If you break down everything that goes into making a game, and improve each thing by just one percent, you'll have a significant improvement when you put them all together. This GDC 2025 talk from Studio Gobo's Lead Designer Adam Russell goes into detail about how to build marginal gains into your team's development process, and create a mindset that empowers individual team members to identify and action micro-improvements that, when combined, compound to create improvements that benefit everyone all the way from our dev team to our players.

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GDC Festival of Gaming

A GDC talk by lead designer Adam from Studio GoBo on applying the 'marginal gains' philosophy to game development, using LEGO Horizon Adventures as a case study. Borrowed from British cycling's transformation under Dave Brailsford, the concept holds that hundreds of small 1% improvements compound into massive overall gains. Concrete examples from the game's development include custom editor icons for enemy spawns, data table consolidation for challenge rewards, ledge-grab visualizations, validation checks for encounters, robust debug menus, and accessibility features. The talk also covers how to build a studio culture around marginal gains by celebrating small wins, empowering developers at all levels to identify friction points, and using feedback trackers and cross-discipline playtests as forums for surfacing improvements.

Building Big Impact, One Brick at a Time: Marginal Gains in 'LEGO Horizon Adventures'