Game + Play + Level Design!

Review "What is a Game?" from Week 0.

Verbs

Verbs tell us what the player(s) can do in the game.

When pitching or scoping a game project, it's helpful to describe your idea in a few sentences, including verbs that introduce the main mechanic(s) of the game.

For example, when describing a premise:

e.g. A (noun) that (verbs) a (noun) and (verbs) (nouns).

And when describing a conditional event or state change:

e.g. If / when (noun) (verbs) a (noun), a (noun) (verbs).

An egg-shaped dog that stretches very high and collects strawberries.

When eggdog collides with something that's not a strawberry, the player loses.

What are the verbs in your game (meaning: what can the player do on a moment to moment basis in your game)?

When considering your own variations, try out different sentences that might be interesting. Remember to keep your sentences short and simple.

As your game grows in depth and complexity, you may find yourself with a rich collection of sentences in your game plan.

Level

Once you have a list of actions and events, you’ll need a place for them to occur.

What is level design?

There are two ways to understand level design:

• formal industrial sense of capital-L capital-D "Level Design" without environment art;
• broad common sense "level design" which includes environment art / anything in a level.

For your projects, you will be assessed on level design as a whole (visuals, environment properties, etc.)

However, at the prototyping stage when you're developing a level or game mechanic, it's more conventional to take the approach of Level Design, which includes building a functional layout with simple maps and grayboxing.

Think of this as wireframing a level with placeholder assets. The non-functional "art" aspects such as modeling, lighting and texture don't need to happen before you can consider things like navigation, composition, interaction, movement, trajectory, and physical feel of the game.

But before we start thinking about level layout, we need to know...

What is your level trying to accomplish?

• Are you teaching the player a new mechanic?
• Are you telling a story?
• Are you making a space for recreational relaxation or competitive battle?

Think through what you’re trying to do and jot down what a player should experience over the course of the level, and what should they take away from being or acting in this space?

In terms of the ball game, think about how the rules of the game are conveyed through visual cues or props on the original playing field's setup and design. (e.g. a line, a point, a bounded area...)

For your projects, consider layering your level with your own intentions for:

• how the level directs a player's experience
• how objects are revealed to the player
• what the objects or places can represent
• how time and space unfolds for the player
• how you can work with the player's imagination through sensory affect, perception, and cognition / consciousness... or what we call the "phenomenology" of the player.

Layout

After you’ve nailed down what your goals and concepts are for your level. you can begin sketching or laying out ideas.

If you need to communicate your level to others in a team, you’ll need to be more detailed and clear about your level. If it’s just you, then your layout can be a sketch, scribble, or anything that will aid in planning the space.

Environmental Expressivity

When thinking about a player’s movement through your level, at both micro and macro scales, there are features to consider about the environment that can exist from intrinsic to the concept of the game to helping a player know where to go next.

Choice

Which are the possible actions? Is there a point of no return?

Legibility

How does the player understand what they can and can't do in the world. A ladder implies climbing. Red tape implies no crossing.

Signposting

Showing where to go with a big landmark (see weenies in theme park design) - another method can be leading using lighting (tendency to avoid darkness, trying to find a light)

Progression of different spaces

Unlocking new areas, moving from small tunnels to open fields, different types of rooms (or a series of the same room)

How a player experiences a space is strongly influenced by how they arrive in it. Play with dichotomies:

• cramped -> open;
• light -> dark;
• mundane -> sacred.

Denial and Reward

Add weight to a reveal, induce momentary “lostness”

Easter eggs

Hidden objects, images, and notes elicit close focus on the environment.

Confusion / Surprise

Did I break the game? Am I supposed to be in this place? Jank can be a form of storytelling.

Or the spectacle of surprise!

Spatial Sound

A call from afar, music in the distance.

External Forces

Climbing, falling, descending, flying...

Where are you taking us?

Are we going down into the underworld or climbing towards heaven?

How are we getting there and how does that feel?

Spatial Memory

Levels of games, virtual environments, can become part of our spatial memories.

Some game levels rely on the cues drawn from a collectively shared spatial memory to establish a familiar scape for the players to intuitively navigate. (e.g. those who already know soccer will know what to do with a goal post.)

When adapting from an existing game, you may choose to reference, exclude, or modify notable or iconic characteristics of the original environment to guide your player towards different behaviours.

...and perhaps even subvert these expectations!

Mechanical Properties

Are there any obstacles, features, or affordances of the game's levels that affect play? Examples might include:

• different material types of tennis court (clay, grass, etc)
• animated or dynamic obstacles
• how the players or game could change the landscape over time.

Consider the "rambunctiousness" of your levels

Ideas and Inspiration

• No Clip Website - online library of digital maps from various notable video games.
• Try and re-imagine a familiar space, but distort the proportions and distances to represent other tangible/intangible aspects (sense of time, feeling, temp, safety.)
• Adapt another piece of media into a level. A chapter of a book. A song.
• Draw a map from memory of something you do every day on the computer / phone / internet … how could you represent a non-spatial thing as a place to be navigated through?

Play

Here are some elements you may consider as you figure out how you'd like players to interact with the game environment / other players:

Agency

Player agency is often seen as a central element of what makes games enjoyable as an interactive media, but this is definitely worth weighing against other implications of play.

What are the implications of exercising agency? What about games without agency?

You may consider what sort of agency is given to your player(s), and what that agency could represent in that context.

Skill VS Chance

Aspects of your game that relies on the mastery of one's ability, and others that are left to the unpredictable hands of fate and random probability.

Another way of viewing chance is in terms of "risk" level -- in game design, a standard principle is to balance high risk with high reward, so players are more likely to consider taking riskier actions.

Risk assessments can become part of strategic play.

Strategy

What does the player need to do to win?

What decisions does the player make on a moment to moment basis?

How do they make those choices meaningfully?

Why would they make one choice over another?

Thematic Treatment

Same mechanics, different theme.

Learning Curve / Level Difficulty / Flow / Complexity

The difference between learning an ability, and mastering it.

I wasn't kidding when I said I'd beat this game. It's done. Normal life can resume. Got a bit stuck a few times so speed isn't great, but my goodness what a finish. No "lame horse mode" here, this is done properly.

Scaling the difficulty of your level in incremental levels can reward players at different stages of mastery.

And at a particular equilibrium of challenge and skill, you may reach the flow channel.

But if you are considering a more polemical approach that requries moments of critical reflection, you may consider going against flow.

When adjusting the difficulty of your ball game adaptation, consider the components that offer challenges to (and thus demand mastery skill) from your player.

How can you complicate these components? Does changing/removing/amplifying/negating any of these make for something more interesting?

Maybe the result isn’t a “good” game, but it becomes interesting, unexpected, outrageous…

Game Juice / Game Feel

(You'll learn this once you complete reading response 2!)

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and if you're doing a multiplayer game...

Perfect information / imperfect information

A game possesses perfect information if each player, when making any decision, is perfectly informed of all the events that have previously occurred.

Imperfect information introduces uncertainty but it’s not the same as chance. Some games can have randomness with perfect information and others can have imperfect information without chance.

Competition / Cooperation

Direct targeting, such as player elimination;

Cooperating towards a common goal.

Or a little bit of both!

Symmetry / Asymmetry

Do all players play the game with similar power dynamics, or are their abilities and goals completely different according to what roles they take on?

Synchronous / asynchronous

Does play happen at the same time, or are different players acting at different times?

Some course reminders

• Ball game research for Project 2 is due next Tuesday.
• Reading Response 2 is due next Thursday.