When it comes to game levels, the first thing that comes to mind are dungeons in RPGs, levels in match-3, and copies of various games. However, what many people may not think of is that many things in the real world can also affect the design of game levels, in fact, many good game level designs have striking similarities with reality.
In a previous GDC presentation, Senior Level Planner Andrew Yoder and University of Miami Professor Jerry Belich shared unusual game level design ideas from the perspectives of playgrounds and theme parks.
Here's the full content of GameLook transcription:
Playground and game level design
Andrew Yoder：
We're going to talk about playground and level design, briefly introduce myself, I started in the game industry from mods, and I have done multiplayer level design in these (Gunfire Ranger, Havoc of the Gods, Royal Realm, Star Wars Armor) and many more games.
But what we're talking about here is the playground, what can a playground in the real world teach us in terms of level design? Specifically, what can it teach us in terms of the terrain of the level?
Before discussing the details, let's talk about something academic, the playground is a durable community space with undetermined play, it is not a course that needs to overcome obstacles, nor a puzzle that needs to be solved, nor is it a story that needs to be told. Although there are sometimes lessons or story factors, the playground doesn't digest and translate it into action, it's always there.
A good playground has a lot of lessons, a lot of stories, and a lot of forms of play. Fundamentally, a playground is a multiplayer venue that expands according to the player's needs, such as the number of players, the game mode, and the player's trust. A google study has explored trust in games, and some of the ideas apply to playgrounds, where we can expand single-person facilities to double-player collaborations to events where 6 or more people can participate.
When we talk about the design of the sandbox level, there is also a lot of overlap between the playground and the sandbox, and the main difference is that the sandbox is a neutral space where you can put toys, and the playground itself is a kind of toy. Sandboxes can sometimes be converted into action, but playgrounds don't move, and sandboxes are great for parallel or single-player gameplay, but are often not suitable for rich co-op or multiplayer experiences.
Today we're talking mostly about level geometry, but it's important to remember that the way we build or shape levels has an impact on multiplayer play systems. If we play deathmatch mode on the King of the Hill map, you might feel like the king of the hills because the level design and the game system are synergistic.
This is a playground near my house, very simple, basic, if you live in a northern city in the United States, you may see such facilities everywhere, it is worth noting that we can not directly translate the layout of the playground into a level layout, but there are still some things we can learn.
We took the playground facilities closer and took them apart for analysis, where the light green box can be seen as a module, and its center is a platform that plays a target role, of course, for small children, adults like me have passed the age of playing playgrounds.
However, for 5-year-olds, getting on this platform can be a small goal. In order to achieve or achieve this goal, they need to walk up from the side "skill check" path, it is worth noting that this path is not linear, it can adapt to many types of skills, such as 3-year-olds can walk these steps may be slow, 5-year-olds walk well, 10-year-olds may be able to go up 2 steps at a time.
If we put it in an environment of multiplayer competition, if I can go two steps at a time and the opponent can't, then I have a competitive advantage.
Once we reach the platform, we're going to walk back, and the functionality here is the equivalent of a reward in the game, which is a slide within the red line, and it's also an opportunity for players with higher skills to show, for example, they can walk up the slide.
There may also be a non-clear-looking piece, usually made of metal, and a good piece of the module acts as a landmark or theme.
After understanding the concept of this module, we can create more complex structures, such as this playground facility is interesting, because it is combined by multiple modules to form a larger structure.
For example, module 1 has steps and white slides that cannot be seen behind, module 2 is like a twisted ladder pool or something like that, module 3 is a module with a spiral tube, and it is connected to module 4 that can jump, which allows us to return to the ground.
In an abstract way, we can think of this playground format as hierarchical or tree, as a playground, it's very good, but it's also very simple, if we play an attack game, the lack of looping can be a big problem, because the only way back to the first module is to go back to the same way, so we will keep repeating back to the previous position.
However, if you design it to be a ring, the experience may be much better. In fact, if we want to do it, we can make a bigger and more diverse playground.
