Level Design Workshop: Singleplayer vs. Multiplayer Level Design: A Paradigm Shift

[Music] hello everyone uh just as a reminder before I start my talk uh turn off your cell phones and fill out uh the the surveys that they give you uh through email and so I'm going to get this talk rolling so I'm going to be talking about single player versus multiplayer level design and the paradigm shift that kind of occurs when you're thinking about designing between each one first of all who am I my name is Elizabeth Bank Schwarz and I'm a level designer at a company in Austin Texas called certain affinity and I got my start working on uh the MMO RPG Lord of the Rings Online the minds more expansion pack and since then I've worked on a bunch of different single player and multiplayer titles including BioShock Infinite uh Mafia 3 and doom and Call of Duty Modern Warfare remaster and so what I will be covering today is what is based on my own experience coming from a single player

highly narratively linear background designing stuff like for BioShock Infinite and then moving over to working at certain affinity and designing more multiplayer levels especially for first-person shooter design like for the new Ste came that came out uh we certain Affinity helped with uh with some of the multiplayer for that and so I came from a very narrative heavy single player background and I was very surprised when I started designing levels for multiplayer about a lot of the differences there are there are some similarities but there was a lot of things I was used to putting a lot of time into in single player levels that I didn't need to in multiplayer and comparatively things that I found out need to be paid a lot of attention to when you design for a multiplayer level that you don't really need to think about as much when you're designing a single player level so this talk is based on my own experience is kind of a if you're going to switch in between the two and learn what similarities there

are and what differences there are so first of all when you are starting to design the layouts for a space obviously you need to plan for the size of your level and in single player the things that go into figuring out how you're the size that you're going to design for is you know how many combats are you going to be supporting in that space what are the sizes of those combats are there going to be any big narrative set pieces in that level uh any traversal conversations like for example if you need to support uh smaller narrative moments where maybe uh for example on bshock infinite uh the player as Booker uh is talking with Elizabeth and they're walking and having a conversation and your learning narrative moments and so you want to think about designing a space that's a quiet moment where it doesn't intersect into combat or uh other elements like that and so thinking about the sizing there

and any additional side quests or content that you might want to add in there whereas in multiplayer the biggest thing when you're thinking about the level size is obviously what is the game you're working on how many players does it support uh are you designing for like a 2v2 level or a 64x 64 and also what is the intended time until engagement is the game you're designing a game like Doom where it's almost immediate uh interaction in combat and you just go go go or are you uh designing a level for a smaller slower uh sorry a larger slower Pace level where you want to have a bit more space before uh the player encounters another enemy so that they can uh get a sense of the battlefield and their options and a bit more of a tactical feel and once you've kind of had a general idea of how big you want to make your level uh there's a couple differences between the things you have to think about when you are designing

and uh frame Framing and composition of the level overall so the biggest focus in single player especially if you're working on a very narrative level uh a narrative level is storytelling storytelling is really important uh as some of the previous speakers talked about trying to find any little moment that you can tell the story in the level is really important and also supporting any gameplay objectives uh Steve touched on on this a little bit about making sure the player knows where they're going like how where they're trying to get to and making sure that's clear for the player is really important whereas in multiplayer the the biggest things uh isn't really storytelling as much and that was a big uh change for me uh coming from uh working a rational it was all like story story story how can we put story into every little bit element of the space whereas in uh some multiplayer games do have a bit of story but it's not as important and it's

almost a waste of time to spend uh spend your time working uh and thinking about that element whereas the more important things in multiplayer are more uh what are your player routes and paths and options for the player to move around the space and also uh something that's more important in multiplayer but not as important in single player is uh tightening up all the sight lines uh and making sure that you fix any and all exploits that you can before it gets out there live and talking about kind of uh break this down a little bit more so uh when I was talking about telling a story um and using any opportunity you can to tell a story is you need to identify or create situations that really frame narrative moments and so think about when you are designing a level that doesn't have cutcenes what are the times where the player will definitely be looking at a certain location and identifying those and

making sure that you use the crap out of that moment so some examples of this would be like uh in the image here uh when the player is exiting a room uh you know that the player is going to be looking at that door and putting all this narrative moments around the door or say you are exiting the door what do you see when you exit that door and some more examples of this are if the player is stuck in an elevator moving up or down maybe they are climbing up a ladder and that moment where they exit the ladder what will they see identifying those moments is really important when you're designing a level and either creating those moments or using those moments uh also you could when you are designing the space to to support narrative moments thinking about using things like a t Junction uh to have an opportunity to show narrative bits to the player for

