When developing any game, especially a big-budget entry in a popular franchise, it's critical to have a series of core design goals, or pillars, that you can use as a guide to making decisions and defining what you want the final vision of the game to accomplish.
At GDC 2013, Blizzard's Jay Wilson delivered a postmortem of Diablo III that explored the various pillars Blizzard used to guide development of the game and how well the team accomplished each of them. He focused specifically on the ones they felt they struggled with and the game design lessons learned during those struggles.
It was a good talk, in part because Wilson offered examples of specific challenges of living up to these values, prioritizing them against one another, and evaluating how well they were accomplished after Diablo III was released.
If you missed seeing it in person, that's okay -- you can watch it right now for free on the GDC Vault's official YouTube channel.
About the GDC Vault
In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.
Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.
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