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Session Name:

Independent Games Summit: Challenging or Approachable? Pick Two

Overview:

You've probably heard this debate before. It's a common belief that challenge and approachability are incompatible that making a game more challenging inherently makes a game less approachable. And yet, we *can* have both! In fact, many recent indie hits are successful precisely because they thread this needle. In this talk, John Austin will break this problem down on a (not too) theoretical level and build a framework we can use to talk about difficulty in games. In the second half, he will explore concrete strategies and case studies from recent indie games that we can leverage to adjust approachability in our games without compromising on challenge or the inherent vision of the game.

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