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but for many players it would seem to make the playing experience all the more
compelling.
Familiar Subject Matter
Of course, The Sims is not the original software toy, nor is it even Will Wright’s
first. His first success with the software toy genre came with SimCity. It too simu
-
lated a sophisticated system and allowed the player to truly control her city’s
destiny. Though SimCity is an excellent, entertaining title, The Sims is more compel
-
ling still. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the player of The Sims is
controlling humans instead of a city. In other words, it follows Chris Crawford’s
insistence that games should focus on “people not things.” In general, most players
will find people to be much more interesting than things, and players will be able to
form an emotional bond with a simulated person much easier than with a simulated
city. After playing The Sims for a while, players will feel sad when their sim’s
amorous advances are rebuffed or when their house burns to the ground. Though
certainly not as smart or interesting as actual humans, the simulated people in The
Sims are close enough to being plausible that players will want to believe in their
sims’ virtual existences and will fill in the simulation’s deficiencies for themselves.
Furthermore, almost all the players who play The Sims will have an intimate
knowledge of the subject being simulated before they start playing. They will feel
that they are something of an expert on this “suburban life” subject and think they
will be able to play the game better as a result. For instance, players know by
instinct that they should set up a bathroom with a shower, a toilet, and a sink. If the
job were to simulate an alien life-form’s daily life on another planet, players would
have much less of an idea how to proceed and would need to figure out the life-
form’s culture before they could expect to succeed at the game. Because players
already know so much about the subject matter of The Sims, they are that much
more drawn into the game. From the moment she starts up the game, the player
feels good because she is putting her real-world knowledge to use in creating these
simulated lives. When Will Wright made SimEarth, he created a game involving

systems that players knew very little about, and this may explain why so many peo
-
ple found the game to be quite difficult. For SimCity, players had a better sense of
what was going on; while they may not have been experts on urban planning and
dynamics, players at least thought they knew how a city should be laid out and
were familiar with problems such as traffic, pollution, and crime. With The Sims,
most players know infinitely more about the topic than they do about city planning.
Hence, the game is that much more compelling to play. Its very familiarity draws
the player in like nothing else can.
Of course, simulating a subject many of the players will be familiar with can be
a challenge as well; if the designer gets it wrong, players will know instantly. In the
398 Chapter 20: Game Analysis: The Sims
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alien-life simulator, who is to say what is accurate since the world and creatures are
made up to begin with? This grants the designer more artistic license for how the
world is constructed. However, in a reality simulation like The Sims, if the designer
makes the wrong choice about what will provoke a sim to do what action, players
will see the error and their suspension of disbelief will be shattered instantly.
Working with a subject that players are intimate with may serve to draw them in,
but if it is not done correctly it may drive them away as well.
Safe Experimentation
On first inspection, one might not think that what The Sims simulates is actually all
that interesting. Indeed, for the suburbanites who are likely to own a computer to
play the game and have the disposable income to purchase it, how different is the
game-world of The Sims from real life? It would seem that the escapist and
wish-fulfillment qualities many games possess are totally lacking in The Sims. Fur-
thermore, The Sims does not even present “life with all the dull bits cut out.” The
player’s sims still have to engage in the more mundane aspects of modern life, such
as going to the bathroom, going to work, paying bills, and taking out the trash. Is
this fun? Strangely, it is, since these more tedious chores lend an air of “realism” to
the proceedings, which makes the player’s successes or failures all the more
meaningful.
What The Sims really provides to the player is a test-bed for safe experimenta
-

tion. While prudence may prevent the player from pursuing a career as a criminal or
Chapter 20: Game Analysis: The Sims 399
Though the
subject matter of
The Sims may
seem pedestrian,
the game is so
fascinating
because it
provides players
with a safe world
in which to
experiment.
professional athlete in real life, the game will allow the player to take her sims in
that direction with little risk to the player. While building a house is a major under
-
taking involving great financial risk for the purchaser, in The Sims, players can
build lavish houses, spend money on frivolous trinkets for their sims, throw wild
hot tub parties, or pursue homosexual relationships just to get a sense of what life
might be like if they lived it differently. If these experimental lifestyles turn out to
not work as well as the players had hoped, the only loss is for their sims, an effect
considerably less serious than real-world bankruptcy or social ostracizing. Indeed,
if the player avoids saving her game after a catastrophic event or decision, the loss
is easily undone entirely. The life the player controls in The Sims may be one quite
close to her own, but the ability to try new things without fear of serious repercus
-
sions makes the experience compelling and exciting.
Depth and Focus
A big part of what makes The Sims work is the range of choices the player is pre-
sented with for what he can do with his sims. Abdicating authorship is all well and

good, but if the designer fails to provide the player enough meaningful choices, the
player will find himself only able to author a very narrow range of stories. Indeed, it
is the designer’s responsibility in creating a software toy to design that toy with a
broad enough range of possibilities that the appeal of playing with it is not quickly
exhausted. And Wright did that expertly with The Sims, leaving the player with a
constant feeling that there is so much more to do and see in the game-world, that
one could never hope to do it all.
A player can concentrate on building her house, starting either with some of the
pre-built houses or constructing one from the ground up. A robust set of house-
construction and landscaping tools allows the player to create a very large variety
of houses, with probably no two built-from-scratch houses ever being the same,
even with hundreds of thousands of people playing the game. Once a house is built
or purchased, players can concentrate on filling it up with all manner of interesting
possessions which have a variety of effects on the inhabitants of the house. Of
course, the player gets to construct the inhabitants as well, picking from a large
range of personalities, body types, ages, ethnicities, and even hairstyles, with the
option to make children or adults as well as males or females. Once the sims move
into the house, the player is able to determine what they eat, what they study, what
career they pursue, how they have their fun, and with whom they socialize.
Whether it be house building, property acquisition and placement, character cre
-
ation, or life control, any one of these components includes far more choices than
most games provide. When all of these different systems are combined, the range of
choices available to the player increases exponentially, creating a game with truly
unprecedented depth.
400 Chapter 20: Game Analysis: The Sims
Of course, what the sims cannot do in the game is significant as well. The sims
cannot leave their homes except to go to work, and when they do the player cannot
follow them. Being able to go to other places would be nice, but consider how
much more complex the game would need to be to simulate the rest of the world. A

