The Life and Worlds of a Level Designer

[redfella]

I hope I don't catch too much flak for breaking this out into a seperate thread from other thread of the same concept. But here goes:

Some of you know I want to make a documentary about level designers. Some of you voiced concerns that I didn't have a premise or script to follow and therefore I was aimlessly milling about. In light of your comments I have created the following premise in order to clarify the intentions of this documentary. Note: this documentary will be put on youtube and I do NOT intend to make any money from it. I am asking for the communities help in making this film! Please read further.

I want to make this documentary about 'The Life and Worlds of a Level Designer'. I think I have a pretty good idea what that entails.

First you have the life of a level designer. For example, the lfie is about how absolutely ecstatic you are when you first find out about mapping and then the wet dreams that follow shortly thereafter. It's about the late nights of staying up until 2 in the morning, 7 nights in a row, for six months straight... just to work on your grand map ideas. It's about the complete and utter refusal to hang out with any of your friends and/or girlfriend, because, well, you got worlds to create. Your grade point-averages begin to drop, but you don't care. The life of a mapper is about sleeping in thru school or being an absolute zombie at work while you catch up on your sleep with your eyes open. It's about the shear excitement you feel when you walk through your first compile. Or the euphoria when you release your first map and play it online with other gamers. It's about the hopes and dreams of being able to map for a living and watching those in the community move on to professional mapping jobs and being genuinely excited for them. It's about the community itself which is a great resource for help and encouragement and about the dedication of community leaders to maintain and grow great websites pertaining to level design. Etc. Etc.

Then of course there are the worlds of a level designer. This pertains to the levels and worlds that are created by the mapper. Great in variety and size and shape and colour and esoteric ambiance are the many places that are created. Some are small and nifty. Others sprawling mega-metropolises. Some are withered and old and abandoned. While others are creepy and nothing short of disturbing. Some futuristic and clean; a spotless enviroment to make a bloody mess. And some that look like utter shitholes. These are the worlds we make.

I think that this film is really about any mapper who can relate to the premise written above. I'm sure that maybe not all of you have experienced the some thing, but I would wager to bet the majority has. I think there are a common set of traits that define a level designer. These are the traits and nuances that I want to capture in the film.

In summation, I've thought about this project in some detail and I think that the best way to present it to you guys (the community) is to make it a community project. Since that's really what it is. The documentary should be about the people's stories. Sure a little history lesson in the film would be helpful to get one's bearings, but to keep the attention of the viewer, it has to have a great story and/or stories. That's where I need help from you guys! I need help finding these stories. I can't create the stories from thin air . I need to hear them from the horses' mouth sort-of-speak.

If any of you guys out there can relate to the premise of this film, and wouldn't mind volunteering a little of your time, you would not begin to understand how much I would appreciate it. Just to even hit me up on IM for a little bit and talk about the project would mean a lot to me. I hope to hear from you guys! That is all.

MSN and email == eric_8051@msn.com

Thanks!

[GONNAFISTYA]

Will your documentary cover the negative aspects of the profession? For overall "balance".

Such as when level designers work on games/levels they aren't excited about, but are needed for the game/industry? Or the all-nighters eating cold pizza? Or the potential for burnout? Or for those poor, jaded bastards for whom level design is just "a job" (see burnout)?

I must say that after six and a half years of being "pro" and looking back, I didn't know exactly what I was getting into after more than a year of "mapping" (making my own maps and working on my own "dream levels")....particularly when making maps and endless changes/revisions to maps based on someone else's "grand design".

[fKd]

i was thinking about that point as well... the burnout factor must be quite huge. its one thing to be working hard on your own stuff.... but once ya start having to build based on others ideas the freedom and excitement must start to wain.. that being said... being a level designer is my goal in life and i'll keep on working till i achieve that... i dont know what it is about mapping but since that first doom level i made i've been hooked.