example here this is a t Junction where the player has entered and they have the option of going left or right and so putting the narrative elements right at the base so the player will see it no matter which path they choose is a better option than choose than putting it in one area or another cuz you don't know whether the player is going to see it or not um and besides narrative also uh making sure gameplay objectives are clear is super important in single player there's this idea uh that was coined by Walt Disney called weenies uh it's uh based on the concept that he his dog used to follow him around when he had a like a hot dog or weenie and he noticed that the dog would follow him around and it would it was a way to guide the dog to certain places he wanted to so he used that terminology when designing theme parks uh like for example Cinderella's castle uh in Disney World Etc and it's kind of like this this visually distinctive thing that you can see and you can use that as a point

of reference um so in this example uh from infinite you are exiting uh this small space and the first thing you see is this Statue Of An Angel and you know from past knowledge that uh the uh the young woman Elizabeth is in that Tower the angel Tower and that's where you need to get to but you don't really might not know how to get there yet but at least you know where you're going and on the image of the right gives you an idea of the fact that you can kind of see this angel statue from anywhere and you are guided towards that space and so making sure you identify moments like exiting rooms or things to display relevant uh narrative or uh gameplay objectives is super important in single player whereas a multiplayer uh framing is still really important but you're kind of framing different things you are thinking about

making clear the player path options that they have so that players when they're running around the space they can make split-second decisions of where they're going to be going and also it's really important to guide uh to make clear where the paths are going to be leading uh some some multiplayer levels you you might turn a path and you think you're going a certain direction and you get frustrated because it leads you somewhere else where you don't intend and that's not really the best uh design when of a space when you're designing a multiplayer level uh but for example here this is um an image of Zanzibar from Halo and on the bottom right you can see that the path there's a path framed on the side with the sand that kind of leads up giving you the impression that you're you're going into the second layer of this building here but you also know that you can see this the path up on the left coming out from the building so you know that somebody might be coming into the building from

that left upper path as well and so making sure that the options the player has to move around the space and strategically where other enemies will be is the most important thing when designing multiplayer level and the biggest change that that I had to think about when I started designing multiplayer levels is really paying a lot more attention to sight lines in single player it can be kind of fun to find that teeny little spot where you can get an advantage over an NPC and they don't see you and and you feel like it's rewarding and fun uh because the enemy doesn't have feelings but in multiplayer the enemy you're killing has feelings they're a real person and they get frustrated if they don't they die and they don't understand why it in a multiplayer game it's important to understand why you died and feel like

the players should feel like it's their fault that they made a mistake that they died and not that there's some gaming of the system that feels unfair and so watching out for uned Sight lines is super important and I have an example here of uh one of an early level I had done and there was a small room where you enter you could enter from either door which is the brown blocks there but if you entered down from the bottom and walked up the stairs uh around those uh exagonal pillars the player could have an unattended sight line where they could look in between the two pillars and get this teeny little sight line out of the door and and just sniper shoot anyone who was running around outside the door and the people who are running around outside were like what the heck where did I die from I don't know and and because they can't the people outside can't really see in and they don't really see that there is an enemy in there and so I had to adjust this to block off that sideline and so a lot more time time goes into really nailing

down these sight lines when you're designing a multiplayer map and once you have the base map designed obviously you want to start thinking about optional or more advanced player routes and so in single player the additional Roots can be used to give additional story elements to the player for example this is a small basement in a in a bar in the level fton and it's very out of the way but what happens is there's a guitar that's on a chair and the player can interact with it and what happens if you interact with it is uh the player Booker starts playing strumming a guitar and Elizabeth there she starts singing this kind of melancholy song about how the circle will never be unbroken kind of talking about like the chain of Oppression and people being poor and and it being

really difficult to get out of that situation and she takes this orange and gives it to this little kid here and so it's a really uh poignant little teeny side moment that a lot of players might not see but it can be fun to design and add these little elements in your game and it can feel very rewarding as a player to find these teeny little tidbits and support additional narrative uh initiatives or the feel of the level but you also have have to think about what happens if the player misses this do we have the money and the resources to support these moments because in single player a lot well at least more linear single player levels players often only play once and so is it okay if players miss this content and that's something that you have to think about a lot more than when you're designing a multiplayer game be game level because people will be playing those over and over again and obviously you can also use additional areas uh in

single player to uh additional loot or other narrative elements as well another thing that you have to consider when designing a single player level is will the AI play nice if you add different types of um ways of interacting with the levels so it's great to in single player and multiplayer to design spaces that support multiple play Styles maybe you want to design for stealth players or you want to design for running gun just go and shoot everyone action folks or sniping but uh you have to think about will the I play nice with that so an example I use here on the left is uh deox uh where you can go in the vents and uh run around and use those as a stealthy way of getting around and it's appealing to add these additional roots to support Stealth gameplay but you have to think about is the level is the game you're making will that support this type of play style

