needed to work
  1. Visibility of timelines / status / expectations
  2. Access to team documents and data
  3. Clear communication of changes, revisions, and iteration summaries

Educator Game Research Download by Julian Frommel, Erik Harpstead, and Regan Mandryk

In this talk, Frommel et al. discussed several papers in the game literature space to help catch designers up on what has been going on in academia. Below are some of the papers of interest:

Dominic Kai et al. 2024. Dives into investigating juicy effects and seeing how they influence player experience. They found that there are situations where it should and shouldn’t be used https://dl-acm-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/doi/full/10.1145/3723498.3723720
Prabhav Bhatnager et al 2025. Explored emotionally impactful experience through game feel. They found 9 aspects of games that can cause emotionally impactful experiences https://dl-acm-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/doi/10.1145/3723498.3723808
Mackenzie et al. 2024. Delves into how to test with kids since they are historically very difficult to get good feedback from. Findings include asking why the kid had a spike in heart rate or why the kid made a :( at a given point https://dl-acm-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/doi/abs/10.1145/3677112
Dmitry Alexandrovsky et al. 2024. Players want to have clean ways of off ramping from games. Players greatly prefer to have player agency respected by presenting clear ways to exit https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3677066
Waldenmeier et al. 2024. Presents findings on how cheat codes can allow players to self regulate and reduce pressure when facing in-game features https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380526759_Cheat_Codes_as_External_Support_for_Players_Navigating_Fear_of_Failure_and_Self-Regulation_Challenges_In_Digital_Games
Jon Mella et al. 2023. Shows how players use game immersion from cognitive involvement or challenge can help with recovering from post work https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370180534_Gaming_for_Post-Work_Recovery_The_Role_of_Immersion
Rafael Alves Heinze et al. 2024. Found that stress recovery can occur from action mechanics by providing psychological detachment https://dl-acm-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/doi/abs/10.1145/3677070
Min Zhou et al. 2025. Emotionally challenging narratives aren’t just for younger audiences. Older players actually enjoy engaging with difficult themes https://dl-acm-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/doi/full/10.1145/3706598.3713899

Backed by Data, Built with Care: Telling Authentic LGBTQ Stories in Video Games by Sabrina Mah and Blair Durkee

In this talk, Mah and Durkee present GLAAD’s findings in their recent gaming report regarding the LGBTQ games market.

Key Points
1. 17% of gamers identify as LGBTQ, 13-17 year olds are at 28%
2. Queer gamers play more hours per month then non queer gamers
3. Queer gamers appreciate different types of queer representation and this contributes to their purchasing habits
4. Adding any mentioned queer character or option for player choice makes 39-63% of LGBTQ players more likely to purchase your game
5. Non-queer players who are less likely to buy games with queer content also are older and spend less money / time on games
6. Simply stating a character is queer is not enough
7. 50% of queer players feel more accepted in games the in real world
8. 56% of queer players depend on games to get them through tough times
9. 66% of queer players agree that games allow them to express themselves in ways that they don’t feel comfortable doing in the real world

Tool Design Roundtable Day 2 led by Robin-Yann Storm

In this roundtable, we discussed several topics related to tool development.

Resources
1. Figma
2. Miro
3. Mostly mixed between Unreal, Unity, and in house
Tools Made
1. Google sheet api to pull dialogue from sheets
2. Custom dialogue pipeline tool
3. Automated error message report creator to send to tool team (error, image, stacktrace)
4. Amount of money spent on a meeting calculator
5. Auto game screenshot taker that captures various points in your game
Tool Customization Features
1. High Contrast
2. Color Blind Friendly
3. Font Size
4. Dyslexic Fonts (best is comic sans)
5. Light vs Dark mode
6. Short cut override
Advice
1. Talk to users to see if they need new tool or just new features to an existing tool
2. Sometimes purchasing a tool is the more economical choice
3. Let team know your open to adding accessibility features

The State of Mental Health in the Games Industry by Kelli Dunlap and Elizabeth Kilmer

In this talk, Dunlap and Kilmer present their findings regarding the current state of mental health in the game industry.

Key Findings
1. Only about 20% of participants mental health quality is good or better
2. Most participants feel uncomfortable disclosing to manager or HR their mental health
3. 94% of participants reported actively experiencing at least one burnout symptom
4. Average number of burnout symptoms per participant was 7 out of a possible 12
5. Top Five Stressors
  1. Job Insecurity or financial pressures
  2. World Events
  3. Workplace culture of leadership
  4. Workload or deadlines at work
  5. Health concerns
6. Core burnout features
  1. Exhaustion
  2. Ineffectiveness
  3. Cynicism / Detachment
7. It's important to have dedicated time to conduct work
8. Mental health apps are not desired
9. Being able to shift schedule around is very helpful

Flipping the Script: Overhauling Sucker Punch's Writing Pipeline for 'Ghost of Yōtei' by Roland Munsil

In this talk, Munsil presents the approach his studio took to overhauling their narrative pipeline in order to streamline the process and fix several issues from their first game.

Issues w/ Previous Method
1. Writers wrote in google docs, uploaded to lines database, which designers pulled into the game
2. Writers felt disconnected
3. Large amount of time hooking up dialogue to game objects
4. Multiple sources of truth
5. No version control
Solution
1. Combine it all into the game directly
2. Made a front end tool for less technical writers
3. Tool made using Dear ImGui
4. Based on Final Draft for familiarity
5. Used a robo voice feature to test dialogue lines
6. Allowed writers to test their own work in game at run time
7. Allowed for exporting script for voice acting
8. Indicated what dialogue was directly hooked up in the game
9. Status flags to mark current state of a line

Professional Game Writing roundtable: Best Practices and Issues (Presented by the IGDA) led by Justin Bortnick and Jon Myers

In this roundtable, the discussions mainly focused on two topics:

AI vs Writing
1. Nearly all writers rose hands about concerns / disliking GenAI
2. GenAI is not good at comedy since it works off predictability so can’t do surprises well
3. Main Objections
  1. Environmental Impact
  2. Rights Issues
  3. Creativity Issues
4. Majority of writers feel very strongly in their position
Tools used for Interactive Fiction
1. Lots of support for Ink, then twine
2. Twine may cause a predisposition to make a widely spanning narrative
3. Recommendation to try Ellipsus https://ellipsus.com

Conclusion

Overall, this was quite the productive GDC as my notes above show. Can’t wait to start getting back to work this week and to attend next year!

Skye Winters

Notes from GDC 2026

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