On the Value of Game Design Theory
It seems that, with increasing frequency, the idea of high concept game design gets a bad rap with some members of the industry. Designers that converse with other designers about “orthogonal level design” and read www.ludology.org get sneered at by those who feel designers should be quiet and work harder on placing more portals, splines, or whatever the game calls for level designers to do.
High concept game design ideas are, truthfully, not very useful in the day-to-day workings of the level designer. When constantly juggling poly limits, hiding the bad features of engines (monsters pathing through walls, for instance, or pathing through each other), implementing the core design vision, scripting behaviors, and trying to make everything pretty, it’s hard to concentrate on whether story is useful in games, whether dynamic difficulty is preferable to regular hand-scaled difficulty, or whether you should be designing for hard core players or a more casual audience, and how do you do that, anyway?
However, I think that talking about this stuff, or even thinking about it, is inherently useful. First, it hones your innate design skills. As with taking martial arts, it allows a wider range of reactions when in a situation where you would normally only have a few. Good design becomes an unconscious reaction to all your tasks, whether laying down terrain, or choosing the right mix of enemies, or figuring out where a powerup, savepoint, quest objective, or ambush point should be located.
Second, it allows better understanding of what is going wrong when a gameplay experience doesn’t “feel right”. The more learned you are, the easier it is to define what is bothering you when your “this is ugly” instincts pop up. Plus, opening yourself up to that feeling allows you to be more sensitive to it, both in yourself and others. This may sound a little metaphysical, but good gameplay instincts are necessary to making fun games.
Third, if you ever go to GDC, and listen to Harvey Smith talk about Orthogonal Level design and systemic design, you won’t be as confused as three-quarters of the audience. It’s nice to feel smart once in a while.
Thus, this blog. This is my outlet to talk about high concept stuff, and, it appears, the day-to-day nuts and bolts of level design. If I were an artist, I’d make a comic strip, but there you go.
Now, to figure out how to add comments to this damn thing so people can respond. All two of you.
High concept game design ideas are, truthfully, not very useful in the day-to-day workings of the level designer. When constantly juggling poly limits, hiding the bad features of engines (monsters pathing through walls, for instance, or pathing through each other), implementing the core design vision, scripting behaviors, and trying to make everything pretty, it’s hard to concentrate on whether story is useful in games, whether dynamic difficulty is preferable to regular hand-scaled difficulty, or whether you should be designing for hard core players or a more casual audience, and how do you do that, anyway?
However, I think that talking about this stuff, or even thinking about it, is inherently useful. First, it hones your innate design skills. As with taking martial arts, it allows a wider range of reactions when in a situation where you would normally only have a few. Good design becomes an unconscious reaction to all your tasks, whether laying down terrain, or choosing the right mix of enemies, or figuring out where a powerup, savepoint, quest objective, or ambush point should be located.
Second, it allows better understanding of what is going wrong when a gameplay experience doesn’t “feel right”. The more learned you are, the easier it is to define what is bothering you when your “this is ugly” instincts pop up. Plus, opening yourself up to that feeling allows you to be more sensitive to it, both in yourself and others. This may sound a little metaphysical, but good gameplay instincts are necessary to making fun games.
Third, if you ever go to GDC, and listen to Harvey Smith talk about Orthogonal Level design and systemic design, you won’t be as confused as three-quarters of the audience. It’s nice to feel smart once in a while.
Thus, this blog. This is my outlet to talk about high concept stuff, and, it appears, the day-to-day nuts and bolts of level design. If I were an artist, I’d make a comic strip, but there you go.
Now, to figure out how to add comments to this damn thing so people can respond. All two of you.
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