On Monday 19th October, guest speaker Oguz Orkun Doma came to give us a talk on the subject of Level Design. He has a PhD in Architecture, as well as extensive experience in level design and game design, as well as VR development. He has worked in various roles at many different companies, including as a Level Designer at Crytek, Game Designer and XR Project manager in Neo Auvra Digital health Technologies, and Project manager at Hyperlab Games. Currently he works as a research fellow in University of Southampton WSA as an Interaction Designer for Virtual Production.
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Firstly in our lecture, Oz took us through some basic ideas behind the role of level designer and what it entails.
- Planning navigable spaces and game flow, and how they interact with game mechanics, challenge and guidance.
- Differs from environmental design – they plan the virtual environment and its thematic consistency.
- Space shapes emotion, pacing and what we memorise. It also structures the way in which we experience time and agency.
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Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (or MDA) is an analysis tool used to study and design games. It intends to break a game’s entire being into those three principles:
- Mechanics are the core components of a game – the rules, player actions, and the algorithms themselves that make up the game in-engine.
- Dynamics are the ways mechanics act on player input and interacting with other mechanics outside of a vacuum.
- Aesthetics are the ways a player responds emotionally to the game.
This structure is usually represented in a pyramid (or reverse-pyramid) structure, with mechanics making up the foundation, dynamics in the middle and aesthetics as the peak.
We also talked about game flow and the idea of the player’s journey – a well-known example of this is the east Asian story structure Kishōtenketsu – introducing an idea/ developing it further/ adding a twist/ concluding the story in one final act. This ha been used in many games to great success – a notable example of this would be Super Mario 3D World’s linear level structure.
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We talked briefly on the idea of Phenomenology – the implied usage of something based on pre-learned context. For example, the idea of holding or containing a liquid isn’t drawn alone from the visual shape of a jug, but rather past experience with similar things. The jug isn’t an object but a “thing” that gathers relations – acting as a connection between physical matter and human experiences.
I found this particularly interesting as a concept, and it is certainly something that can be exercised in my own games work – in fact it is almost definitely something I have been already using subconsciously.
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Next we did a breakdown of the narrative action bubbles system, as well as the triadic breakdown structure. The former is used often in storytelling, and greatly helps to visualise the flow and structure of a game from a wider view – breaking levels down into manageable, focused experiences. We were tasked with making our own narrative bubble system for a scene in a piece of media we enjoyed in groups – we chose the climactic chase sequence of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (see below).
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We then looked at the triadic breakdown structure and how in particular it can be useful in environment art – we also talked about a method of prototyping known as blockmesh (or greyboxing) that outlines the game environment using simple tools.
- Blockmesh is very useful in playtesting, as it helps create a good sense of scale.
- Works in stages – create a simple prototype to start, sketch on top of it and iterate using the blockmesh again. Keep repeating this process until the environment is more fully built.
Triadic breakdown is a way of establishing asset hierarchy, which can be especially useful in environment art. We looked at some examples of this in both real-world application and games like Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, and then were tasked with making our own for or pre-established scene from earlier.
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This lecture was useful and insightful. Beforehand, I would have considered level design to be an area of expertise for me, but this talk made me consider a lot of new ideas that I did not have prior knowledge of. So, I am grateful for Oz’s work in this lecture and hope that by considering these new ideas I will become a better level designer.
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