Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
dungeon and enables progression by unlocking previously unreachable areas.
In addition, it uses the familiar dramatic arc associated with adventure stories where
the hero fights his way through a series of tough challenges to gain that vital edge
and come out victorious.
Most storytelling in video games is either linear (the story is the same every time
the player plays the game) or branching (the player makes decisions that influence
the direction of the plot line in a large-scale way). Emergent storytelling, in which
a story emerges entirely from the game's mechanics and the player's actions, has
long been a holy grail of game designers. It has proven to be a particularly intrac-
table problem because it requires designers to characterize dramatic situations and
human behavior in numeric and algorithmic terms. This is far more difficult than
creating the economy of even a very complex game world like that of
Civilization.
Because this topic concentrates on game economies, we don't have room to discuss
the various efforts that people have made toward emergent storytelling. For the
moment, it remains a research topic for academics and is seldom attempted in
commercial video games.
When we design levels, we usually do so working from one of two perspectives on
the task. One perspective focuses on the
challenges
that players must overcome (or
tasks they must perform) to complete the level. The other perspective focuses on
the
layout
of the game world—the simulated space in which it takes place.
In Chapter 9 of
Fundamentals of Game Design
, Ernest Adams explains that challenges
in video games form a hierarchy, with groups of short-duration challenges combining
to form larger challenges. The lowest level challenges are called
atomic
challenges
because they cannot be further subdivided. For example, successfully landing a
punch on an opponent in a boxing game is an atomic challenge, while winning the
fight is a mission made up of many such challenges, and it may be necessary to win
many fights to finish the game. From the challenges perspective on level design, we
concentrate on defining this hierarchy.
Viewing level design from the second perspective, that of layout, we define the
architecture of the level itself. In Chapter 12 of
Fundamentals of Game Design,
Adams
describes several common spatial layouts found across different games. Some games,
such as side-scrolling games or
Half-Life
, provide nearly linear levels. Track-based car
racing games use ring-shaped layouts. Spaces in first-person shooter games designed
for multiplayer combat are often quite sophisticated, with open and protected areas,
doors to guard, high vantage points, and so on.
Each of these two different perspectives has its own strengths when considering
different design issues. For example, it's easier to think about pacing and difficulty
curves when you view the level as a series of tasks or challenges. But storytelling and