[pjw]

stuff

I agree with Fisty; the downsides are a big piece of the pie that should probably be at least acknowledged.

Don't get me wrong--I love my job, but nothing's perfect, and I suspect that newly-hired level designers sometimes become disillusioned with the realities of the industry if they go in with unrealistic expectations.

I'll shoot you some IM info sometime soon, and see if I have anything to offer that might interest you.

(Why the heck did you make a new thread for this?)

[Castle]

One thing that tends to happen a lot is you get guys like me who started out trying to push the envelope and be bigger and better than others. This tends to happen a lot with professional companies as well where they dont quite understand what it is they are really trying to achieve.

Making huge and super pretty levels that aren't designed with the desire to make the level cater to the player.. Likewise approaching game design in first person shooters with the concept that every hallway needs to have a cool moment and the more features you add into the game the better it will be. Every area needs to have one huge explosion or something.. You guys with experience know what I am talking about.

While the idea might seem good on paper.. You can have dozens of meetings to discuss goals like this.. In the end as both a normal or ambitious level designer or a multi billion dollar corporation its very easy to forget about the players ideal experience.

In reality one of the most important lessons as a designer you should ever learn is that you are creating something for the soul purpose of consumption. 99% of the time nothing more than mindless consumption. Its often best to expect nothing more from a player. Often times with out regard to anything but for themselves caring nothing about how hard you worked on the content, how many guns you made, how long you made that steam shoot out of the door as it opened or how many different bad guys you can run into.

Thoughts flow in a players mind in such simple ways.. questions just come out of the blue.
"Where do I go next?"
"I hate this door it wont open."
"I want to go this way... why cant I go the way I want to?"
"This part sucks because I died. I hate dieing..."
"What was I doing again?"
"Whats this over here?"

Meanwhile as designers we are like...
"Man this pillar is so awesome..."
"We just had a 2 hour meeting to discuss how to make this room more interesting. Gonna fucking add 12 more rocket launcher dudes and make the ceiling collapse and kill the player if he doesn't stand in the right place. ADD SOME STRATEGY..... yeaah COOOLL..."

*sigh*....
I am so guilty of this.... Both allowing it to happen and doing it myself...... I see it in just about every game I play too.... Sometimes your work will be better if you DONT crunch on it or stay up all night.... I only say this in response to the comments about staying up all night and losing lots of sleep when designing... That and to give an example of one thing I have experienced in my world of level design...

been awhile since I did a castle rant eh.. ( I say the above with absolutely NO direct references to actual projects or anything similar. I made up the examples while writing the post. )

[Kaz]

I enjoyed reading that

[spookmineer]

There are so many aspects I'd like to know from level designers...

The whole "map/eye candy" vs "gameplay" discussion is interesting.
As a mapper, you want to be proud of a map, so there has to be some eye candy. To keep a player interested after playing it the first time though, gameplay has to be at least ok.
This balance is delicate, I find. There are huge, awesome maps which no one plays because the gameplay is just not very good (you keep hitting your head on that beautiful arch, you get stuck behind that very good looking candle holder when you walk flush to a wall, you find yourself staring at that shiny piece of marble and get fragged once again).

So, there is one side that's interesting: how did they learn what they do mapping wise, how did they develop themselves, how many maps did they make prior to their first released map.

The other side is interesting too: do they play themselves (I think every mapper should at least know how a game works, you can't really make a map with good gameplay if you don't know the basics of the game itself, but maybe that's me...).
Did they read "Lunaran's Deathmatch Encyclopedia" and promode's "Competitive Level Design Guide", do they spend as much time to making those pillars look great as they do on map flow and item placement.

And most of all, how do they balance these two sides (or don't they, if not why not, etc).
Maybe some mappers are making maps for the beauty/art of it, but for those who want to see their maps on servers, how do they go about promoting the map they just finished.

There are loads of questions all having to do with the balance between beauty and gameplay...

