FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION

Key Design Principles

Two types of design principles will help you design a level: universal level design prin­ciples aimed at designing levels in any kind of game, and genre-specific level design principles, which focus on design issues specific to the different genres. This section addresses each of these in turn.

Universal Level Design Principles

Barbarossa: The [Pirate's] Code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.

—Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Level designers have for some time tried to define a set of principles to guide the level design process so that new games will avoid the errors of older ones. Considerable debate surrounds this issue, because not everyone agrees on which, if any, principle is truly universal. Examining the important principles constitutes a valuable exercise in any case, so we present a brief list here. Some principles apply as much to game design generally as they do specifically to level design, but because the level designer constructs the play environment and sets the challenges, she will be the one who puts these principles into practice.

■ Make the early levels of a game tutorial levels. The entire section "Tutorial Levels" is devoted to this extremely important topic later in this chapter.

■ Vary the pacing of the level. This is also critically important. The "Progression and Pacing" section addresses this later.

■ When the player surmounts a challenge that consumes his resources, pro­vide more resources. This may seem obvious, but you might be surprised at how many games fail to do it. This, too, is addressed in "Progression and Pacing."

■ Avoid conceptual non sequiturs. Unless your level is either intentionally sur­real or meant to be funny, you shouldn't build elements that make no sense, such as rooms accessible only via ventilation shafts. Even more important, don't put dangers or rewards in places in which no sane person could possibly expect to find them. See the section "Avoid Conceptual Non Sequiturs" later in the chapter.

■ Clearly inform the player of his short-term goals. At any given time, the player is working to achieve a whole hierarchy of challenges, from the overall vic­tory condition of the game down to the problem occupying his attention (How do I get across this chasm?) at the immediate moment. (Chapter 9, "Gameplay," dis­cusses the hierarchy of challenges at greater length.) While you do not always have to tell the player exactly what he needs to do to win (he may have to discover the long-term goal through exploration or observation), you should never leave him wondering what to do next; the current or next short-term goal should be obvious.

■ Be clear about risks, rewards, and the consequences of decisions. When fac­ing a challenge, the player should always have some idea of the benefits of success and the price of failure or, if the player has to make a decision, the likely conse­quences associated with his options. Old video games used to implement a learn by dying approach, which gave players no means of knowing what elements of the game world were dangerous and what weren't, so the avatars died repeatedly as the players learned. Industry professionals now consider this extremely bad design practice. Although the player should not necessarily know every detail of what con­sequences his decisions will produce, he should be able to make a reasonable guess based on the context in which you present the decision. If you give him a door­knob, it should open the door. It may also release a giant killer robo-camel into the room, but it should open the door first.

■ Reward the player for skill, imagination, intelligence, and dedication. These four qualities distinguish a good player, and good players deserve to be rewarded. You may create rewards in many forms: powerups and other resources, shortcuts through the level, secret levels, minigames, cut-scenes and other narrative material, or simple praise. Players like to be told when they've done a good job.

■ Reward in a large way, punish in a small way, or to use an old adage, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. The hope of success motivates players more than the fear of failure does. If a game repeatedly smacks them down hard, players will become discouraged and abandon the game with a feeling that they're being abused. Don't forget that the duty to empathize is one of the obligations of player-centric game design: Your primary objective is to give players an enjoyable experience. Build more rewards into your level than punishments.

■ The foreground takes precedence over the background. Design the visual appearance of your level so that the player's attention is naturally drawn to his immediate surroundings. Don't make the background so complex that it distracts the player. Spend more of your machine's limited resources (polygons, memory, CPU time) on foreground objects than on background ones.

■ The purpose of an artificial opponent is to put up a good fight and then lose. Design your level so that the player will get better and better at overcoming the challenges until he succeeds at all of them. In a multiplayer competitive game, the skill and luck of the players decide who wins, but in a single-player game, you always want the player to win eventually, and it's up to you to make sure that hap­pens. An unbeatable level is a badly designed level.

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Implement multiple difficulty settings if possible. Make your game accessible to a wider audience by allowing them to switch the difficulty of your game to easy, normal, or hard settings. In games with an internal economy, you should be able to tweak the numbers to adjust the difficulty to accommodate the player's preference; Chapter 11, "Game Balancing," addresses this in more detail.