massive amount of additional work would have been required, and had that sensible
limitation not been made early on in the title’s development it might never have
been completed. By focusing on the home life, the game is able to “get it right” in a
way it could not have had the game-world of The Sims been larger. In short, what
would have been gained in breadth would have been lost in depth. If a designer
spends all her time adding an unreasonable range of possibilities to the game, it is
likely that any one of the features the game includes will be far shallower than if
the designer knows how to focus her efforts.
The Sims also expertly captures the “just one more thing” style of gameplay.
This type of gameplay is perhaps best exemplified by Civilization, where the player
is constantly looking forward to the next technology to be discovered, the next unit
to be built, or the next discovery of new territory. Similarly in The Sims, the player
may be working on having his sims meet new people, trying to advance their
careers, hoping to put an addition on the house, and thinking of someday having
them raise a child, all at the same time. Because of these constant aspirations, there
is never a good place to stop playing the game; there is constantly something on the
horizon to look forward to. Hence the game is fabulously addictive, with captivated
players devoting hour upon hour, day after day, and week after week of their lives
to the game.
Interface
The best a game’s interface can hope to do is to not ruin the player’s experience.
The interface’s job is to communicate to the player the state of the world and to
receive input from the player as to what he wants to change in that game-world. The
act of using this input/output interface is not meant to be fun in and of itself; it is the
player’s interaction with the world that should be the compelling experience. But
since the interface determines how the player interacts with the world, if that inter
-
face is not up to the task then at best the player will become frustrated and at worst
the player will be unable to perform the action he wants.
The Sims’ user interface is a beautiful example of how to do an interface cor

-
rectly. It provides the player with a staggering amount of information about the
game-world, while allowing the player to easily and intuitively make whatever
changes she wants. Unlike many modern action games, the tutorial primarily
provides the player with information about how to play the game, not how to
manipulate the interface. The interface is so simple and intuitive that players pick it
up with very little difficulty, no doubt the result of rigorous playtesting. The fact
Chapter 20: Game Analysis: The Sims 401
that help is embedded throughout the interface is key, allowing the player to click
on any text item for an explanation of how it is important and why it is relevant.
A big part of the success of The Sims’ input/output scheme is its similarity to
systems the player is likely to understand before he ever starts playing the game.
For instance, the buttons that determine the game’s simulation speed look like those
one would find on a tape player, something with which almost all players will be
familiar. A large amount of the interface is reminiscent of Microsoft Windows, with
the pointing and clicking the player does mirroring that OS wherever appropriate.
Item manipulation is reminiscent of Windows as well; the player can use drag and
drop to place objects, or simply click and click. The standard Windows “X” appears
in the upper right-hand corner of dialog boxes to indicate that they can be closed,
and the regular OK/Cancel button combinations are used wherever appropriate.
While the functionality mirrors Windows in many ways, it is important to note that
the appearance of the interface does not look exactly like Windows. All of the but
-
tons are nicely drawn in a friendly art style that is a far cry from Windows’ cold,
utilitarian sterility. If the game used the actual dialog box art that Windows pro
-
vides, the player would instantly be reminded of working with the file picker or
some other Windows interface, not an experience he is likely to remember fondly,
certainly not as a “fun” activity. However, by putting a new visual style on the
behavior of Windows, the interface is intuitive and familiar to the player without

actually reminding him of file management.
Another example of this is the “head” menu used throughout the game. When
the player wants to have a sim perform an action on a particular object, the player
402 Chapter 20: Game Analysis: The Sims
The Sims has an
extremely
intuitive interface
that includes
multiple ways for
the player to
accomplish the
same action.
simply clicks on the object in question. From there a floating head of her current
sim appears, with a range of different actions the sim can perform surrounding it in
a circle. The player then simply moves the mouse over to the action he wants and
clicks on it. While moving the pointer around, the sim’s head actually tracks the
cursor, watching it wherever it goes. This menu functions identically to a pop-up
menu in Windows, but with several distinct advantages. The first is that it does not
look like a pop-up menu, and thereby the player does not associate it with boring
Windows functionality. Second, the menu only lists the options that are available
for the current object at that time. A normal pop-up menu would list all of the
objects possible, with currently unavailable options grayed out. Third, by having
the sim’s head in the center, the menu brings the player closer to the core of what he
is doing; he is directing the sim to perform a certain action. The directive he is giv
-
ing to his beloved sim is more intimate than it would have been through a more
sterile, bland, and standard pop-up menu.
Controlled Versus Autonomous Behavior
In the game, the player is able to direct his sims to perform certain actions: take out
the trash, call up a friend, take a shower, and so forth. The sims will also, however,