[GONNAFISTYA]

There are so many aspects I'd like to know from level designers...

The whole "map/eye candy" vs "gameplay" discussion is interesting.
As a mapper, you want to be proud of a map, so there has to be some eye candy. To keep a player interested after playing it the first time though, gameplay has to be at least ok.
This balance is delicate, I find. There are huge, awesome maps which no one plays because the gameplay is just not very good (you keep hitting your head on that beautiful arch, you get stuck behind that very good looking candle holder when you walk flush to a wall, you find yourself staring at that shiny piece of marble and get fragged once again).

If you're asking what it's like as a "pro" regarding the "map/eye candy" vs "gameplay" discussion...it is always part of your job and is something you have ultimate say in. In alot of studios the level designer doesn't do the art, a level artist does. Someone else may do the lighting. In those studios where there are more "specialists" the level designer is primarily concerned with collision geometry (the "physical bounds of the map"), implementing other assets such as scripted events and cutscenes and finally gameplay (enemy type/location, weapons, vehicle type/location, etc).

Even in this situation - with lots of people getting their hands on different aspects of your level - the level designer still has the final say in the overall finished level that is implemented into the game. If that beautiful arch is getting in the way, you or a game artist needs to fix it. If that candle holder is getting gameplay testers stuck, you put it somewhere else or ditch it completely. In a nutshell, level designers base their levels on artists while artists "flesh out" the levels based on level designers. And since game development is based on teamwork nearly 100% of game levels in commercial products are a compromise of everyone's "grand vision".

The one major drawback - IMHO - is that on the professional level you are sometimes required to make levels based on someone's concept art...instead of your own "vision". If the layout in the artwork is viable for the game you're making (layout, dimensions, etc) you'll more than likely include it in your level. If it isn't viable "as is" you can base your level on the concept art...but don't have to be 100% faithful to it. What this means is that if the producer or game designer insist on a specific location/mood/lighting concept with a big, money-shot object/location/explosion/game moment the level designer still has the freedom to be creative in and around the money-shot object/explosion/game moment. Even still, level designers are usually restricted to a core set of dimensions for specific things such as how low the character crouches or how high they can jump, where the game camera is located, etc...so they have to design their levels around those restrictions. It's give and take.

-------

Regarding level designers being "core gamers"...it's pretty much a requirement for the job. It's not always necessary for programmers or artists to be gamers to work in the industry and excell at it, but for level designers it's pretty much a must have. You cannot design levels for a game that someone else envisioned unless you understand all aspects of available gameplay mechanics of the specific game you're working on.

**You couldn't design strafe-jump-only jumps for a level unless you were intimately familiar with executing the move and knew the dimensions involved.

[GONNAFISTYA]

In reality one of the most important lessons as a designer you should ever learn is that you are creating something for the soul purpose of consumption. 99% of the time nothing more than mindless consumption.

I think perhaps that fact alone is what dulls the "romance" of the profession for some people. It's one of those "life lessons" of working in the biz.

[spookmineer]

Thanks for the reply

I assumed (and still do) the documentary is about solo mappers, where the mapping process and decisions made are not *as* cerebral/controlled as in pro environments, and the stakes are not as high.

When the stakes are not as high, personal preference seeps through more and the end product will be based on more emotional decisions than in a commercial product.
Maybe the personality of a mapper will be somewhat visible because it was not a team effort - be it in more eye candy at the cost of gameplay or not - and precisely this is what makes the "eye candy" vs "gameplay" interesting: I hope this documentary will not focus as much on what decisions turned out badly (losing focus of gameplay is one of the pitfalls) but more on what drives these people, where they get their inspiration from and why they consciously may make "bad" decisions.

In other words, I hope it will not be a tutorial on how to map, but what kind of people mappers are.

[GONNAFISTYA]

They're all drunks.

[spookmineer]

/me grabs another beer.

