But with this idea comes a dilemma. How do you decide what you cut, or what is the least important aspect? How can you, as a developer, make a conscious decision about your product and what should or should not be a part of it?

It’s had to answer, but is something that every developer will and do face at one point in their project. And without the very best decision here, a game could be made or broken to some degree.

For me, personally, I’ve played a few dozen games, and I think that at points it becomes rather obvious when a developer has made compromises. Whether it is some little graphic glitches in Mass Effect, an invisible wall here or there in any game, or the severe lack of ending in Halo 2, these trade-offs are made, and are usually apparent. In many cases, these developers could probably have made a different trade-off that would have made things a little better for the user in the long run.

Instead of having loads, games these days are having pop-in textures. This tends to look bad, and can at many points lessen a player’s respect for otherwise pristine visuals. A load screen, no matter how short could have been put in for the sake of preserving the visuals, and have had the same kind of impact for the player.  In the case of invisible walls, a developer could have sacrificed a visual aspect and traded it for another in the interest of preserving a clear cut border between gameplay area and beyond. When story ideas are cut, extensions are usually hashed together to make previously unconnected areas connect.

These trade-offs are not always good, but in the long run are what the developer felt was valuable. To keep a player in the experience for as long as possible, a developer was willing to have pop-in textures. To keep the level looking natural, the developer was willing to keep their invisible wall. To ensure that things would remain coherent despite the cut, the writers slapped on a quick fix.

But as we progress to a new future of games, where do we place our values when it comes to making games?  I’ve pondered on this idea for awhile, and eventually made a hierarchy of importance in these aspects. This is my personal list, so it may not be yours, and that’s fine. The differences show the very same thing that is true about any market. Tastes will be the same, you have to find your niche.

1.  Gameplay – Self explanatory. The game better play as good as it can. If you don’t nail gameplay, you won’t and don’t have a good game.
2. Story -  This aspect doesn’t simply mean the progression of the in-game story. How well does the player get immersed? Canonical things like setting and in-game realism factor into this aspect, which will be the key to drawing a player in and keeping them there.
3. Graphics – A game must look pretty. But if it doesn’t have a good story/immersion it isn’t going to be worthy of selling. The aesthetics of art/music influence the immersive qualities of games to a great degree, so it is not easy to say that these are entirely separate.
4. Release Time – The time that a game releases is not entirely important. A good game will sell no matter when it is released. A quality I have taken from Nintendo, you should feel free to delay a game until it is ready. However, under no circumstances should these delays add anymore than half a year to a release date. Duke Nukem Forever is a good example of how NOT to take this principle being last.

So there you go. If you have any comments, suggestions, or complaints, I’m more than willing to receive them. Just make a post below.

First we should probably talk about what makes a level design good. For me, it’s any time I’m playing a game and I get to a part where the situation looks difficult, feels difficult, and by all means SHOULD be difficult. But thanks to the ingenuity of the level designers I have a multitude of paths to take to resolve the situation, good cover to avoid fire, while still being able to fire my own volleys. The visual clues in level textures that would bring my eye to look at them instead of the wrong path.

Level Designers are perhaps the most key component of whether or not a game will play well. A bad level design, makes a frustrating game, makes a bad review. A good level design, makes a playable game, makes a fun game. And that’s to put it as simply as possible. Note, I used the term “bad review” and “fun game” because they’re rather ambiguous. A frustrating game will still sell, given proper marketing. A fun game will do poorly, regardless how well designed and fun it may be. A lot of good companies have made games that just didn’t get the marketing they deserved and went out of business as such.

So what do level designers do to start their levels?

This will tend to be a process that will vary. Some may make sketches of prospective ideas, others may play around with their level modeling tools until something that seems fun comes to mind, other developers may get an idea of a locale and decide that they want to base a design on that kind of situation.

