May 30, 2006
Action Theater, 2nd Floor of the Metreon, 101 4th Street, San Francisco, CA, USA
http://www.igda.org/sf
REESTABLISHING AN ICON:
The Peaks and Pitfalls of Developing “Tomb Raider: Legend”
GUEST SPEAKER: Riley Cooper (Lead Designer), with Jacob Wendler (Art Director) and Lulu Lamer (Design Producer) of Crystal Dynamics.
When first presented with the challenge of creating the seventh Tomb Raider, the team at Crystal Dynamics had mixed emotions, due in large part to how frustrated people had become with the license. Driven by that shared frustration, they set out to make the Tomb Raider that would bring Lara Croft back to form.
Achieving this goal required more than the combined talent and passion of the team–it required tapping into people who still cared about the franchise, leveraging marketing to persuade disappointed fans into giving the new Tomb Raider a chance, committing to story (and Lara Croft herself), and focus testing the game like no other in Crystal Dynamics history. Their homework paid off, as Tomb Raider: Legend continues to garner praise from both fans and critics.
Join Riley Cooper, Jacob Wendler, and Lulu Lamer of Crystal Dynamics as they impart lessons learned while making Tomb Raider: Legend. They’ll discuss the challenges of developing engine and content in parallel, the effects of dividing design teams between system and level designers, and how they managed to revive one of the most well-known heroines in film and video games.
This event is free and open to the general public.
FREE: Tomb Raider: Legend Post Mortem