So, how do we apply this to the level geometry, the level design?
This is Quake from 1996, I started modding at this time, if you don't know this game, the right is its first level layout, we can apply the concept of playground to the level design. Quake actually does the same, and there are a lot of them.
These levels are essentially for multiplayer play, so they can be used in all maps such as single-player, co-op, and PvP, and if we compare them with playgrounds, we can find that many games have playground-like designs.
For example, this can be seen as a playground, although it does not seem to have anything to do with Quake, but it is actually the layout structure of the game's levels, and if we put the previously mentioned concepts such as skill checks and steps on it, it will look very familiar.
The layout and modules of this level can be described in the form of a playground, and we made a very neat playground before adding monsters, rewards and many elements. If we add enemy reactions and item reactions, this level is more like a permanent place than an obstacle course that needs to be completed like most Quake levels.
It's worth noting that there are many ways to accomplish the objectives here, so you can add new objectives and gameplay to it, such as this is a simple demo of parkour gameplay.
Usually, this level takes 10-15 minutes to complete for the first time, but in parkour mode, taking full advantage of different jumping techniques, players only need 27 seconds to complete the level. This is not the game planning plan to play, but with this playground layout, our levels can bring endless possibilities.
At this time, many of you may say, I don't make such a game, so how does it help me? Actually, even I don't necessarily make a game like this, because it's just a strange thing I'm exploring. However, if you want to do a 3D environment, you need to do a player character image, have camera control and other factors, the concept of a playground can be used.
In the creative prototype stage or early stages, you need some data to test the map, and the metrics test map can only tell you how far between two locations and how high a location is, but it won't tell you if it's interesting, so we can try measuring the playground.
It's a measuring playground I've made for a game, we want to identify the basic elements of the level at a very early stage, we have a lot of rich operating settings, we want to explore ideas like compact cameras, double jumps, and we need to make sure that all of these things come together and don't make any one of them much higher than the others.
As we explore more things, we put it all in the levels, like gunplay, where you can shoot some things and there will be other things that shoot at you.
Does the final level look like a playground? Maybe it's not like it at all, but it doesn't matter, because the role of the playground structure is to help us find the fun points of the game, rather than just making it into a game level.
Going back to the original academic definition, the playground is a durable community space with unpredetermined play, with a focus on non-predetermined, and we have a lot to add in terms of a durable community space.
For me, the playground is an interesting metaphor that means we have a lot to do in multiplayer level design, and it's also an example of the level geometry influencing the design of the game system, which allows our level design to be more flexible to adapt to the needs of the player.
How do you draw level design inspiration from the real world?
Jerry Belich：
I'm Jerry Belich, a professor of game design at the University of Miami, and a Play Engineer, so a lot of what I do is design physical hardware as well as electronic digital experiences, and I've been at GDC for many years. The main thing I'm sharing today is some of the similarities between the real world and the digital game space, in particular exploring the boundaries of level design and the release of experiences.
The two biggest sources of inspiration for me are Disney and Nintendo, both of which are masters in terms of design. Disney has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to designing immersive experiences, and Nintendo is one of the most important innovators in the gaming industry, especially With Breath of the Wild giving us a glimpse of how unique and meticulous open-world design can be.
I think there are similarities between the two companies, such as this is a brief microcosm of the breath of the wild game world, which has something in common with the big picture design of many theme parks, especially the guidance of landmarks, and the abstract way to prevent something from being revealed in advance, which I call "berm".
For example, in this screenshot, the game does not give a clear path, but it draws us through several landmarks.
This is a photograph of the Kingdom of Magic, and you can see that its design has a lot of similarities to Breath of the Wild, it draws people in different directions in various ways, there are no wrong routes here, all the routes you choose.
You can see where you are on a theme park map, just like the Breath of the Wild map, there are many landmarks that attract people to different attractions, and the magic castle is probably the most attractive, it guides people through most of the park to get there.
