Sprawling open-world games like Skyrim and Fallout 3 demand a great deal of development effort, and can be daunting to plan and create - especially when subject to the constant and often unpredictable flux of a game in development.

At GDC 2014, Bethesda's Joel Burgess took to the stage during the conference's Level Design In A Day bootcamp to share insights into the iterative approach used at Bethesda Game Studios to help their level design team plan, implement, test and polish massive amounts of content.

Burgess also explored how this approach allows the team to maintain their staff without having to hire and fire at the whims of the project cycle, which may help make Bethesda uniquely capable of shipping games like Fallout 4.

His talk offered a rare glimpse behind the scenes of Bethesda's production process, and now you can watch it for free over on the official GDC 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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