An Architectural Approach to Level Design: Creating an Art Theory for Game Worlds (and So Can You!)

[Music] alright welcome to an architectural approach to level design creating an art theory for game worlds and so can you I'm Chris Totten and before we get started I want to ask everybody to please silence cell phones please fill out the electronic evals and if people start needing seats please move towards the center of your rows so who is this guy I have my own indie game studio I use this studio to publish research that I've done on games and the arts and humanities and you're gonna see that's a big theme of my work I work with museums to showcase games my latest thing is the Smithsonian American Art Museum arcade which is an indie event at Smithsonian in Washington DC this year's theme is game spaces so if you level designers who are indie have any cool games to

show off with great level design please submit funny how that worked out that I was speaking at level design this year I teach game development and I have two degrees in architecture I've also published two books on level design the first is an architectural approach to level design which analyzes game worlds according to architectural theory and spatial psychology I have also published and edited a while it's an edited volume called level design processes and experiences where lovely people from the industry wrote about what they do when they design levels and let me put it into a book so this is not a book talk though where I summarized the information in the book you should still buy my book but I'm not gonna summarize it I'm going to talk about this is a call to action talk this is a motivational talk that

hopefully if any of you are on the fence on you know I'm a level designer and I have a lot of thoughts about level design and I have a cool process how do I share it with the world well we're going to talk about it today so the topics are why did I write about level design the benefits of sharing your techniques how to choose your topics and do level design analysis and what I learned by sharing my own work so first why in the world did I write about level design so when I was in school I started making my own games and this was around the time that a lot of really great books on game design were coming out including things like rules of play things that looked at game design as one would fields of classical design and I was in architecture school learning architecture Theory seeing game designers talk about architecture theory

in game design books and I was like there ah--this a yes and I started blending architecture theory and game design theory in my school projects which culminated in my thesis where I turned architecture into a game and had students play the game to design their school projects I also analyzed game worlds as pieces of architecture so that was the beginning of a career path understatement of the decade so when I got out of architecture school and got into game development I noticed that books on game design kept coming out a lot of books on game design and a lot of books on game design as a general field but not really books that douve into anything else that contributed to games you know so I study a lot of art I didn't see anything that looked at the history of art and game art or there's more on music composition

now but that wasn't coming out for a long time and there were very few resources on level design that weren't a chapter in a game design book that said and sometimes they design levels too and I thought that was weird because I when I design levels I'm not using the same skills when I design the general game mechanics versus when I work on levels I think about things like architecture and perspective and Composition art and architecture things and part of that's my background but you know there's different sides of my brain firing that's not true I think that's the same side of my brain but still it's different different ideas firing and I thought you know these are kind of separate but equal and and if I treat them as such maybe level design has some cool things to say on its own and I wasn't the only one saying this I would

come to GDC I would read articles I would listen to podcasts and people would be talking about you know this architecture thing I bet we'd learn a lot about game design and level design if we looked at architecture and I thought hey I know about that stuff so why don't I start writing about level design and architecture and maybe I can I can that's the way I can make it an impact in the industry maybe this is this is my thing so I started doing that okay so let that's me let's say you're the person that is on that fence thinking I have something to say I feel like I might have something to say what do I do so what do I talk about I want you to ask yourselves three questions one what do I take for granted that isn't documented anywhere and I'm going to use

the example of block tober which is a recent hashtag if you are not familiar where level designers tweeted pictures of their grave locked levels to the world and a lot of people thought it was really cool because they were used to only seeing the finish product and not necessarily used to seeing what the process of making a level was and it it you know made a lot of light lightbulbs go off for people so looking behind the curtain in this way is something that we may be very used to some people may even be embarrassed by their gray box levels but it's something that people who've never seen this students recent develop you know recent like new developers or even just game players would are get very excited about so you know think about that stuff that is just part of your workflow that you forgot was novel next semi-related what