The "berms" here serve to shield people's view and the outside world, and there are similarities to the design of Breath of the Wild, where they hide attractions through some man-made things and then reveal them as people get closer. For Disney, it's important to enter the park and see the Magic Castle.
When you get to the Magic Kingdom, you can't see a lot of things in the park, and then you go left or right, then you walk to the main street, and finally the Magic Castle appears in a very perfect way.
It's happening mostly because of the park gate, which is the boundary of the Disney experience, and everything within the boundaries is completely under their control, just like in the game.
The role of this boundary is to allow Disney to create very powerful moments of experience, but that's not the beginning of the audience experience, Disney through their mobile app to direct people to the park gates, and the airport bus and so on, and I think when designing games, you can also consider such boundaries and design to expand the experience and attract people to get there.
When it comes to boundaries in games, there are actually many kinds, such as light design, input devices. Overall, the boundaries in the game are more about revealing the game world to the player than the occlusion art of the theme park, because you have complete control over everything in the game world, because Nintendo is not like Disney, but also consider some attractions being seen by the upper-level residents of downtown Los Angeles.
Theme parks do this because they're reducing conflict, and if I could see Frontland in Tomorrowland, they would repel each other. This problem is especially pronounced in console games, especially portable consoles, where they do not have full control over the environment.
As a game planner, you don't feel like it's not something you should be thinking about, the lack of operation doesn't mean it has no impact on the game, I think Nintendo must have considered different game styles when designing the Switch controller, and the impact of this on its platform game.
At one of GDC's booths, for example, Butt Sniffin Pugs was designed with additional ways to operate that would not only allow experiencers to forget about the meetings they were attending, let go of their nervousness, and experience the game in the most natural state, so that they could observe how people really reacted to playing the game.
This is a game GIF for Vlambeer, and I made a model to turn it into a somatosensory game.
I made a cardboard version of the wings with buttons on the wings that could fire and buttons on the feet that could speed up, mainly to get people to accept the external experience, which was a completely different experience, and it was fun both to play and look. Just like we play tennis and play tennis, the difference is very big.
We can borrow from a lot of industry controls on experience design, whether it's movies, games, or anything.
For example, this horror cinema does not only make costumes, many people also bring props, rubber gloves, and some streets also sell these props, so people are actively involved in this atmosphere before watching the movie, preparing for the release of the movie. In this case, the boundary is the movie itself, and you could have sat in front of the screen and waited for the movie to start, but they expanded the experience through various elements, giving people a very unique and happy experience.
In addition to theme parks, there are many real-world experiences with similar designs. Of course, it also includes escape rooms, which even formed its own industry, but escape rooms are not designed with Experience bleed, after the door is closed, you enter the experience, after opening the experience ends, and that's it.
It's not that game developers aren't doing this, but through the perspective of the real world, we can explore a lot of things that we haven't noticed, especially in the case of more and more types of devices we have, such as smart lights, TV LEDs, intelligent voice assistants, etc. In the future, there will be more and more ways to help game planning map the digital world to the real world and bring more impact to people.
Assuming there's a piece of software that allows switch to interact with your light bulbs, when you play Breath of the Wild, you can present the progress of the game through the interaction of a variety of devices, such as the screen on the ceiling may show the weather conditions in the game in real time, although it may be a bit silly, but it is also a lot of fun.
The upgrade of the console and the emergence of more new technologies will make the boundaries between the digital world and the real world more and more blurred, and we can use many technologies to improve game design.
It's a game I designed, the real world becomes a constraint on gameplay, the level itself has to exist on top of an entity, so it can't be infinite, which forces all participants to cooperate and walk back and forth to better understand the game world.
It's Please Stand By, where everything is digital but shown to people through the screen structure of old TVs, and this game is brilliant because it's time-obsolete, but spatially it's not, and you can get back a lot of memories through an experience like that.
The last thing I want to say is that when designing a game, thinking about how to make the most of the space between the player and the game, which isn't always blank, thinking about what the boundaries of the experience you're going to create are, which you have complete control over, and then thinking about what happens before that experience, how people get it, that's all I've shared.
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