“Learning and helping them out, guiding them towards finding new features and learning more, that’s how a game should reward the players,” says Cities: Skylines designer Karoliina Korppoo. “It seems to be working quite nicely for us.”

Released earlier this year, Cities: Skylines did indeed prove to be a notable success for developer Colossal Order. At GDC Europe 2015, Korppoo ran down how the studio designed the game to be a latter-day SimCity successor, explaining how it was possible with a small team and limited resources.

She also shared lessons learned about the value of positively reinforcing players' preferred play styles rather than punishing them for not achieving preset goals, and opened up about how a robust modding community has helped Colossal Order update and tune the game.

Her talk was frank, informative, and well worth watching for free on the GDC Vault.

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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