sorts of things have you grok tour internalize so much that you forgot to learn it that you had to learn it I'm a teacher and I teach software and when I work in something like even Photoshop I when something breaks my brain goes to this checklist that I don't even notice it goes to that solves the problem for me I just go through this set of motions but I forgot that I had to learn that set of motions to fix my problem and somebody who's new and I see this in my students they're like oh my gosh it's broken it'll never come back and you have to teach people that that thing that you forgot you had to learn and then eventually they'll learn it so think about those things if there's anything you do again your day to day process what did you forget was new at some point and then what other interests or knowledge do you have that you bring

to your work are you in to like heavy metal music hiking cooking anything take that and then take game or level design and it's just kind of smush them together and you'll probably have some unique perspective about which to talk about your work so an example I like using several years ago I made an art history game called loses keys revenge which is yars revenge plus Russian and art the video game so I made design decisions according to theories from art history and graphic design and the way levels were arranged levels were supposed to each actually be a piece of graphic design art but also an interactive level that you could like as you play because you're moving shapes are shifting and going like criss crossing each other and that would make graphic design as you play but you know

I took these things that certainly have large bodies of knowledge and did game design with it you know that could be art history and graphic design have whole college courses devoted to them have whole majors whole libraries and if somebody - were to write that book I'm not writing that book you could you could I mean you can get a book out of it so there's a lot of stuff out there in the world that you can combine with your work as a level designer and create content so let's say you do have something like that let's say you're thinking I can go do that now Oh crud what do i do how do I organize this so I like to borrow term lenses from Jessie shells art of game design which is an awesome book you should read so break down your own approach into self-contained steps and

then take each of those steps and then look at your work through just that step don't let any other steps in and then that's like write everything you can about that okay that's chapter one now take another step look at that one chapter two or episode two or I don't know podcast well episode 2 video 2 whatever but that is how you create individual chunks episodes videos etc is you just talk about one thing in detail if you're still looking for information I like to go on what I call a bibliography raid this is something I learned in grad school where you take the thing you're inspired by or if you have a favorite designer and they talk about their inspirations pick up that thing read it or watch it and then see if that inspirational piece talks about any of their own inspirations then go

consume that and then go consume that thing's inspirations eventually you'll find your way looping back all the way around to the thing that you started with but that practice that's what researchers do and that's how they learn as much as possible about their topic areas is they just go find the resources that their resources used so that's a great way to build content citations examples and things like that and then the more you do that and the more you share it the more that everybody else in this room for example will be able to everybody else will be able to pull from the knowledgebase you've created which brings us to sharing now sharing is tricky in the game industry we have these things called NDA's and and when we were prepping for this talk Joel had a great quote about MDA and sharing in level design I wanted to share it with you because it's not under

NDA I think there's a self policing culture of fear that prevents us from sharing it's useful to generally chip away at this culture so here's my attempt at chipping away at this culture I talk a lot about thinking like an architect and seeing like an architect today I want to talk to you about talking like an architect so this is a an image from a book called Chris pattern language by Christopher Alexander it's a book of design principles and in it he talks about specific buildings as examples of these principles but he starts with the principle he starts talking about these things like you know the shapes of space or humans going from dark to light lighting conditions things like that and he talked about them as laws of design and laws of human behavior in space and only after he's explained what those things are does he actually get into specific examples and the idea would be if you are working

on something and you are thinking about design concepts as you're working on it don't start don't lead with the I'm working on this game called X&Y and let me tell you about this concept start with the concept and what's useful about this so you can describe concepts in generally applicable ways you create design theories this way and I like doing this especially when I am writing and using examples from published games like published popular games I I always default to like action-adventure games I'm a huge fan of you know Zelda's and Metroid's and hyper light drifter 's and Skyrim and things like that so all oh is default to using that as an example but then I have to stop myself and say can I get this to work in a racing game can I get this concept too can I think of where it could be applied somewhere like that and if I can't then I should go back and rework the concept same thing

with technology if I can't if I'm thinking about something in terms of unreal and I can't think of it in terms of unity then it's only useful to the Unreal audience and therefore invalid because you want to make things as useful to everybody who's a level designer as possible so that's talking without identifying your game without speaking about your specific game another thing you can do is sketch ideas without content then identifies your game again I can take a concept like creating the feeling of curiosity and players with rhythmic elements and shaded lighting conditions which is this is this is a diagram of and I don't have to draw a specific game I can just drop pillars and some light and a stick figure that's going home and if you can do that you represent people can fill in the gaps themselves be like a lie I've seen games that use that you don't have to use screenshots from your game or