[Pext]

Thoughts flow in a players mind in such simple ways.. questions just come out of the blue.
"Where do I go next?"
"I hate this door it wont open."
"I want to go this way... why cant I go the way I want to?"
"This part sucks because I died. I hate dieing..."
"What was I doing again?"
"Whats this over here?"

maybe your job is to make the player think of something more interesting?

hm... i'll think of this a bit and i'll observe myself a bit; i'm currently playing bioshock.

[Castle]

maybe your job is to make the player think of something more interesting?

hm... i'll think of this a bit and i'll observe myself a bit; i'm currently playing bioshock.

I oversimplified a bit.
However in most cases you will see this kind of behavior in average players.
People, I find, just like to play a game with out being bogged down by anything they don't understand. Its so obvious sounding for me to say but for some reason its something I often have to remind myself.

This is one of the main reasons I think that presentation walks hand in hand with execution. Presentation is how you convey ideas to the player in bite sized chunks in an understandable way with out forcing the player to bite off more than he/she can chew. With really great execution and proper pacing its possible to convey fairly complex ideas to a player in such a way that they get it and enjoy it.

for example:
The same guy who knows how to beat the hardest end game boss raids in wow with a massively complex hud will still become confused if all of the doors in your map don't have a little red or green light on it... Or you make enemies attack him from a slightly long hallway thats actually just a dead end... Because of the different styles of play and how you convey ideas something simple can become much more frustrating than it should be while something complex can seem more simple than it really is.

IMHO for the most part when people play a game I think they are usually just living in the moment. For a contrast not living in the moment would be how you play chess. So in that example, aside from maybe working towards a set goal like you might find yourself doing in a MMO for extended time. Its VERY rare that you ever see people who are able to play Quake 3 as if it is a game of chess. In a standard Half life style formula first person shooter the very backbone of how the game will flow encourages you to live in the moment.

The reason why I observe such simple thought process with play testers is because many of the projects I have worked on follow the half life formula. So in that respect its really hard for me to be able to answer your response on the idea that maybe I should be trying to force the player to think on a higher level.

When in reality one of the main attractions to the half life formula was that it went away from more complex level flows such as a blatant find key open door mechanic that actually forced you to have to figure out the level as you played as though it was a giant puzzle every time.

One of the hugest advantages of the half life formula is that it made things easier for the player so they can have a more catered game experience allowing for a larger pallet of possible sequences that you ease the player through rather than go against the grain and force them to have to expend energy constantly learning and memorize fairly complex levels that they will most likely only play through once.

Anyway I don't want to side track the thread further going off topic a bit.

[redfella]

Will your documentary cover the negative aspects of the profession? For overall "balance".

Well, that wasn't my original intention.

Being that I am just an amatuer filmmaker, at best, I was intending on sticking just to the hobbyist side of level design. I'm intending on making a simple, straight-forward documentary. The film will not be in any way comprehensive nor even balanced for that matter.

I want to capture the essence of a level designer high on the thrill of mapping. This, for better or worse, usually defines a hobbyist who is relatively new to the world of level design. I want to capture the late nights, the pizza, the music, the intensity. Picture a scene straight out of Masters of Doom.

[redfella]

I assumed (and still do) the documentary is about solo mappers, where the mapping process and decisions made are not *as* cerebral/controlled as in pro environments, and the stakes are not as high.

Correct.

In other words, I hope it will not be a tutorial on how to map, but what kind of people mappers are.

Yes, for the most part. I think it will be good to dedicate perhaps 25%, or so, of the film to what the mappers are actually doing. This means explaining techinal concepts in layman's terms; backed up with visual references. I'm hoping to get ahold of a sharp, word-saavy mapper who can explain these techincal concept for the camera. Therefore it won't have to be narrated and the continuity of the film will not be jepordized. Think of King of Kong... sprinkled throughout the film the filmmakers included technical information about what was actually happening on screen. Things like kill screens, and boards, and timing, and strategy where all discussed.