function on their own without the player’s direction. The sims contain enough inter-
nal logic to tend to their most pressing needs, whether it is to eat, to go to the
bathroom, to play a pinball game, or to read today’s paper. As the player makes
additions to the house or purchases further possessions, the sims will walk over to
new objects and either applaud or complain about them, their reaction dependent on
how much they like each particular object. This communicates to the player whether
the sim is generally going to be happy with the new possession or if the sim would
rather it were not there. Since the way the house is set up is a big component of the
sim’s total happiness, this provides crucial information to the player about how to
best set up the house.
The autonomous behavior of the sims also allows the player to set up the house
and then sit back and watch how the sims live in it. This makes the game more like
SimCity, in which the player could only set up the framework of the city—its
streets, its zones, its key buildings—and then see how the inhabitants of the city
live in it. A player of The Sims can build a pleasant house that he thinks would be
good to live in and then sit back and watch the sims inhabit it, using their default
behavior. This provides yet another avenue for interesting gameplay.
Chapter 20: Game Analysis: The Sims 403
The sims generally do not have the foresight of a player, however, and as a
result will perform better, be more productive, and be happier if the player smartly
directs their every move. For instance, the sims will not try to improve their
career-boosting skills of their own volition, such as improving their creativity by
learning how to paint. So it is often in the player’s best interest to override the sims’
internal choices for what action to perform next, if he wants the sim to attain her
full potential. However, the autonomous behavior avoids the player having to
micro-manage every little decision. Sure, being able to tell the sims exactly what to
do is a key part of the game, but if the player is controlling a number of sims at
once, planning something for every one of them to do at a given moment can be
quite a task. The sims’ internal behavior helps to off-load this responsibility from
the player when the player does not want to worry about it.

A Lesson to Be Learned
The Sims is perhaps the most original commercial game design released in recent
years. The game does not take as a starting point any other published game, but
instead seems to have emerged entirely from Will Wright’s brain. To look at the
game is to marvel at its creativity and innovation. There is so much that is done
right in The Sims, an entire book could be devoted to an analysis of its design. The
game is truly like a computerized dollhouse, providing us the ability to play-act real
human scenarios in order to better understand them. The description of the
dollhouse found in the game is quite illuminating:
404 Chapter 20: Game Analysis: The Sims
The sims have
some intelligence
of their own,
which frees up
the player from
having to worry
about every last
detail of their
lives.
Will Lloyd Wright Doll House
This marvel of doll house design is meant for everyone, allowing
children as well as adults to act out fantasies of controlling little fami
-
lies. This incredible replica comes complete with amazingly realistic
furniture and decorative items. Don’t be surprised if hours upon hours
are spent enjoying this little world.
What is perhaps most interesting and compelling about The Sims is the poten
-
tial it has to teach us about our own lives. What is the relationship we have with the
possessions we own? How does the space we live in affect our lives? How does

jealousy start in a relationship?
Of course, no one would argue that The Sims is a completely accurate simula
-
tion of human motivations and activities, but does it need to be completely accurate
to cause us to think about our lives in new and interesting ways? As we move our
sims around and watch them interact, we may disagree with how the simulation
models their behavior. But in that disagreement, we think about what we really
would expect them to do, with that reflection shedding new light on the relation-
ships we maintain in our real lives. This, it seems, is the potential of computer
games—not to allow us to escape from real life or to even replace it, but to open up
new areas of thought, to be able to see the world through a different set of eyes and
come back to our own lives equipped with that priceless information.
Chapter 20: Game Analysis: The Sims 405
Chapter 21
Level Design
“We’ve always striven for ‘immersion’ in the gameplay, but as we’ve
grown (well, changed at least) as designers, our sense of that has
changed. While the details of this attempt vary from game to game, the
core goal has been to provide a range of player capability in the world.
With this breadth of capability, the player hopefully feels more involved in
their decisions. An Underworld player can open a door with the key, by
picking the lock, by breaking it down, or by casting a spell. If the player
can choose their own goals, and their own approaches to an obstacle,
then when they reach the goal it is far more satisfying. Flexible simulation
of game elements is a powerful way to enable the player to make their
own way in the world.”
— Doug Church, talking about his game Ultima Underworld
406
A
s computer games have grown in size and scope, the tasks that in the past

were performed by one person are now performed by multiple people. This
division of labor is necessary for the timely completion of the sophisticated
and massive games the publishers demand and the marketplace has come to expect.
One of the unique roles that was created through this division of labor was that of
the level designer. Once the core gameplay for a game is established, it is the level
designer’s job to create the game-world in which that gameplay takes place, to build
spaces that are fun for the player.
The number of level designers required for a project is directly proportional to
the complexity of the levels to be used in that project. For a 3D game with
extremely detailed architecture which all must be built by the level designer, it is
not unreasonable to have two levels per designer, perhaps only one. Sometimes the
game’s primary designer also serves as a level designer, and sometimes she merely
oversees the team of level designers working on the project. For a 2D game, it is
not out of the question for the game’s lead designer to craft all of the game’s levels.
Level design is where all the different components of a game come together. In
some ways creating a level is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle; to build his lev-
els, the level designer must make use of the game’s engine, art, and core gameplay.
Often level design is where a game’s problems become most apparent. If the engine
is not up to snuff, the levels will start behaving erratically in certain situations, or
the frame rate will not be able to support the planned effects. If the art is made to
the wrong scale or has rendering problems of any kind, these difficulties come out
as the level designer starts placing the art in the world. If the title’s gameplay is not
able to support a wide enough variety of levels to fill out an entire game, or, even
worse, if the gameplay just is not any fun, this problem will become apparent dur
-
ing the level design process. It is the level designer’s responsibility to bring these
problems to the attention of the team, and to see that the difficulties are resolved
properly. Often this can result in the level designer being one of the least liked team
members, since he must always be pestering people to fix problems, but if he
instead tries to ignore the problems he encounters, the game will be worse as a