even games in particular this is also a way when you're writing a book to not have to ask for permission to use screenshots find examples in release games so again you games that have already come out either yours or ones that you play and this is also great because it helps build us a cannon of levels for people to learn from and create as great works like what's the falling water level design maybe we should figure that out that that's an interesting question and then if you are going to use a screen shot or some some example and again Joel contributed this one use example props make make just some blocks to use in 3d or use old props from old games that you've already published and that way you don't have to again use that nd a protected stuff long story short more sharing equals design history equals more knowledge I love this book cover because it is it

illustrates this idea very very succinctly this georgian-style building probably wouldn't exist if people didn't understand Greek architecture and if we just wiped all of the Greek temples off the map then we wouldn't have all these architecture styles that were that were inspired by them same thing with your levels if we don't talk about your levels and we don't celebrate your levels which are great art themselves then we're they're gone so we should talk about them so lastly what if I personally learned by writing about level design the first and perhaps most important is Who am I to write a book I do not work at a triple-a studio I've never worked at a triple-a studio I am NOT Indy famous but I am the person who chose to open a word document one day and that matters so sometimes you're

just the person who dares to take this task on and I've found that people that I am fans of come up to me and now say oh my gosh I'm a huge fan of your book and I'll be like oh my god you made that game I love and that's really cool you know all the people that I thought should probably be doing this instead like my work now oh maybe not all but some that I've talked to and that's really cool so don't be afraid to try you know never be afraid to start and try and that goes for anything in the game industry you know do the thing and and people will eventually recognize you for it I also learned the publishing process which I'm not going to read this whole thing because I only have a few minutes left but in summary you submit your idea to an editor who's in charge of finding new books they're called acquisitions editors then you work with them to develop an outline that provides something different from what's already

on the market so again that goes back to the idea of filling in knowledge gaps if you are contributing something that's never been contributed before the publisher will we get really excited so then once you've established this and usually gone through a round of peer review so submitting to people in the industry that say they look at your proposal and say yeah that's that's a thing that should exist you write your manuscript give it to the editors and they help you arrange your content check it for grammar make it sound better than it did what it just came out of your fingers when you were perhaps a little too tired to type but it's put into a final layout printed and then look I also learned how to best choose the release method for content I'm talking a lot about books and publishing but I've talked with a lot of people that have said no I want my stuff to be available for free I go with what I go with because as an academic I get credit in

my day job for publishing with presses that's just part of the academic thing but if you are weighing whether which one to go with here's a breakdown publishers are great they do a lot of things for you and your but your work becomes part of their business model they sell it they may even own your manuscript I've had friends who want to get their manuscript republished but the publisher doesn't want to do it so they had to buy their manuscript back so be aware of that it's really not that big a deal day-to-day but be aware of it putting it out on the internet for free lets you reach lots of people regardless of their ability to pay for content and that's really important the diversity and you know economic diversity is really important and I really respect the people who do choose to put stuff out for free you know to help people to help content reach people the downside

of this though is that it lacks a system of checks and balances to help you know every bit of proving that you are the person who should be talking about this to editing your content making it sound sound good is something you have to take on on your own and you also have to do your own marketing you know publishers do marketing for you so both have their ups and downs and those are things to think about and then lastly and another important thing is making a famous game is not the only way to make a positive impact on the industry it's worth saying that sharing content teaching people and helping create a system of theory and knowledge that other people can pull from and hopefully make even better games and levels is is a worthwhile pursuit and I think we should celebrate it more so I've learned a lot by sharing my work but I'm giving this talk because I don't think that I should or can do this alone again I want this to be as

varied and diverse as all those game design books that are up in the bookstore and there are lots of experiences in game development mine are not the only ones out there and they can all impact how we make game levels so I'm issuing issuing a call to action take what you're doing and use it to tell the world about level design help help us build a library of level design knowledge and make it knowledge that can be shared by people can be talked about and discussed and so that we can make better and more diverse game spaces that rival the most beautiful houses most iconic skyscrapers and the most sublime cathedrals and I have a few minutes for questions but thank you for coming to my talk [Applause]

