Level Design

or

“How not to get your player to stop playing.”

WK 9
 Midterm Calendar Review
 Greenlight Presentations Explained
 Level Design
 Content
 Mechanics
 Doors and Keys
 Golden Rules
 The Process
***Break***
 Environment(s)
 Visuals & Aesthetics
 Art Style
 Sounds
 Music
 Effects
 Failures
Midterm Calendar Review
 As it says on the syllabus…
The Real World:
 1) You = Slave
 2) Elevator Pitch / Email
(Quick Proposal)
 3) Game Concept Document
(8-10 Page Proposal)
 4) Greenlight Meeting
(8-10 Minutes)
 5) Game Design Document
(30-40 Page Plan)
 6) You = Rich and Famous Slave
The Deliverable (D2)
 Part 1: Game Proposal: The “Elevator Pitch” one
page summary of your brilliant game idea.
(Not graded but required for concept approval –
You did this already!)

 Part 2: Game Concept Document: The 8-10 page

conceptual “Pitch Document” you are writing now.
(80% of your D2 grade – due on March 25, and
described in great detail to you already!)
D2 - Part 2: The Document
 REQUIRED ELEMENTS – 60% (There are 16 of them – each
is worth 3.75 points. Some will be a sentence or two like “title”
or “platform”, but many will require multiple paragraphs of
explanation like “Story” or “Gameplay” similar to your D1. Tell
me WHY each element is what it is!)

 MLA / APA FORMATTING – 20% (ZERO tolerance this time

– do your citations properly! Each mistake is worth one point!
Just 11 mistakes will drop you a letter grade! Buy that English
major a pizza to edit your mistakes!)
Presentation of the Deliverable (D2)
An 8-10 minute conceptual “pitch” to the class.

The point of the presentation is NOT to detail every aspect of your

concept document or game, but to get us excited about your idea!

You may not read your paper to us.

You should use visual aids! PowerPoint or similar is recommended.

You might think of this as a fleshed out presentation of “Part 1:

Game Proposal” without going into the detail of “Part 2: Concept
Document”
The “Pitch” presentation =
The “Greenlight Meeting”
A “Greenlight Meeting” is by definition the
meeting in which it is decided to “green
light” a project, (in the context of the movie,
TV, and now Video Game businesses), and
to formally approve production finance,
thereby allowing the project to move
forward from the development phase to
pre-production and development.
The “Pitch”: The “Greenlight
Meeting” presentation

You must use this time to convince

us to fund your project idea!
The “Pitch”: The “Greenlight
Meeting” presentation
 PITCH PRESENTATION – 20%
(Audiovisual presentation to the class on
your assigned “Greenlight Meeting”
presentation week)
D2 – CONCEPT DOCUMENT
(25% of Class Grade)

 REQUIRED ELEMENTS – 60%

 FORMATTING – 20%

 PITCH PRESENTATION – 20%

Level Design
Content
Mechanics
Doors and Keys
Golden Rules
The Process
Content

 Separation
 Breaking it up

 Order
 Sequencing it
Mechanics
 Action
(Doing Stuff)

 Exploration
(Discovering Stuff)

 Puzzle Solving
(Figuring out Stuff)

 Flow
(Connecting Stuff)
Doors and Keys

 _____ come before _____ !

Doors and Keys
 Doors come before Keys !
 Doors: Keys:
Golden Rules:
What NOT to do to a player… EVER
 Consult your 10 commandments of game
design again! (Handout from 3rd Week!)
 It is NOT “you verses them!” - EVER.
 Never steal the thing that makes it fun!
 If you don’t know what makes your game
fun, then don’t make it – it’s a bad design.
The Level Building Process
(Not set in stone!)

 1) Preliminary Questions
 2) Conceptual Sketched Outline of level
 3) Base Architecture / Block out
 4) Refine Architecture till it’s FUN!
 5) Base Gameplay
 6) Refine Gameplay till it’s FUN!
 7) Refine Aesthetics
 8) Playtesting

READ ROUSE PP 467-473

***10 MINUTES***
Environment Design
Visuals and Aesthetics
Art Style
Sounds
Music
Effects
Failures
Visuals & Aesthetics
 Aesthetics is commonly known as the study of sensory or
sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of
sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define
aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature.“
 In short: “How a level looks and sounds”
Art Style
Sounds

 Soundtrack

 Score

 Special Effects
Soundtrack
 The term soundtrack refers to three related concepts:
recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the
images of a motion picture, television program or video
game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music
as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; and the
physical area of a film that contains the synchronized
recorded sound.
Score
 A score is technically the printed music of a
piece written for several instruments.
 Often refers to the background instrumental
music played during a visual sequence
such as a movie.
Special Effects / “Foley”
 The Foley artist on a film crew is the person who
creates many of the natural, everyday sound
effects in a film, which are recorded during a
session with a recording engineer.
 Sound effects and foley are added during post-
production to dialog and real effects that were
picked up by microphones on-set.
 In a virtual environment there is nothing to re-
record, it must all be created!
FAIL!
HW:
Read Rouse, Ch 23 to review tonight's discussion.

No class Next Week (Spring Break) - ALL student papers

(D2) Due in 2 weeks (3-25-09).

FIRST GREENLIGHT PRESENTATIONS also begin in 2

weeks (with 2 more to follow).

Optional: Check out this neat blog post about

"Art Games and Not Games"