because what happens if you shoot the enemy through the vents but the enemy can't get to you what happens then is that okay does is your game is your level supporting that kind of gam playay style and on the right side over here um I'm using this example from Far Cry 3 because this is something that when I was playing through it I felt kind of frustrated at uh there are these defensible areas that you have to go into in the map and try to take them over but once I got the sniper I would just sit on the Ridge and shoot every enemy before they could even get to me because the AI didn't really play nice with the sniper because the combats weren't designed with AIS having snipers and so I had the advantage over them and the AIS would try to run towards me like in the path that you can see kind of in the back left there's like a route up but they have to take so long to get to

you that you can you just have so much of an advantage it's not really fun anymore and so when you're thinking about adding sniper Vantage points trying to restrict the spaces that the players can have those sniper moments uh or thinking about how the AI will respond to those moments accordingly so when you're designing optional roots in multiplayer uh it's pretty much a necessity that you have to design more than one route because if players encounter each other the same route over and over again is really boring and uh because players are playing these levels over and over again you need to provide multiple roots and options for the player and so I have like a couple examples here uh the player can jump up on that platform and then double jump onto the platform on the right or they can just run straight on the ground and then jump and then ledge grab up onto

the right or an ADV more advanced player uh could jump onto that platform and then do a much more difficult jump to get to a very small side ledge and have a different angle and advantage over the players but it's a lot more difficult for players to get onto that ledge without falling off and so providing both simple and advanced ways for players to get around is really important in multi player now when you're thinking about pickups in single player and multiplayer in single player often times you can design the level first and add pickups later uh you know weapon placements or powerups or uh ammo to replenish uh any anything that you've lost which often is designed so that that happens after a big combat scene or right before a big combat uh the good thing about in single

player is you can use pickups to tell stories you can instead of just plopping them anywhere thinking about okay how did these uh items get here uh who was here and you know why are they gone now and using those to tell stories and to support the overarching story of your game whereas in multiplayer you pretty much have to design pickups at the same time that you are designing the layout so pickups in multiplayer like a power up or a power weapon or something like in this example in Doom here there are these things called uh runes where they appear randomly after some amount of time uh in in a level and players rush to it and once they the first person to pick up the Rune turns into a uh giant demon who has a lot more power over everyone than just an individual player would and so so the thing to consider

when you're placing these is that they will change how the space that the pickups are in and how they play they will be both a draw where a lot of combat will happen around these pickups and uh a lot of different angles will need to be supported for entering to get to those pickups and to support a larger combat space than just this teeny little teeny little location and exploits is probably one of the biggest things to think about uh when you're designing a level for multiplayer in single player it's not super important uh if if there if the player finds an exploit I mean besides people posting silly videos and then it getting on polygon or something they're pretty low consequences and sometimes it can even be fun to get those teeny little exploits uh but in multiplayer especially if you're designing a level that might possibly be used for um for competitive gameplay somay someday it's critical to fix and it's super high

consequences players will find any exploit it's just a matter of time and it's only Fun For The Individual but frustrating for everyone else and unfair for everyone else involved and so a lot more time and play testing needs to be taken uh to find and fix these exploits and now we get into play testing because play testing for a single player level and play testing for a multiplayer level are are pretty different so when play testing for single player you really especially if it's a narrative linear game you only get one shot each play tester only gets one first impression of your level and how they initially react to things and that's very applicable to the fact that play uh players in the end game the final product will only play at once and so you need to find more people to play but you need to take more time to polish

your level before you show it to anyone because a lot of play testers um you normal Gamers don't have the skill set to extrapolate earlier levels into a more polished state so they might get distracted by little elements and taking more time to polish a level before putting in front of a player uh we'll make sure to see if the subtle nuanced level design structures or lighting or framing Etc will lead to them understanding what they're doing and why and The Narrative of a level and so keeping them as pure and untainted as possible is really critical I mean one way to get around this is to find uh find other devs on your team especially other level designers uh who are good at extrapolating so if you if you need to and you should uh get people to look at your level early then uh you should find those people who have the skill to look

at the base barebones framework of a gray box and being able to imagine what it's going to be in its final State and not get uh like distracted by all the nitty-gritty details that don't really matter at that stage and so overall when you are play testing for single player uh you should make sure that players should know what their motivation is and they should always know where they are they might not know how to get to where they are supposed to be going right away but they should always have a frame of reference as to where they're where they're going and not get lost and so if players are lost then you should probably fix it whereas when play testing for multiplayer you really need to um play test often and iterate often it's really necessary to get loads and loads of play tests done preferably every day if possible get people in and just playing through it uh you don't really need to

spend as much time on polish as compared to single player because uh the biggest thing in multiplayer is the layouts themselves and so you can get people in earlier on and play testing and the earlier you get players in the more players can um can have the opportunity to experience your level over and over again because that's going to be closer to what uh the polished and shipped game is going to be like where players going to play over and over again so for multiplayer First Impressions aren't a huge deal uh if players aren't really sure where they're going or if they're slightly lost or they aren't able to make a mental map of the whole layout of the level it's not a huge deal because uh most a well-designed multiplayer map will guide players to the combat anyways and so as long as players initially encounter other other players it's fine and if

