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Rules to Design By and Parting Advice
19) Play test, play test, and play test some more. Nothing surpasses play testing when it comes to ensuring quality level design. Although I’ve listed it as the19th rule, play-testing should be an ongoing process. You need to test your levels as you make them. It will save you a lot of time reworking your level if you can identify a significant bug or flaw in your thinking early in the design process. Plus, play testing is often where many level designers come up with some of their best improvements to levels. And don’t forget that only through rigorous play-testing you can spare yourself the embarrassment of your boss or your coworkers finding some really heinous and obvious bugs in your level. Testing your level is part of your job. One of the most rewarding activities in level design is watching other people play your level. Not only do you get an opportunity to see their reactions (both positive and negative), but you can gauge how close they come to the experience you strove for. You can observe their play styles, see how they explore and discover the various tricks, puzzles, traps and rewards. It helps you see how difficult your level is to people who don’t already know the solutions and don’t necessarily have your play skills. You can identify where your level is too boring or difficult, observe solutions to puzzles that you didn’t expect and thereby make them easier, or harder. There’s always a player who will do the unexpected, and when you come across this situation, don’t be afraid to ask them questions like, "Why did you go there?" The player may provide you with a great idea for improving your level. Watching a player test your level is definitely an opportunity you should never pass up. Always remember that play-testers are never wrong, though they may not be able to clearly explain the basis for their opinions or offer good suggestions for improving your level. Take their advice with a grain of salt, because they are not always the target market or the target skill level. Some of your testers may not be big fans of your type of game, or they might have played the game so much that they’re no longer good sources of advice when it comes to the game’s difficulty. You should get input from as many play testers as you can before you change your level, so that you can see if there’s consensus in the feedback. Reacting to only one player’s response, whether positive or negative, can spoil your level for the other players. 20) Take the time to make it better. The more time you spend working on a level, the better it can get. It’s often the subtler details that separate a good level from a great one, so take some time to put them in. It’s one of the finer pleasures of the level designer’s job to perfect a setting or the choreography of a battle. The beauty of the electronic medium is that you can save different copies of your level and experiment with them. Try out different ideas from your own twisted mind or based on feedback from play testers. Don’t ever be content with your level until you’ve experienced the fun you originally envisioned. There’s often something you can do in your level to get that vision across. Take the time to figure out what’s lacking or what’s preventing you from having that ultimate experience. You are the only one who can make it better. The Myth of the "Every-Man" Designer The "Every-Man" designer is the person who thinks that he or she knows what every person wants in a game. Being human and of only one mind and heart, this is a very pretentious assumption. You should have the humility to recognize that your tastes differ from others and that you are not always right. Keep your mind open to feedback and fresh ideas, and consult with people who may have more experience than you. If you do not, your games will miss their intended market. Game design is a very hard skill to judge, being intangible, evolving, and not taught in any school. The "Every-Man" designers take advantage of this by putting on airs of great skill to put themselves into positions of power. Unfortunately, our industry is full of such people and they are often in a position to judge and change your work. I hope that by mentioning this here, early in your career, that you will not become one of them, because it can be a very unpleasant realization for you and your company that you don’t know what every player wants. Developing Level Design Instincts Level design instincts are what employers look for when they interview you. To a certain extent, employers assume you have some of these instincts if you have designed any levels at all, for they only come from practice. They are what you take from game to game and project to project, and they’re what make your job so special. It’s these instincts that let you immediately apply design theories and rules on the first pass of designing a level. You’ll know when you have developed good instincts when you can look at someone else’s level, or an early level of your own, and the mistakes will glare at you. All of the rules in this series of articles came from my own instincts which I developed over years of making games, making plenty of mistakes, and having plenty of realizations. You, as a beginning designer, will make plenty of mistakes. However, hopefully you will learn from these experiences and you will stick with it. Hopefully these level design theories and rules will get you a head start on a satisfying hobby or career in level design. Tim Ryan is an independent game designer working under the pseudonym "Muse of Fire Productions." He has been working in the game industry since 1992 and published numerous games on a variety of platforms. His recent work can be seen in the hit PC game MechCommander. Direct questions or friendly comments to MuseOfFireProductions@Yahoo.com. |
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