result. The job of the level designer is one that comes with great responsibility.
With all the different aspects of the game’s content to worry about, the level
designer’s job is certainly not an easy one. Beyond making sure all of the game’s
components are up to snuff, if the level designer’s own work is not of the highest
quality, then the game is likely to fail miserably. If the levels do not bring out the
best aspects of the engine, the art, and the gameplay, it does not matter how good
those component parts may be. Without good levels to pull it all together, the game
will fail to live up to its potential.
Chapter 21: Level Design 407
Levels in Different Games
The definition of a “level” varies greatly from game to game. It most commonly
refers to the game-world of side-scrollers, first-person shooters, adventures, flight
simulators, and role-playing games. These games tend to have distinct areas which
are referred to as “levels.” These areas may be constrained by geographical area
(lava world versus ice world), by the amount of content that can be kept in memory
at once, or by the amount of gameplay that “feels right” before the player is granted
a short reprieve preceding the beginning of the next level. Though many classic
arcade games such as Centipede or Space Invaders took place entirely on one level,
others such as Pac-Man or Joust offered simple variations on the game-world to
prolong their gameplay. Thus, the different mazes in Pac-Man constitute its levels.
In a campaign-based strategy game such as StarCraft, the levels or scenarios are
defined by maps accompanied by objectives the player must accomplish, such as
defend the Terrans against the Protoss forces in this amount of time. In a racing
game, a level would be one of the tracks available in the game. In a sports game,
say baseball, the levels would be the different stadiums featured in the game. Here
the difference between the various levels is completely aesthetic, since in terms of
play mechanics, a baseball game played in Wrigley Field is only subtly different
from one played in Yankee Stadium.
Games such as Civilization and SimCity do have levels, but one key difference
from the games described above is that the entirety of a player’s game takes place

on a single level. The base level is also often randomly generated, and from there it
is largely the user’s responsibility to construct the level as he plays. This is why
408 Chapter 21: Level Design
Joust made
simple changes
to its game-
world to
produce different
levels.
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these titles are often referred to as “builder” games. For these titles, the authorship
of the level is almost entirely abdicated to the player.
This chapter deals primarily with games that use pre-built levels which have a
major impact on the gameplay. Though sports titles and “builder” games may have
levels, their construction is left up to the artists and players respectively, and there
-
fore is not generally of concern to designers. For games like Doom, Tomb Raider,
Super Mario 64, Maniac Mansion, Pac-Man, StarCraft, and Fallout, however, the
design of the levels has everything to do with gameplay and therefore the designer
must be intimately involved with their creation.
Level Separation
How a game is broken down into its component levels has a huge impact on the
flow of the game. Players often play a game a level at a time. If a parent announces
dinner while a child is playing a game, that child is likely to beg to be allowed to
“just finish this level.” In console games, frequently the player can only save her
game between levels, which places further importance on the end of a level as the
completion of a unit of gameplay. A level can function like an act in a play, a chap-
ter in a book, or a movement in a symphony. It gives the audience a chance to see a
discrete unit within a larger work, to understand what portion of the work has been
completed and how much awaits ahead. Well-designed levels are set up such that
difficulty and tension ramp upward toward the end of a level where some sort of a
mini-resolution finally occurs. This may be through a boss monster to defeat or a
special quest object to obtain. When the player finally sees that the level has ended,
she knows that she has accomplished a significant amount of gameplay and should

feel proud of herself.
Technical limitations often dictate where the end of a level must occur. Only so
many textures, sounds, and level data can fit in memory at once, and when those
resources are used up, the gameplay has to stop long enough for different level data
to be loaded in. New technologies present the opportunity for more seamless envi
-
ronments. Even on the technically limited PlayStation, the developer Insomniac
was able to avoid loading screens entirely in Spyro the Dragon, instead just having
Spyro fly into the air for a second while the necessary data is swapped in, then fly
-
ing back to earth in the new level. To the casual player watching Spyro, the break is
much less jarring than seeing a “loading” screen come up. The Spyro the Dragon
levels still have to be divided into sections between these non-loading screens,
however, meaning that the gameplay in those levels is still limited to a certain
amount of space. A good designer, of course, can take the memory constraints and
use them properly to create levels that are fun and challenging to play while also
fitting in the space available. Again, the designer must take the limitations of the
hardware and embrace them.
Chapter 21: Level Design 409
Half-Life is another interesting example of level division. Here the team at
Valve wanted to create a more seamless experience for the player, but were still
using the limited Quake technology. Quake had featured thirty or so levels, each of
which took a significant amount of time to load. In Quake the levels existed in sep
-
arate universes from each other; never would a monster chase the player from one
level to another, never would a player return to a previous level. The programmers
at Valve came up with a system where, if the levels were small enough, they could
be loaded in under five seconds. They also made modifications so that monsters
could track the player across the boundaries between maps. The level designers at
Valve were able to make their levels very small, much smaller than a standard

Quake level, but then created a great quantity of them. The areas between two lev
-
els contain identical architecture, such that the player can run across the border
between two of these levels and, aside from the brief loading message, not even
know he had crossed a level boundary. The result is a much more seamless experi-
ence for the player. Evidently the team still felt the need for story arcs in the game,
since text “chapter titles” appear briefly on the screen at key points during the
game. But since the programming and design teams were able to create a near-
seamless level loading system, the design team was able to separate the game into
these storytelling units wherever it felt best, instead of where the technology dic-
tated. The ideal for an immersive game like Half-Life, of course, would be to
eliminate these load times entirely. Someday the technology will exist to cache in
new level data as the player gets close to needing it. Until then, designers trying to
create seamless environments must strive to keep the loading as short and unobtru-
sive as possible.
Level Order
The order in which the levels occur is also important to the overall flow of the
game. Perhaps big shoot-out levels should be alternated with more strategic or puz
-
zle-oriented levels. If a game places all of its strategic levels early in the game and
then crowds the end with more action-oriented episodes, the game may seem unbal
-
anced. At the very least, the designer should know how the order of the levels will
affect the flow of gameplay, and should be aware of how moving different levels
around will affect it. For example, if a game has thirty levels and six boss monsters,
one logical way to place these adversaries in the game would be at the end of the
fifth, tenth, fifteenth, twentieth, twenty-fifth, and thirtieth levels. The bosses cer
-
tainly do not have to be on those precise levels, and each can be shifted slightly
forward or backward in the level order without causing any serious problems. If the