they don't have the skills the first game that they play to understand what the layout is they'll get that they'll get that after playing it many times and so in single player it's a big deal to fix if players are lost but not as much in multiplayer so in summary the biggest things to think about uh when you are designing for single player and multiplayer levels and where you should put mo more of your time and your priorities so in single player you should really make sure to sell the narrative whereas in multiplayer uh narrative is generally low priority I got this is this is one of the things that I had to unlearn when designing for multiplayer levels uh I was designing uh a level and I I like to when I first designed a level to think about a space of what is it uh what is the structure who was there before the player got there what is the whole history of uh

the design of the space and what was it being used for and in multiplayer I got really bogged down with thinking of all those teeny little details that don't really matter and don't have a huge impact on the end result not to say that teeny little narrative elements can add a little bit to a level but you you don't need to spend much time on that in multiplayer uh but in single player and multiplayer they do share a similar element element that they both need to make sure that they frame you know uh optional roots and uh gameplay objectives and in single player uh you need to design optional routes for uh to support uh any rewards that you give the player whether that's a a narrative tidbit or um like a pickup or something like that and uh support optional play Styles as well and in multiplayer you also need to support uh play style multiple play Styles and that's even

more important and make sure to design routes for more advanced players so those Advanced players feel a sense of progression and that they're not just playing the same level over and over again but they can find additional roots to um evolve through the level and get get a fair advantage over players not like the sideline issue I was showing earlier but fair and visible advantages over other players and when you play testing single player you play test less and polish more in between and multiplayer you play test as often as possible and make sure to repeat your PL testers and most important uh fix exploits and sight lines in multiplayer because in single player uh they're pretty low priority and so these are a bunch of the things that you um you have to think about when you are designing for different uh experiences in single player and multiplayer and a lot of the skill sets you learn from one are applic able to the other you know using a lot of uh

architectural and framing techniques that you've learned or thinking about uh what makes a fun layout in space and those can definitely uh be interchanged in between the two but there's a lot of um slightly different things that you have to think about in terms of where you place your time in in thinking about them so thank you [Music] so we have like three minutes so so yeah if there's any questions might get one or two in hi um that was a great talk thank you I was just uh Curious how you think of Cooperative level design because this seems uh focused mostly on multiplayer so I'm thinking would you place Cooperative closer to single player or multiplayer so I haven't personally designed any Cooperative multiplayer

levels yet but I imagine that it probably uh takes into account kind of both of the elements that I was talking about in single player and multiplayer obviously you're right I was designing I I was talking about specific examples um and there are a lot of multiplayer experiences or single player experiences that don't fit in between the two things I was talking about but cooperative play um yeah there's definitely some similarities like there might be like framing uh objectives and maybe narrative moments that the Cooperative uh Team wants to experience together those are those would be important to uh design and frame but you don't have the issue of a single player level where you only get one chance to understand what's going on thank you hi thanks for the cool talk um I would like to stick with the uh single player levels right now um before we going to start with I don't know basic blockouts whoever uh environment you're working on how much story in terms of

the storytelling wise how much story do you need to start uh working on the level you you're thinking about uh it really depends I would say the biggest thing to think about is what is the space um obviously you might have varying amounts of data as to what the story will be in the space but at least thinking about uh instead of starting out with just plain shapes thinking about what are those shapes and structures and building small stories based on that that might support the overall theme of the game you're working on and so even if you don't have the full idea of what what the story is yet you probably have a good idea of the general theme of the game and I mean single player you're going to rework your level multiple times and especially if it's a narrative game you're probably going to remake a bunch of the levels to support support new narrative elements that get that get

put in and so you're just going to have to start somewhere and then add stuff in later when you get more data thank you so much hello um thanks for the talk first of all uh I wanted to talk about multiplayer level design I guess my question is uh what's your opinion on asymmetry and multiplayer level design and how you like handle giving players different advantages in a situation or would you rather have like a completely symmetrical map where both teams like have no advantages over each other so I think symmetrical multiplayer levels are I don't prefer them because players can get easily mixed up and confused as to where they are uh but asymmetrical multiplayer I hate using the word asymmetrical because they still are symmetrical in terms of balancing uh you need to figure out like if you give advantage on one side you need to figure out a different way to give a similar advantage on another side or provide locations that give advantages that are

equidistant between the two players and maybe supporting like maybe one route on one side is more stealth oriented whereas the other side is more open uh direct um direct combat and so I would pref I prefer more asymmetrical multiplayer levels okay thank you I think that's all the time we have so thank you