Level Design Books

    Quote from 2d-chris

    Designers arent smart, programmers are Anyway level design is mostly about understanding "fun" not being smart.I never said that you can't learn from books, I said you don't have to which is absolutely true.

    Books of that kind are good for begginers. It's true that being good Level Designer is to know what is fun, how to scare/make laugh player, how to reduce frustration for players with different skills etc. Actually I didn't find any book for advanced Designers about psychology in games, some case studies about player's behaviors and reactions or some advanced art and architecture "tricks" and methods...

    Quote from 2d-chris

    Designers arent smart, programmers are Anyway level design is mostly about understanding "fun" not being smart.I never said that you can't learn from books, I said you don't have to which is absolutely true.

    how exactly would a level designer go about understanding "fun"? fun is such a subjective wording that is impossible to define as just one thing. one person's fun isn't necessarily another person's fun; and because of this, i disagree with your statement.

    i think immersion plays a larger role in any digital game than any trace of fun has ever done. sure, fun still exists in games. i mean, you play a game of cards or a board game for fun. you may even want to play something digital, such as solitaire or bejeweled for fun.

    however, as soon as you step into a video game, you add an entire world to your repertoire. the player's link to the virtual world, the avatar, becomes the point of interest; because it is this link from which you stimulate the player through his actions in the game world. the second a player has fully realized him or herself as his or her avatar is the point where the player is immersed in the game. from this point on, a number of psychological features will have effect; the main of these being that you feel in tune with your character. you essentially "get" the game; you understand it, and it starts mattering to you.

    i think many designers fail to create environments and characters that work towards the goal in the above statement. they choose to let immersion go in favor of adhering to the fleeting notion of "fun", or other intangible values. this is why their game becomes a virtual solitaire: something that you have so little involvement in that you practically don't care what happens next. whether you die, your teammates or anyone else. whether the world is destroyed or not. you, as a player, will sit there thinking to yourself, "it's just a game". this is not what virtual game design is about.

    this leads me to a couple of questions:

    let's take a look at a few examples: half-life 2, portal, killzone 1, resistance 1.

    would you compare these 4 games to each other in the same category?

    would you think that you got the same experience out of them?

    feel free to answer them (i speak to everyone on the board).

    Don't over think Books tend to make you do that for sure.

    Fun can come from many things, personally I design something that I consider fun, then I convince others to invest time to make it “practically” fun ... you can turn a relevantly boring design into something fun given enough time to iterate with solid focus. From my experience designs can and do get clouded with ideas that simply don't merge, it's down to the level designer to understand this and carefully think things through and find a compromise.

    Some level designers use other games as leverage to help them, there is nothing wrong with this and it’s common practice but you don’t need to analyze all the in's and out's of the level/game, because the truth is they didn’t really know an till everything came together at the end. You can have all the vision in the world but you're never going to know what the final outcome will be, too many variables.

    Be the vision holder of your mission/level, for SP it's the most important thing.

    For me "Fun" is the sum of all the factors that affect on game receiving by player. It's 100% ture that everyone have different definition and theory of "Fun". Just look at the game scores. If game have score "96/100" it means that I can like it if this is my genre and type of the game that I like. If game receive "75/100" it means that 1 on 4 players didn't like it (didn't get this type of "Fun") and it can be me. Immersion, casuality, genre and all the factors are just factors and sum of it is the final "Fun" from playing. For me...

    Quote from seir

    For me "Fun" is the sum of all the factors that affect on game receiving by player. It's 100% ture that everyone have different definition and theory of "Fun". Just look at the game scores. If game have score "96/100" it means that I can like it if this is my genre and type of the game that I like. If game receive "75/100" it means that 1 on 4 players didn't like it (didn't get this type of "Fun") and it can be me. Immersion, casuality, genre and all the factors are just factors and sum of it is the final "Fun" from playing. For me...

    my point is that immersion is measurable and attainable by forcing a player's involvement in a game, whereas "fun" isn't. they're two different dimensions. i would bet that after having been immersed in a game, you wouldn't think, "man that was fun"; you'd think, "man that was a good game" or "man that was good". they aren't related, because it's two different kinds of stimuli.

    eh? fun = good = great = awesome = enjoying your time more than watching paint dry on a wall ... no need to get all shrinky about it. Entertainment is meant to be fun, what ever entertains you is fun

    Quote from Sentura

    my point is that immersion is measurable and attainable by forcing a player's involvement in a game, whereas "fun" isn't. they're two different dimensions.