questions yeah there's there's two mics up here if anybody has a question going go alright hi I'm currently a student at DigiPen in Seattle and I've been working a lot with a colleague of mine just trying to learn more about level design in a way that isn't really taught at our school and we've had a really hard time as far as finding levels like a collection of levels mm-hmm for any sort of concept is there some sort of database or like some sort of collection of these are good examples of these kinds of levels yeah so the question was is there a database of levels to look at not that I'm aware of we had an interesting conversation before this there was a preview article posted about this workshop that one of

the questions was similar to yours I would start there there were some great citations but that that could be a project actually that that sounds like a good idea history of level design so we'll talk maybe yeah yeah that'd be it'd be a good idea hi my name is Deepak teach like design at roblox and a lot of them are user-generated contents a lot of them don't have that background Jeff finds is very fascinating so besides level design what else do you feel like a lot of designers aren't you know bringing in when they come into making games so what our designers not bringing in when they make games I've talked a lot about art art history in this but a lot of with my expertise it goes back to art history and I do see that in in game development for example you know I'm making a Don Quixote card game right now it's an it's essentially an intellectual property that's just been sitting there

because it's a novel from 1605 right and I know that because I read literature and you know something like that surprises me you don't see more of people taking a great classic book and being like let me make a game out of this because I can and then you're also like working on a franchise you know in that way so just those cultural milestones beyond game development I think I'd like to see more of in the game industry I listened to a podcast interviewing Tim Schafer and he said one of the best things he ever did was take a full Clark class and have like in college and that rich outer life helped him go back to games and then make things like grim fandago which is based on Mexican folklore so any like I said any interest that you have if you can find a way to get it to work with game development you know I would absolutely say do more of

it yeah I guess so it's no one else is asking yeah yeah what's your biggest gripe with level design today I think it's great for subtle design today Wow I guess like over linearity would be my gripe and there are games where it's like yes this should be linear but you know I I cut I love doom 2016 and I loved that I was playing a first-person shooter that I can just run around in a big loop and have something chase me and then turn around and shoot at it and then run away in another loop and that was really cool you know I felt like I played so many games that were just long hallways and then longer hallways and I don't know if that would that felt really good to see a level that was laid out like that again after you know not seeing it since really like the 90s so yeah hi I'm an

autodidact and I end up reading a lot of books I love that little slideshow I was like yes got that one got that one got that way but one thing I really really love is being able to have situations like this where we get to talk to a teacher and and conversed a little bit more so for low designers what is a like introductory course or what is a kind of course that we could find at a local college that you would suggest relating to architecture and thinking more in this direction that's a really good question so courses that you can find that you I would recommend for level designers if you took an architectural here Theory course and they it is one where they talk about not just identifying the buildings and using them as references because a lot of people think architecture and game design they think about environment art and making things look like classic architecture but if they're talking about architectural design concepts in that course which a lot of things will do they talk about

why the building was important it's usually something experiential then that would be a really good point if you're not thinking of taking a course or can't take a course then I really like the book chambers for a memory palace by Lyndon and more ly endian and mo re and that is a it's basically two old architects comparing notes about experiences of buildings they saw and it's really cool and it's funny because they actually take a little jab at video games in the beginning and I'm like I'm siting in it like you you're a great book for level designers so and yeah so that's that's a book that I tell a lot of people it's actually pretty good read so you know if you're not able to take class maybe buy that book yeah so yeah

thank you yeah so now maybe I'll mention a few like podcasts I like to I've listened a lot of checkpoints they do cool things with design concepts level design Lobby has been really helpful and I listened a lot to retro knots and I know they've been around forever but they've been doing a series on Metroidvania design which has been fantastic so again those are free and if you go listen to those there's some good stuff there so if that's it then be sure to come back after the break for the holy grail of multiplayer level design Maps for casual and competitive play which will be really cool so thank you for coming out and listening to the talk [Applause]