See how Control’s Ashtray Maze was made at the GDC 2020 Summits!

Hey there game makers! The end of the year is nearly here, but GDC 2020 organizers are still working hard to line up a fantastic array of things to see and do at this premier game industry conference.This week the GDC 2020 Session Scheduler has been updated with a smorgasbord of sessions planned for the GDC 2020 Summits, those curated deep dives into specific pre-determined topics which all take place the Monday and Tuesday of GDC week.

For example, as part of the Level Design Summit at GDC 2020 Remedy’s Anne-Marie Gronroos will present Designing the Ashtray Maze in ‘Control‘, a rare opportunity to get an inside look at the making of one of this year’s most remarkable in-game sequences.

The Ashtray Maze in Control is a shifting, interdimensional maze, which the player blasts through with the help of a cassette player, In her talk Gronroos aims to walk you through its design process, the constraints of creating a musical sequence, how to gain flexibility through modularity, fast prototyping of heavily animated environments, and making the most linear section of the game feel both disorienting yet intuitive. 

You won’t want to miss it, especially if you have any interest in level design or Remedy’s approach to production. Find more details on this talk and many others in the (ever-growing) GDC 2020 session schedule, which now includes loads of intriguing talks across a number of GDC’s 20+ Summits.

And just as a quick reminder for you GDC veterans, this year all GDC content previously known as Summits, Tutorials, Bootcamps, and Dev Days will be categorized as Summits, to simplify and streamline your GDC planning process. 

By the same token, all GDC content that was previously branded “Main Conference” (encompassing six discipline tracks and the Advocacy track) is now known as “Core Concepts”, to clarify and emphasize the essential nature of these talks.