"Level with Me", my level design interview series at RPS

    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/level-with-me/

    Hey, I have a series going at Rock Paper Shotgun now. Basically, I interviewed a bunch of FPS level designers across the entire scene, and we all collaborated on the same Portal 2 level. Roundtable panels are usually too messy, so I thought having this shared Portal 2 level would be its own roundtable of sorts, and we could all talk through level design instead of pesky words.

    For part 1, I have Dan Pinchbeck (who name-checks Rob Briscoe a fair bit ) and, um, let's just say for part 3, you'll be seeing a very familiar Mapcorian...

    Interesting stuff. I've never actually played Dear Esther the mod, because by the time I had heard of it, I had heard of Dear Esther the remake... should I play the mod? Or that Korskakova one? I've played your one about organizing memories (at least I think that was you).

    I'm not very good at keeping up on source mods these days. Like Research and Development, that came out a million years ago, and I've had it installed in Steam the entire time, and I've gone through three windows installs, two video cards, and an entire computer rebuild since the last time I played it, and even then it was only like an hour and a half. I liked it, I did, just other stuff distracted me...

    Having magnar on is great, I get a little tired of all the wierd story people that have all these fance ideas about physchology and sometimes forget that they talk about games, not to say that they are intresting to read, but I do enjoy some "regular" designers a bit more, liked instas the best

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    why does he sound like such a troll when inteviewing insta, it's like he's trying to trip him up all the time :S

    I hope insta didn't think I was trolling him. I just wanted him to say interesting stuff and sound smart, so I came up with (what I thought) were interesting topics that he had some authority on. I was softballing compared to what hardball could've been -- like "People say GRAW2 sucks, why do you think that was?" or "Tell everyone at RPS why Square Enix killed GRIN."

    Would you rather have had me ask him how many weapons are in GRAW2, or ask him what his favorite level in MW2 is? How many polygons are in Whoopservatory? Some dumb game journalism / press release stuff? "How great is it, to work at Avalanche? How awesome is E3?"

    I actually thought I kept praising him too much.

    i think just reading up to here:

    RY: All these games are based on human tragedy.

    it seemed like you were on the attack, maybe i completely misinterpreted it. monday morning, grumpy, no coffee, no cigarette, rick is angry and ready to get angry about anything. mondays are the peak of my menstrual cycle.

    don't change your style because of anythign i said, shit, you should probably be more agressive.

    so, when will you do me? ;(

    I really liked the interview and Magnar's points.

    What distracted me was the pushing (in the comments especally) at PlanetPhil. The guy runs his personal blog where he likes to go about action mods. Giving him the Wikipedia comparison or how he has to mention mods for the archieves came across really strong. I really like the radiator mods and they're featured on a lot of sites (including the one I used to write for) but repeatetly pushing at someone for not reporting on them just looks unprofessional. It's like trying to force your indie-band into the death-metal magazine.

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