bosses were placed one each on the last six levels of the game, this would be obvi
-
ously unbalanced. It would seem strange to the player that after twenty-four levels
of no-boss-monster gameplay, suddenly he has to fight one every level.
410 Chapter 21: Level Design
The way the game is broken up into its different levels and the order in which
those levels must occur differs from game to game. For a game like Unreal, as with
the Doom and Quake series before it, the designers were only instructed to make
some cool levels, with little concern for story (since none of these games really had
one) or which events should happen before which other events. Some thought was
put into at what point certain adversaries would first appear in the game, and hence
the earlier levels were more restricted in which creatures they could use. Similarly,
of course, the earlier levels had to be easier and the later ones had to be harder. But
for the most part, the level designers just tried to make the coolest levels possible,
almost working in a vacuum from the other designers. Certainly they would see
each other’s work and this might inspire them to make their own levels better, but
none of the levels really had to match up thematically with the levels that came
before or after it, and the lack of a story meant that this did not adversely affect the
game.
In a game such as Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, however, the story
plays a much larger role. In order for that story to work, the levels need to support
it. Hence, for a more story-centric game, a great deal of preplanning is done by the
game’s design and story teams as to which story events need to happen in which
levels. In what sort of environments should those levels take place? What types of
adversaries will the player fight there? The order in which the levels appear in the
game cannot be changed as easily as in Doom, since that would radically change
the story as well. In order for the entire game to flow and escalate in difficulty
appropriately, the type of gameplay found in each level must be planned ahead of
time. The levels do not need to be planned down to minute detail, however, as this
Chapter 21: Level Design 411

The goal of the
Unreal level
designers was to
create some cool
levels, not
necessarily to
make them fit
together as a
whole.
is best left to the level designer, who can place the individual encounters, objects,
or minor puzzles as they best fit the level. A mini design document explaining what
the level has to accomplish in order to function within the game’s story will allow
the level designer to know exactly what she must include in the level; from there
she can fill in the details.
The Components of a Level
Once the levels a game needs have been decided on, possibly with some idea of
how those levels must support the story, the next task is to actually create those lev
-
els. Regardless of its location in the game as a whole, the goal of every level is to
provide an engaging gameplay experience for the player. When working on the lev
-
els for a game, it is important to constantly keep in mind the focus of the game.
What is this game trying to accomplish? How important are the different aspects of
the game? What will the level need to do to support the type of gameplay this game
has? In addition, depending on the amount of pre-production design done on the
levels, one may need to consider how this level may play differently than others. Is
it a “thinking” level after an action-intensive one? Is this level more about explora-
tion and discovery than building up the strength of the player character or
characters?
Before level design begins, the design team should convene and break down the

different gameplay components of the game, since each member must completely
understand how the gameplay functions. Each level designer must understand how
412 Chapter 21: Level Design
A level for the
sophisticated
Quake III Arena
engine requires
significantly
more work than
one for a simpler
2D game. As a
result, making
changes to a
Q3A level is
significantly
more time
consuming.
his level will use that gameplay before he starts building anything. In some games it
is easy to radically change the layout of a level, such as in a tile-based game like
StarCraft. If problems with the level arise, the level can be easily reworked. For a
game using the Quake III engine, however, once a level is built it is very labor-
intensive to radically alter it. Producers will be reluctant to invest another month of
architecture construction time to rework a level because it is not playing well.
Therefore understanding ahead of time the gameplay of the game and the level in
question is important. One perhaps simplistic but still useful way to break down the
components of a level’s gameplay is in terms of action, exploration, puzzle solving,
storytelling, and aesthetics.
Action
Action is the most obvious component of the levels for many games, and indeed for
many titles the action element is the only justification for the level’s existence. Of

course there are some games that eschew the action component entirely, such as
many adventure or puzzle games, but nearly all other games contain some action
components, whether it consists of blasting demons in a shooter like Doom, inca-
pacitating walking mushrooms in Super Mario 64, slaying mutants in Fallout,or
speeding by the opponents’ cars in San Francisco Rush.
Whatever your game’s action component is, the level designer’s job is to under-
stand how much action the level contains and at what pacing this action component
should be presented to the player. What percentage of your level should be action
filled and exciting? How many battles will the player fight? Is the combat fast and
furious or are there “breaks” or intermissions between major conflicts? Should the
player’s adrenaline be pumping during the entire level because of a constant fear of
death? Of course, the amount of action is entirely dependent on what type of game
you are making, but regardless, you need to have a clear idea of what amount of
conflict the player will encounter.
For a game with a lot of action, the levels must be constructed keeping in mind
how that action will play out. The level designer must keep in mind how the enemy
AI functions and what types of maps will lead to the most interesting conflicts.
What geometry will give the player lots of locations to duck and cover while dodg
-
ing enemy fire? How can the levels be best set up to encourage the player to figure
out her own strategy for defeating the opposition? Knowing what sort of action
your game will have and how that action best plays out is critical to designing lev
-
els that bring out the best in the action gameplay.
Exploration
What will the player be doing when not in the heat of battle? Exploration is a major
part of a lot of action/adventure titles such as Tomb Raider or Super Mario Bros.
Chapter 21: Level Design 413
Instead of just providing a bridge between different action set pieces, if properly
designed the exploration can actually be a lot of fun for a player. It is often hard for