All of these are good ideas, and any and all of them could work for the preliminary stages. Essentially the genesis of a level will come in one form or another. The writers may simply tell the designer what needs to happen at that part of the game, giving them a setting and a basic story rundown. A multiplayer level designer may feel the need to have a design that would work well for a certain gametype, and would then do his sketches about that central idea.

All of these methods will work.

There’s no need to be discriminate here. Just get a working idea of what you need to accomplish, or what you would like to accomplish with it. Then move on from this preliminary work, and sketch or rough model the project so that you can confer with others about how they feel it would work and what changes will be necessary.

From here on out it’s just a mission of getting the necessary changes made, and then getting the level into a playable product with rough textures and item placements. It’s then important to go through constant revision with artists and playtesters to work out any real design flaws (players get confused here! Why is there a crate in the middle of a fucking forest Jeff?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO US?! Can we atleast make it a boulder so it’ll look good, Jesus, man.)

The major objective is, of course, to have a product that is playable at the end of it, that does everything it needs to do in a way that is fun for a good majority of people. The process is a complex one that will take a good deal of a company’s development time, atleast from the way I understand it.

One of the key aspects of playability is for a level to just make sense to a player. As has been said by the developers at Bungie, there need to be visual cues for a player to mark position on the map and make communication easier. “The Flag’s behind the dumpster!” “I’ve got an enemy over here by shotgun spawn!” “HELP ME OUT HERE BY THE PORTAPOTTY!”

These cues need to do two things simultaneously. Direct a player, and fit into the world they’re placed in. As is too often the case, designers have always had a tendency to use crates for certain functions. They’ve got low polygon count, and are thus good for the processor, but they’ve also got a certain aspect that really pulls a player from their experience. Why is there a crate in the middle of a forest? Why are we still using wooden crates in 2552? There’s just a certain aspect of these sorts of things that can really take a player out of the experience, but more importantly it shows some laziness in the design process.

But, that aspect is a discussion for a later date.

Cliffy B, of Gears of War fame, once wrote an article I really liked about what he called “Clarity of Experience,” and its an article that essentially communicates all that needs to be said on the topic of visual cues. In the article he talks about how games like Halo have made online matches nice and easy by designating colors to each team, and making these colors very easily distinguishable visually so as not to cause confusion amongst team members. In a similar way, by putting visual cues into your levels you lessen the confusion of your players, and express a clarity of their mission in the form of what draws their attention. Whether it’s a beam of light coming in through the forest canopy, or the firery remnants of a previous battle. These cues will help a player understand what path they need to go down, to eventually accomplish a mission.

Again, all of this takes a lot of optimization and good play testing to ensure that it works properly. But, by commiting to the design of a level and continually testing and weeding out any discrepancies, a designer can ultimately make the decision about whether a game is fun or not. Whether it’s what it should be or not.

Any and all tips, comments, or concerns are very much appreciated. Any and all advice I could get from anyone would surely be beneficial for me now and in the future.

With this in mind many will aspire to go straight for their dreams, and set their marks too high. They’ll first set out to coding the most beautiful engine possible, or writing the most intricate story, or modeling the most perfect models to take part. They try with all their heart and passion to make the game they want to make, and inevitably fail.

What went wrong?

It’s not wrong that these developers strive for the most perfect project possible. Infact, all developers should, and for the most part do,  make it a priority to make a very high quality product. But with this kind of aspiration, there comes a severe flaw, especially for those developers starting out.

By making it your priority for the game to be good, you tend to make a refusal for anything less. This benchmark becomes unachievable, and defeats any semblance of self confidence a developer and his team might have. This self defeat is the reason that so many otherwise good ideas don’t make it to the final stages of development and polish. So many good game ideas fall out because the non-professional developer loses faith in his product, and it goes unfinished.

