Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
gradually. Just as it all starts to seem a bit familiar, bring in a twist: a new vehicle, a
new action, a new location, a new enemy, or a sharp change in the plot of the story.
Never Lose Sight of Your Audience
Level design, more than any other part of the game design and development pro-
cess, brings with it the risk of building a game that your audience won't enjoy.
You
assemble all the components that the others provide, and when the player starts up
the game, she finds herself in
your
environment. The game designers may decide on
the types of challenges the game contains, but you decide when the player will face
them, in what sequence, and in what combinations. Consequently, you, more than
anyone else on the team, must apply the player-centric approach to every design
decision you make. Go inside the mind of your player and try to imagine what it
will be like to see it all for the first time.
Always remember that you are not the player. Your own personal circumstances
have
nothing to do with the game
. You may be a 22-year-old male, but your player
may well be a 10-year-old girl or a 50-year-old man. Understand the game's target
audience and what that audience wants from the game; then make sure you give it
to them—at all times!
TWINKIE DENIAL CONDITIONS
Since 1997, I have written a regular column called “The Designer's Notebook” for the
Gamasutra
developers' webzine. In the course of writing the column I have amassed a
collection of design errors
—
mistakes to avoid
—
which I document in an annual column
titled “Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!” Many of these errors were suggested by other
game designers or by angry gamers. The errors have come to be known as “Twinkie
Denial Conditions.” (A Twinkie is a snack cake often sold in vending machines; game
developers frequently resort to vending machines for sustenance when they are working
so late that all the pizza-delivery places are closed.) Some of the errors listed in this
chapter are Twinkie Denial Conditions, but there are many more. You can find a complete
list of Twinkie Denial Conditions with links to the articles in which they appeared at
Summary
In this chapter, you explored level design, a key stage in the development of any
video game. The level designer is responsible for actually presenting the game expe-
rience to the player by designing elements such as the space in which the game
takes place, deciding what challenges a player will face at each level of the game,
creating the atmosphere of the game world, and planning the pacing of events for
