You have a great idea for a game. Turning that idea into a reality isn't just about knowing the tools. In this course you will practice moving from game concept through design documentation, prototyping and testing. Numerous elements go into the overall process of game design. These range from topics such as idea generation, story, character, and game world development, game mechanics and level design, and user experience design. You will explore the process for designing meaningful experiences for your players. At the end of the course learners will have produced a game's high concept document, one page blueprint, a physical prototype, pitch and supporting design documentation to move from an idea in your head to a fleshed out design, ready for implementation.
Level Components
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From the course by Michigan State University
Principles of Game Design
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From the lesson
From Idea to Implementation
Games aren't just about ideas, stories and worlds. They are also interactive systems that players experience. What does it mean to develop gameplay or game systems? This module introduces you to the process of designing gameplay experiences and then how those components can be leveraged in the process of level design. You will explore what it means to "balance" a game or move from an idea to something playable by users.
Meet the Instructors
Casey O'DonnellAssociate Professor
Media and Information
[MUSIC]
Okay.
I talked a bit about the difference between game design and level design, but
I want to talk about the kinds of components,
the things that go into designing a level.
Because, the truth is there are quite a few things that go into it, right?
You have action, exploration, puzzle solving, storytelling and
the overall aesthetics.
These are important things to pay attention to as you start to think about,
well how am I going to design a level, what kinds of things go into my levels?
Let's talk about action, which is one of our components of level design, right?
Well, it's important that the type of action that a level contains is
compatible with the rest of a game.
And sometimes, you can add types of action that add variety,
but sometimes it detracts.
So if a game is primarily about running around shooting things and
blowing stuff up, suddenly adding in a level that's about being sneaky and
quiet can be really confusing or daunting for
a player, which isn't to say that lots of games don't do that.
They do, but it's not always a good decision, all right?
So we also need to think about how much action a level contains,
because If there's too much, you can have player fatigue.
Maybe they can't get enough done.
I know personally, as somebody that has two small children,
levels that take hours for me to complete are really difficult,
because finding hours in my days are really difficult.
And if I'm playing for an hour and my kid unplugs the controller or
does something interesting, I don't want to lose all of that time and possibility.
And so, that's an important element of your level design.
How much time it's going to take, right, which is also related to pacing, right?
Like how quickly, how rapidly are things introduced to the player?
How much attention do they have to pay, right?
Because that is important, right?
Like it's different.
Some games are very actively paced, right?
That the player must react very quickly.
But they can only sustain that kind of attention for a given amount of time.
So what else?
Well, exploration.
So what does that mean, right?
And so exploration doesn't fit into every game.
But you can also add parts of it in.
One of my favorite, it's not even an Easter egg, one of the things that I
enjoyed about the first time I played the game, Limbo was the fact that, even though
everything about the game said, go this way, stupid, I went that way.
Because that's just what kind of player I am.
But, the game rewarded me by saying, yes, you went this way, now go the other way.
And so that's interesting, right?
And exploration is important, right?
That it's one of those things that a player can effectively identify with.
And it can be what happens in between action sequences.
It allows the player to relax for a moment,
as they move between moments of excitement, all right?
But for some games, it may actually run counter to the flow, right?
That sometimes that exploration moment isn't interesting anymore.
And you'll notice a lot of games that require you to explore at first,
may introduce systems later that allow you to fast-travel, to avoid that exploration.
Because what you're really interested in that point is not so much exploration,
but getting as much done as you can in the game.
And so it's really about a balance between exploration and action within a game.
All right?
It's important, right?
And if there's too much or too little, right, the flow, which we'll talk
a little bit more in a future lesson, that sometimes too much exploration or
too little, knocks the player out of that state of flow.
So talk about another component, puzzle solving.
All right?
This is actually, for me, one of the most interesting areas for level design,
because it really speaks to that idea of using levels as a kind of playground, for
using the Lego Blocks that a game designer has built, all right?
And puzzles are about forcing the user to solve a very specific or
particular problem within a level, right?
I think the important thing to remember here is that this isn't an arbitrary
kind of activity, all right.
That puzzles really need to also relate back to your story, and
your environment, and the world, right?
That's really interesting.
It's important, right?
And it's how games can really sort of introduce ideas to you.
They force you to solve a particular problem
before advancing to the next level, right?
That's coaching, that's how a game can train you.
And I'm sure most of you can identify games that do that
through their levels, right?
Again it shouldn't be arbitrary, these are things that should be designed.
You're not giving arbitrary tasks for somebody to solve,
you're trying to link these things together into a cohesive story or
world that the player can explore.
And the other thing that's really important is you really have to
provide the player with some structure, some information, right?
So that they can solve the puzzle.
You need to provide really helpful Feedback.
I know I've already mentioned Limbo, but at the Game Developers Conference,
one of my favorite things about Limbo was when the designer talked about how it's
important to let the user know very quickly if they're doing it wrong, right?
And make it clear that that was not a correct solution to the puzzle, and
that ultimately, the correct solution, once the player figures it out and arrives
at that solution, should be, relatively speaking, easy to pull off, right?
Because they've already solved it, right?
They were able to reflect on, well, what's the puzzle here?
How does it work?
Now I can solve it.
So let's talk about story telling, right?
Which we've already talked about in a general sense.
But oftentimes, levels really allow us to explore those story telling moments,
that we're linking together the storyline through those levels or missions.
And this is pretty common, right, and
so as a level designer, story telling is part of what you're doing.
But It also provides an opportunity where maybe you're changing things up, right?
A level set entirely in the intestines of a giant something, I don't know, right?
It allows you to change things up, it allows you to alter the architecture,
the characters, the kinds of interactions.
Now provided that the game itself,
the game design was flexible enough to allow these things.
It also means you can add things like cut scenes, right?
Or cut sequences within a given level, all right?
As a level designer you may trigger those things and literally,
there are things called triggers in game engines that trigger events and
allow you, as a designer, to respond to those kinds of things.
Let's talk about the aesthetics, right?
Again, as we've already said, that how a level looks and feels,
right, is really important.
That's part of the storytelling, that's part of the game world,
and as a level designer that's what you're also thinking about.
Maybe you can do different things.
But, it's a balancing act, because you have to sort of balance the amount of time
it takes to create a level, the amount of time it takes to create a flexible
game engine to handle those needs, as well as
the player's ability or desire to move through those things.
And does it even work with the game story line or its overall aesthetic?
You need to guide the player, right?
It needs to be interesting.
It needs to, it can't be entirely cryptic about,
right, making it obvious where you can and can't go,right?
And a lot of levels place restrictions on the player.
You're not allowed to go anywhere or everywhere,
because that would be really difficult.
Even open world games have limits,
maybe even if it's just the planet that the game is set on, right?
And so, you have to balance that and so sometimes it's, there's this.
We like to think about it like a smoke and mirrors, right?
That we have to make it clear what is part and
what is not part of the level,and where you can go or
when it's not worth your time to explore that far, right?
What are the boundaries?
And so, these are some of the components of level design.
And we'll talk some more about level design next.
Thanks.
[MUSIC]
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