The hardest thing to face for these developers is that they need to compromise, and lower their standards a bit so that their game idea can become some form of reality. It’s something that the best of developers do. Some top-tier developers will pay for a good-enough quality 3D engine, and then adapt things to their needs. Animators and artists will often times have to make compromises on the models and level designs that they make based on a 3D engine. Due to time constraints the writers will have to chop up their story and tie it together in a more solid way if it happens that time simply runs out, or a level design doesn’t work the way they wanted it to.

As seems to be the central idea of my first post, simplicity is once again the key to success with game development. Don’t over-complicate the system, just do what works. There are several companies that base their business model on the income of the quality 3D engines and development kits that they put out. They tend to make engines affordable enough for the needs of a developer.

Be willing to compromise for the needs of performance. A good game is a game that plays well, so if that means downplaying your models and textures a bit, do so. You’re players will thank you for the performance boost, regardless of whatever complaints may arise.

Another portion of this is the fact that it doesn’t always work to use whatever bizarre concepts you think will revolutionize the gaming world. If you experiment and your idea doesn’t work in play test, throw it out. Pick a genre it’ll work as, and make the game as closely to the original idea as possible so long as it remains fun.

No player will ever complain about a game for being the same if it isn’t fun, they’ll only complain if it’s not fun and its the same. They’ll complain if it’s not as fun as some other game, and they’ll complain if its not as fun as they feel it could be if some rather minor changes had been made.

Just keep things simple. It’ll go a long way.

Now, I say these things not in bitterness, but in reflection. I’ve witnessed this, and have taken it to heart, in that I no longer truly concern myself in making a truly unique experience anywhere I go. Because it’s impossible, what I instead focus on, is making the best damned experience possible anywhere I go.

When applied to video games, I’ve come to realize that simplicity often works best on the story side of things. Early games especially required one main tenant for their story, and from there on you were good and content to play for the rest of the duration. It was not entirely essential that you throw in a bunch of complicated branching or ickiness that some modern RPGs require of you today. The gameplay was simplistic, the story was simplistic, the experience was simplistic.

But it was fun, and it was by no means truly unique from other games before it. People played and enjoyed them, and that’s because they were easy to grasp, and easy to picture.

The industry rarely thinks like this anymore.

I see a grand multitude of games trying to overpopulate their game with features and an excessively complex story and all kinds of things that the player is just not going to pay attention to, or really care about. They’re adding niche features, but they target mainstream.

Inevitably, these titles fail, and for a reason. No one really wants a unique experience if it’s a complicated one.

The games that remain simplistic, but can compound some added features in a way that retains the simplicity are the ones that succeed. Rock Band fashioned their peripherals to function in a similar way to the actual instrument, and gamers went for it. The experience remained complex, but the method in which it was played was simple to the player. And that simplicity made it fun.

But when we think of mainstream games, the ones that are popular are also rarely ones that focus on story. And the ones that do focus on story, are rather simplistic in the way that their story is established. Assassin’s Creed – Be an assassin, seek and kill targets. WHEE! Mario Galaxy – Bowser stole princess… Saver her… IN SPACE! Mass Effect – Bad guy commits treason to the galactic community, find a way to bring him to justice. Portal – You’re a scientific test subject, you have a gun that creates portals, ESCAPE!

The stories at their core remain simplistic, and are told as such. You’re given control of an iconic character that is designed for a player to feel some connection with, and you pursue their adventures in accordance with the basic general response requisite of the basic story. Each of these stories can be played through on the very basic level and be fun for a mainstream audience. Mass Effect has a fairly complex story, but the majority of it’s complexity is not requisite of the player and is left for the play of those who wish to play it.

So by following these examples it is fairly safe to conclude that a truly good story for a video game, has to retain a core simplicity on the requisite level that ties all the elements to it in a comprehensible way. To tie in other elements it is fairly important to keep them non-requisite, but available for the niche who would want to move into them.

What things can be done, then, to create a more interesting story for the player, while retaining the core simplicity that is requisite to an enticing experience?

That’s a question for a later date.