You've been logged out of GDC Vault since the maximum users allowed for this account has been reached. To access Members Only content on GDC Vault, please log out of GDC Vault from the computer which last accessed this account.

Click here to find out about GDC Vault Membership options for more users.

close

The Number One Educational Resource for the Game Industry

Session Name: Cursed Problems in Game Design
Speaker(s): Alex Jaffe
Company Name(s): Riot Games
Track / Format: Design

Did you know free users get access to 30% of content from the last 2 years?


Get your team full access to the most up to date GDC content

Overview: Game designers love solving problems, perfecting games until they sing. But sometimes you hit a design problem so thorny that you just can't find a solution, and maybe never will. This may be a "cursed problem": a problem with some inherent contradiction of goals. Consider the kingmaker problem. A designer wants to emphasize certain player skills, but also wants free-for-all PvP, which incentivizes politics in favor of those skills. Cursed problems like these haunt designers across game and genre. And somehow all designers have to deal with them.In this talk, Alex Jaffe (Riot Games) will present a theory of cursed problems. He'll show case studies of decades-old problems, and he'll explore the four design paradigms that have helped developers face these problems and survive.

GDC 2019

Alex Jaffe

Riot Games

free content

Design

Design