Dan Taylor has been in the game industry for over 15 years, and has
worked at major SCEE, EA, Rockstar and Ubisoft studios. He is now senior
level designer at Square Enix Montreal, and is working on Square’s
next-gen Hitman game.
His GDC 2013 talk outlined his ten principles for
good game design – here are the tips we took away from the talk.
1. Good level design is fun to navigate
For a smooth and enjoyable experience the player should always know
where to go. This can be achieved through the use of visual language
like light and geometry.
Mirror’s Edge
is a strong example of this as the red parts of the scenery offer the
most obvious route. But there is a difference between intuitive to
navigate and fun to navigate.
Don’t make navigation too clear;
Modern Warfare 2’s
Favela stage succeeds because it is so different to the others in the
game – a tight, twisty maze with a really good sense of dramatic
tension. Confusion is cool.
2. Good level design does not rely on words to tell the story
A good piece of communication is like a broken circle – make that
break too big and the payer won’t bridge the gap. Make it too small and
it’s too easy and the player gets bored.
Use mise-en-scene – the art of
telling the story through the environment – to add detail to your
narrative without being completely explicit. The master of this implicit
language is
Bioshock, naturally.
3. Good level design always tells the player what to do, but never how to do it
Keep your guidance concise and clear, and make sure you provide
multiple paths. A good example of these more nebulous kinds of
objectives are the Skyrim Dark Brotherhood missions, in that the player
knows what to do, but the game never tells them exactly how to approach
their tasks.
It is up to them – It’s important not to punish the player
for improvisation.
4. Good level design constantly teaches the player
Taylor recommends Raph Koster’s A Theory Of Fun for a deeper
exploration of this principle (and many others touched upon here).
Essentially Koster says that the human mind enjoys storing and decoding
patterns, so your game should always be giving the player new patterns
to analyse and resolve.
The best example of this principle is any game
in the Zelda series. Each dungeon is one massive tutorial, in that it
gives you a new item, teaches you how to use it and finally tests your
mastery of that weapon in the boss battle.
Often, the game’s final boss
will test several, if not all, of the weapons skills you’ve learned
throughout the game.
5. Good level design is surprising
Bethesda game uses a specific play loop in creating their games –
learn, play, challenge, surprise, says Taylor. Keep everything fresh by
not falling into a routine, and avoid the ‘rollercoaster method’ of game
pacing – that is, a steady overall increase in play intensity with
large peaks and troughs along the way.
It’s too predictable.
Fun is
created by uncertainty; the Ishimura stage in
Dead Space 2 revisits
the eerily silent ship from the first game and holds back the expected
alien onslaught for around 15 minutes. It generates a great sense of
tension and surprise this way.
Game designers must seek to surprise, but be sure it works, added
Taylor.
It is the game designers’ responsibility to mitigate that risk.
It’s absolutely crucial that if you’ve got anything risky, you grey-box
it and test it as soon as possible.
6. Good level design empowers the player
Real life sucks, says Taylor – videogames are about escapism and
should allow players to do things they can’t in real life.
In most
games, players want to be badasses, and games like
Red Faction Guerilla, (through its destructible terrain mechanic) and
InFamous (with its balance between player action and consequence), are good examples of how to make the player feel powerful.
7. Good level design is easy, medium and hard
Taylor has a big problem with the whole concept of choosing a
difficulty setting before the game even begins.
“It’s an arbitrary
choice which will completely change the players’ experience with the
game,” he said.
Instead, focus on the risk/reward balance.
The Burnout
games are the kings of this concept, said Taylor, as through taking
trickier shortcuts the player is rewarded and they are neatly marked out
by bright yellow barricades – a strong example of the series’ visual
language.
There’s no difficulty select in Burnout because players can
essentially select their own.
An alternative way of stage design being easy, medium
and hard is the more layered approach within
Dishonored.
It offers multiple paths for various player styles and aptitudes, all
the while extending replayability – smart and efficient stage design.
8. Good level design is efficient
Modular design is your friend for efficient game design, says Taylor.
One problem with game design is that once the player completes a task,
they’ll rarely revisit that part of the game world unless they are
incentivised, or it is built into the mission design.
Consider
bi-directional play so that all of your artists’ work doesn’t flash by,
never to be seen again.
In the Halo series, for example, there are
several stages in which the first half of the mission is about reaching a
destination using one style of play, before returning back through the
same area with different weapons or modified circumstances.
Non-linear
design should give the player implicit objectives which encourage
exploration – don’t pad it out with scattered collectibles, like the
Skulls in Halo, Cogs in Gears Of War and Feathers in Assassin’s Creed.
9. Good level design creates emotion
There are plenty of ideas in architectural theory which can be used
in videogames to create certain emotional responses, says Taylor.
Spatial empathy is important, too.
When games like
Tomb Raider
switch from narrow, claustrophobic corridors out to a large open
spaces, Crystal Dynamics is creating a sense of liberation in the
player.
Adding verticality to stage design can help prompt a sense of
persecution, and a feeling of hope can be evoked by placing a large
reward at the top of an in-game obstacle.
Taylor tends to work backwards
here, in that he uses the emotion he wants to prompt in the player as
the starting point for the stage design, before thinking about the
techniques he can use to enable that.
10. Good level design is driven by mechanics
Videogames are driven by interaction, says Taylor, so stage design
should be considered as a ‘gameplay delivery system’.
That means
bringing together artists, stage designers and programmers to work
towards the same goal – interdisciplinary communication is vital for
success, added Taylor, suggesting that games like
Deus Ex Human Revolution and
Batman: Arkham City
use and re-use or modify the game’s core mechanics to achieve
variation, keep the player engaged and most of all, showcase each game’s
mechanics.