the design team to see this after slaving away on a map for months. How much fun
is exploring architecture with which you are already painfully familiar? Always try
to keep in mind that for a player experiencing a map for the first time, the thrill of
exploring a new virtual world can be quite stimulating. It may be important to con
-
stantly be showing your level to first-time viewers or playtesters, and getting their
feedback on whether they enjoy exploring the level or not.
The designer must keep in mind how the player will explore the level to know
how best to lay it out. What cool piece of art or architecture will the player see
around the next corner? How excited or awe-inspired will the player be on finding
new areas? Making exciting exploration a part of your game goes beyond creating
exciting architecture for the player. It is also determined by how the level flows,
and what the player will have to do to reach an exciting new area. Being dropped
right into the middle of some nice architecture is much less satisfying than having
to navigate a large area of the map to finally make it to an exploration payoff.
Part of making the exploration aspect of a game work is determining the flow
of a level. Will the player need to explore several offshoots from a main, critical
path, or will the player generally only have one way to proceed? Will the path the
player must take to complete the level be obvious at first, or will the player need to
experiment and look around quite a bit before they find it? Games that are very
action-oriented will tend to put the player on a path which leads directly to the next
conflict. Games that encourage the player to poke around may make the path less
obvious.
414 Chapter 21: Level Design
As far back as
Super Mario Bros.
on the Nintendo
Entertainment
System,
Miyamoto’s

games have
included
exploration as a
key gameplay
component.
I once saw someone criticize Shigeru Miyamoto’s games as being all about
exploration, and therefore not very good games. The observation that exploration is
the focus of the later Mario was a correct one. The mistake was in asserting that
this is not a fun part of gameplay, as millions of Mario fans will refute. The chal
-
lenge lies in making exploration entertaining and rewarding for the player,
something Miyamoto’s games do expertly.
Puzzle Solving
Sometimes progressing in a level involves more than just finding a path to the next
area. Instead it may involve figuring out what needs to be accomplished in order to
open a certain door or how a large obstacle can be cleared out of the way. Perhaps
the worst examples of this are the “switch flipping” puzzles found in many
first-person shooters. In these games, for no particular reason, the player needs to
navigate through a large section of the map in order to flip a switch. This action
opens a door which leads the player to another area where another switch is in need
of flipping. And so it goes. This switch may instead be a key or any other object that
opens a door or any other type of device that blocks the player’s progress. This is
the simplest form of a puzzle in an action/exploration game. Here the focus is
mostly on the player exploring until he finds the puzzle, with the solution to the
puzzle then being trivial. In the case of the switch, once it is found all the player
needs to do is flip it.
More sophisticated variants on the switch/door combination can be situations
which require the player to actually figure something out in order to progress. Per-
haps a laser beam needs to be refracted around a series of corners in order for the
player to progress. In order to refract it correctly, the player will need to move sev

-
eral reflective plates. The player must understand the simple physics of the situation
which govern how the beam will behave when reflected in different ways. The
focus here shifts from just finding the puzzle to finding it and then figuring out how
to manipulate it correctly. The player’s gaming experience is enhanced by this puz
-
zle instead of it merely delaying the end of her game. Determining how much
emphasis your level will have on puzzle solving is important to keep in mind, espe
-
cially within the context of the game as a whole. A sure way to frustrate the player
is to suddenly throw a bunch of arbitrary puzzles at her after the entire game up to
that point has been more action-oriented.
Storytelling
Setting is a big part of storytelling, and levels are a vital component of establishing
the setting for a game. Therefore, levels are an integral part of telling a game’s story.
If the story is more than something tacked on to an already completed game, it only
makes sense for the game’s levels and the story to work in synergy. Depending on
Chapter 21: Level Design 415
the type of storytelling that the game is employing, it may be necessary for the
player to meet and converse with characters in the levels, such as in Half-Life or in
almost any RPG. Setting up the levels to support the appearance of these characters
becomes very important. In some games it is obvious that the levels were designed
from the very start with the story in mind. For instance, in Myth: The Fallen Lords,
the player’s goals for a certain level are directly tied to the progression of the story.
In a historical wargame such as Gettysburg!, the battles the player fights have to be
tied to the story, since it could hardly be a historical simulation otherwise.
Knowing the story goals for a given level prior to constructing that level is cru
-
cial to communicating the story effectively. The story should still be loose enough
to allow the level designer to be creative in making the best level possible. There

are still concerns about gameplay, about balancing the right amount of strategy,
action, puzzles, and exploration, and since it is nearly impossible to balance these
components before the level actually exists, the level designer needs to not have his
hands tied by an overly restrictive story. Indeed, it may turn out that the story needs
to change in order to accommodate the gameplay needs of the level, but having an
idea of what story needs to be told on a particular level is essential to designing that
level so it fits properly into the overall narrative.
Aesthetics
How a level looks and sounds are probably the driving factors behind many level
designers’ work. I certainly would not dispute that a level’s appearance is crucial to
its overall success. At the same time, however, the aesthetic component becomes a
416 Chapter 21: Level Design
In a historical
game such as
Gettysburg!, the
gameplay is very
much tied to a
particular story
from history.
problem when how the level looks becomes the designer’s primary concern, a situa
-
tion which usually has a detrimental effect on how the level plays. Suppose a level
designer spends a lot of time creating a massive, gorgeous cathedral for a level, and
the appearance of that cathedral is constantly at the forefront of his mind. What if it
turns out that the cathedral is hard for the player to navigate, the AI agents easily get
confused when trying to pathfind though it, and the whole structure is a bit more
than the engine can handle, resulting in the level running slowly? If the cathedral
looks great and its construction sucked up a lot of man-hours, who will want to cut
it? It may translate into some fabulous screenshots on the back of the box; too bad it
will not be any fun to play.