    That's deep bro...

    Have you read "A theory of fun" by Raph Koster? I'm sure you'd get a kick out of it! Seriously though, no design team on earth would waste a minute of production time in a meeting discussing these things, nor is it going to help the OP find a good book about level-design...

    Quick question: I know this probably varies from company to company but what does the level design process look like? Do editors get handed a piece of paper and told to "make that" with very little creative interpretation or are editors and designers the same people?

    I have this picture in my head of level designers sort of being the programmers of the game development world where people just throw shit at you and expect you to work miracles in the shortest time frame possible. (yes I am aware many level designers are to some extent programmers)

    Quote from FrieChamp

    Have you read "A theory of fun" by Raph Koster? I'm sure you'd get a kick out of it! Seriously though, no design team on earth would waste a minute of production time in a meeting discussing these things, nor is it going to help the OP find a good book about level-design...

    haven't read it, but i'll put it on my to do list.

    as for the rest, i think you're right. i think no production team discusses this, but i know the best of them have it imprinted in their minds. also, in keeping with the times, i can mention that the movie avatar directly addresses this point,

    Quote

    when the protagonist (can't remember his name, kill me for not paying attention to details) confesses to the tribe of what he has done as a spy for the military. his change of sides was exactly the same as him "getting" the environment, and it was at that point he essentially became the avatar - not at the end of the movie.

    Quote from FrieChamp

    Have you read "A theory of fun" by Raph Koster? I'm sure you'd get a kick out of it! Seriously though, no design team on earth would waste a minute of production time in a meeting discussing these things, nor is it going to help the OP find a good book about level-design...

    it's a good read but i found it to be a bit to plain in retroperspective. it's nice if you use it as a guide line and with every topic he brings up look for further second literature (like psychology books, mathematical numeric and stuff).

    Quote from Rick_D

    basically, you talk a lot of shit for someone who has never had to actually deal with the day to day implementation of gameplay.

    basically you don't know what i'm talking about then =)

    not that i'm surprised...

    Quote from Sentura

    how exactly would a level designer go about understanding "fun"? fun is such a subjective wording that is impossible to define as just one thing. one person's fun isn't necessarily another person's fun; and because of this, i disagree with your statement.

    This is why games are developed with a target audience.

    this "fun is not measurable" but "immersion is" stuff is bullshit. how do you measure immersion. a 5 year old is immersed like fuck into super mario world, but if you analyse that with a microscope and pick out what you thought (remember psychology is a very personalised subject, you can study it but it also manages to study you) made it immertsive and then apply that to a game for 10 year olds and soon you realise that all you've done is make a shitty game that no-one enjoys because you've aimed it at the wrong audience, learnt the wrong lessons and applied what you know, badly, to a game design you didn't understand.

    the best you can do to learn, is to take somethign you enjoy playing, be it fps, rpg, platformer, whatever, get a game that has mod tools, and experiment by doing, learn to use the tools, learn what makes a fun experience for you, get others to play it and learn how they felt about it.

    if you open up an editor and say to yourself "i am going to use all my knowledge about every aspect of game design to create the most immersive piece of work i can create" then you will start working in circles, trying to perfect everything as you go and trying to rely on each moment to be a perfect example of the immersion you want to experence (but will never be able to because you are on the other side of the monitor as it were, never able to really experience what you have created through the eyes of someone who has never played it, or seen any part of the development process).

    i will not argue that psychology of human beings is not important in level design. i think it is important to understand that peopel do certain things when they are under pressure, to know the kinds of patterns our brains are receptive to, and the type of imagery that we are repelled by. but it is a vitally important step to simply create little arenas of gameplay to find out how to do things, what is actually enjoyable (a far better word that combines both fun and immersion ) and how to guarantee you can recreate certain feelings and experiences in different situations.

    saying that fun is not important and that you should focus on trying to be some artsy ponce making braid all over again is a waste of everyones' time and doesn't help the OP who wanted to know what to do next. and frankly there's books out there that don'ty really explain shit. you are better off learnign by doing, getting a job as a junior, and learning from others with more experience. some of the best level designers and artists have never written a book in their lives.

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