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The Number One Educational Resource for the Game Industry

Session Name: Designing Grand Strategy: Making the Mechanics of Total War
Speaker(s): James Russell
Company Name(s): Creative Assembly
Track / Format: Game Design

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Overview:

Creative Assembly's award-winning Total War series has been at the forefront of strategy gaming for the last decade. Combining a grand-scope, turn-based campaign game and real-time battles with thousands of men, the creation of each Total War title presents formidable design challenges.

This session explores our approach to the design of game mechanics, and how we apply these principles in the development of Total War strategy games. Perspectives and debates on design problems we encountered are examined, including "realism", simulation versus game rules, mystery versus clarity, decisions and counterpoint, gameplay depth versus micromanagement, gameplay system dynamics and more...

GDC Europe 2012

James Russell

Creative Assembly

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Game Design

Design