A big part of the level designer’s job is to balance the appearance of the level
with the other requirements of that level, as I have listed above. There is always an
achievable middle ground where the level looks good, plays well, renders quickly,
and suits the needs of the game’s story. Level designers spend a lot of their time
learning the “tricks” of a given engine or level editor. What can they do that will
use the fewest polygons while still looking good? Often the solutions they come up
with are not necessarily “real” but rather “faked.” Of course the whole purpose of
creating levels for a virtual world is creating “fake” content, so a level designer
need not worry if an effect is achieved by “faking” something. If the player cannot
tell it is faked, if he cannot see behind the magic curtain, that is all that matters.
One of the principles behind all special effects is to create something that looks like
something it is not. The level designer’s job is to make the player see something
that looks like something it is not, giving the level what Unreal level designer Cliff
Bleszinski would call “schlack,” a shiny and fancy coating over an otherwise unin
-
teresting level.
The visual side of a level can have a big impact on the other concerns of a
game’s level as I have listed before. For instance, in order to make a level playable,
the textures on a level should be laid out in such a way that the player can see
where he should or should not be able to go. Instead of wondering if a particular
slope is too steep for her game-world surrogate to climb up, a different texture can
serve as a visual cue to the player as to which slopes are passable and which are
not. Lighting can be used to conceal secret areas, or a big puzzle in the level may be
figuring out how to turn the lights on. If certain special areas are supposed to be
rewards for the player’s diligent exploration, making those special areas look
impressive is essential to maintaining the player’s interest in the level.
A lot of time can be spent on the aesthetics of a level. The amount of time is
directly proportional to the complexity of the engine and level editor being used as
well as the desired visual effect of the level. In fact, it may be the case that all of the
gameplay and story elements of the level can be set up first and then the visual

appearance can be tweaked for weeks to come. Lighting can be endlessly adjusted,
textures can be shifted or switched for other textures, and polygon faces can be
Chapter 21: Level Design 417
adjusted to better represent the visual effect the designer is trying to achieve. All
the while, the level designer must be fully aware of the effects changes in the
level’s appearance will have on the gameplay.
Balancing It All
Because a good level must balance action, exploration, puzzle solving, storytelling,
and aesthetics, the work of the level designer is a bit of a balancing act. Even if the
level may look better a certain way, how does that impact the story being told? Do
the story requirements for the level mean that it cannot have much in the way of
combat? Then how important is combat to the game, and can the level survive with
-
out it? Is the quantity of puzzle elements in the level preventing the player from
being able to enjoy exploring it? The action, exploration, puzzle solving, storytell
-
ing, and aesthetic qualities of a game level all have interdependencies which the
level designer must be constantly aware of and be constantly maintaining. The price
of good level design is eternal vigilance.
Level Flow
For different types of games, what a level is expected to accomplish changes signifi-
cantly. Consider action/exploration games such as Super Mario 64, Tomb Raider,or
Doom. Though the gameplay in these three games is significantly different, the
functions the levels serve in each is remarkably similar. In all these games, the
player customarily plays through the level from a distinct beginning point to a sepa-
rate end point. A big part of playing the level is exploring the spaces it contains, and
as a result, once the player has played through the level, it is significantly less fun to
play a second time. Furthermore, any encounters the player might have with charac
-
ters or adversaries in these levels are carefully predetermined and set up by the level

designer. Every time the player plays such a level, he will have roughly the same
gameplay experience as the last time he played it. The flow of the level is more or
less linear, with perhaps only a few choices of how to get from point A to point B.
RPGs offer roughly the same flow pattern as the action/exploration games dis
-
cussed above, perhaps with a bit more non-linearity. The designer usually intends
for the player to navigate to a particular location in a particular way. RPGs may
tend to be a bit more non-linear than action/adventure games, usually allowing the
player to choose the order in which different actions can be performed. Often “hub”
style gameplay allows the player to branch off on different adventures while return
-
ing to a central location, such as a town. The player may also stay in the town to
hone his skills for as long as he likes. In the end, though, RPGs offer similar level
flow as action/adventure titles.
418 Chapter 21: Level Design
TEAMFLY

Team-Fly
®

In a level from a strategy game such as WarCraft or Civilization, however, the
action is less canned and the level flow is less clearly defined. WarCraft and Civili-
zation may be as different from each other as Super Mario 64 and Doom, but the
way they use their levels is the same. Exploration is not such a central part of the
enjoyment of these strategy games, and the battles may take place on any part of
the map. Different locations may provide specific strategic advantages when used
correctly, but battles can start in one location and move to another, or certain sec-
tions of the map may go completely unexplored and unexploited by the player and
his opponents. The gameplay on such a map is often significantly less predictable
than on an action/exploration game’s map. The level’s flow is more nebulous.
Of course, there is at least one distinguishing characteristic that makes the level
flow in Civilization significantly different from that of WarCraft. In Civilization,
any one game consists of play on only one level. That is, the player starts a game of
Civilization on one level and plays on that level until she wins or loses, while in
WarCraft the player plays a series of scenarios on a series of levels. Civilization
presents a much more continuous gameplay experience for the player, which may in
turn make it that much more addictive. Whereas a game like WarCraft presents the
player with an easy stopping point—the end of a level—a game like Civilization

has no such breaks. Both types of games may include levels with unpredictable
flows, where different players can play the levels significantly differently, but since
a player in Civilization spends all of his time on one map, the overall feel of the
game is radically different. Of course, the fact that Civilization is turn-based while
WarCraft is real-time significantly changes the flow of the games as well, but that
is a change in gameplay rather than a change in level design and usage.
Returning to our action/exploration games, if we were to take a multi-player
death-match level from a game like Quake, we would see that the level’s flow is
Chapter 21: Level Design 419
The level flow on
a level of a
real-time
strategy game
like WarCraft is
less defined than
in an action/
exploration
game: combat
encounters can
take place all
over the map.
much closer to that of a strategy game. That is, exploring the level is less important
and combat can take place in completely unpredictable ways all over the map.
Indeed, many players of multi-player death-match games will find a map they like
and stick to it, at least for a while. The player will need to have explored the map
thoroughly before he actually has a chance of winning a death-match on that map,
certainly when playing with experienced players. Exploration and memorization of
the map may be an integral part of the metagame in that such exploration leads to
the player’s victory in future games, but the exploration is only a means to an end,
not an end in and of itself, unlike in a single-player game where exploration is a big

