It's the first day of August, and that means we're just weeks away from the big GDC Europe 2016 conference in Germany. For attendees looking to sharpen their design skills, conference organizers are pleased to announce an expert roundtable on big-budget game combat design.

In "Creating Conflict: Combat Design for AAA Action Games, Michael Barclay (Lead Level Designer, Cloud Imperium Games), Sam Howels (Principal Designer, Deep Silver Dambuster Studios) and Pete Ellis (Level Designer, Guerrilla Cambridge) will discuss what it takes to create combat scenarios for AAA action games.

The panelists, each of whom has some experience with the challenge, will take audience members through the various steps and considerations when creating action-packed scenarios for first- and third-person action games.

Check it out and you'll learn about pacing, flow, challenge design, environmental balancing, difficulty tuning, tutorialising mechanics, narrative context and how emotion is reflected within the environment layout. Don't miss it!

More details on this and all other announced talks are now available in the online GDC Europe 2016 Session Scheduler, where you can begin to build your conference week and later export it to the up-to-the-minute GDC Mobile App!

The conference itself will take place August 15th and 16th at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost venue in Cologne, Germany.

GDC Europe 2016 will also continue to offer business and matchmaking opportunities to all attendees with a developer-focused Expo Floor area and networking events throughout the show. For more information, please visit the GDC Europe website.

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