part of the fun.
With the exception of racing games, sports games typically provide a very
non-linear flow to their gameplay. The flow of a basketball game’s levels more
closely resembles a death-match or strategy game’s levels than an action/explora
-
tion game’s maps. Action takes place all over the level or court, with the player’s
movement flowing back and forth across the level, covering and recovering the
same ground but in unique and unpredictable ways. Exploring the level is relatively
unimportant, as the shape of the level is completely simple and typically the entire
court or a very large chunk of it is on screen at once.
In a racing game, the player moves from a distinct start location to a distinct
end location. This movement is quite similar to an exploration-oriented action game
such as Doom, with the key differences that typically the race’s start and end loca-
tions are the same (the track loops) and usually the race-path is repeated multiple
times before the level is over. This flow is just as linear as in an action/adventure
title, if not more so. Modern racing games such as San Francisco Rush or Cruisin’
World incorporate some of the exploration elements of action/exploration games by
making the levels look visually stunning and varied, making the first time the
player rounds a corner an aesthetically thrilling experience. Older racing games
(such as the venerable Pole Position) relied more on the challenge of navigating the
track to entertain the player rather than the thrill of racing through new, fantastic
locations. Many more modern racing games also include alternate paths or short
-
cuts that players can take for varied gameplay results. The flow is still in the same
general direction, but some branching allows the player to concentrate on more than
just how tightly he can take a given corner.
From my discussion of these gaming genres and the way that gameplay flows
on their respective levels, one could divide the games into roughly two groups:
those with more linear levels (action/adventure, role-playing, and racing games)
and those with more non-linear, unpredictable gameplay experiences (strategy,

sports, and multi-player death-match games). Of course, that is not to say that the
two do not overlap. For instance, specific StarCraft levels do everything to encour
-
age players to play them in a specific path, especially the small-team indoor levels.
Similarly, many Super Mario 64 maps allow for multiple viable paths the player
420 Chapter 21: Level Design
can use to play them through. If the designer is creative enough in her efforts, the
distinction between the two types of levels can be blurred, which can often lead to
more varied and interesting gameplay.
Elements of Good Levels
As you design a level, there are a seemingly infinite number of details you must
keep in mind. You must be concerned that you balance the elements of action,
exploration, puzzle solving, storytelling, and audiovisual appeal. You must work
with the artists and programmers to achieve the effects you want. For 3D levels, you
must make sure the whole level is optimized so that it can run on the target system.
Often you have to deal with unruly level design tools which seem to thwart your
every attempt to make something cool.
Often a level designer will come up with a list of rules of thumb to follow while
making a level, even if she does not write this list down. Every designer will have
her own list of “dos” and “don’ts” that she keeps in the back of her mind, and this
list can change significantly from project to project. Some games will have their
own “design rules” established ahead of time and which the designers can then fol-
low, but there are also rules which can apply to any project. Here I present a partial
list of my own rules of thumb, which I use to attempt to make a level that is stimu-
lating to play.
Player Cannot Get Stuck
This should be obvious. The player should never become hopelessly stuck when
playing your level. There should be no pits that can be fallen into but not climbed
out of, no objects which, when moved incorrectly, permanently block the player’s
progress, and no doors which fail to open if the player approaches them a certain

way. Though this goal may seem perfectly obvious, it will actually consume a large
amount of your time as a level designer. Consider a puzzle where the player has a
certain amount of dynamite, and that dynamite needs to be used to blow a hole in a
wall so the player can progress in the level. Well, what if the player uses up all his
dynamite blowing up the wrong things? Without any more dynamite, the player is
completely stuck. Similarly, suppose the player needs to talk to a particular NPC to
get a particular object. What if, instead of talking to that character, the player kills
him? Either the player’s game must end nearly instantly, or there must be some
alternate way to progress through the game. Designing your level in such a way
that, whatever the player does, he can still finish the level, takes a lot of thinking
and planning. As a level designer, you must always be asking yourself, “But what if
the player tries it this way?”
Chapter 21: Level Design 421
Sub-Goals
As the player plays a level, he should have understandable sub-goals. Instead of
playing through the whole level just trying to get to the exit or accomplish some
large goal, the player should be able to recognize that there are various tasks he can
accomplish which contribute to the final goal. A very simple example of this would
be the different keys in Doom. The player knows that once he gets the blue key he is
that much closer to finishing the level. In an arcade racing game like San Francisco
Rush, instead of having just one finish line per track, most games have multiple
“checkpoints” along the track at which the player is given a time bonus and
informed of how well he is doing. In an RPG, the player may be working to defeat
an evil force that is tormenting the land, but along the way he is able to go on vari
-
ous sub-quests for villagers who need his help. These various sub-quests lead the
player toward the larger goal, and provide the player with positive feedback that he
is, in fact, playing the game well. A sub-goal is useless if the player does not under-
stand what he has accomplished. Therefore, it is also important to provide the player
with some sort of reward for achieving the goal, whether it is audiovisual bells and

whistles, a new weapon, bonus points, or more time on the racing clock. If the
designer does not provide enough sub-goals on a particular level or if those
sub-goals are so transparent that the player does not realize he has achieved them,
the player may become confused as to what he is supposed to be doing and whether
he is getting any closer to succeeding.
422 Chapter 21: Level Design
In racing games
such as the San
Francisco Rush
series, players
are given
sub-goals
through
checkpoints
which award
more time.
Pictured here:
San Francisco
Rush: The Rock
Alcatraz Edition.