I don't know where to put this, general or Serious. Perhaps gaming? But recently I've been thinking about game design for some reason and I've stumbled upon some weird thoughs involving level design. What I've found is that unlike what most people claim to be the problem (which is linearity), most environments I've seen lack a certain character. What I mean here is the thing where environments aren't striking. Yes linear games are and tend to be somewhat boring, but there are games which are entirely linear and yet utterly engrossing. And an environment has much to do with it. My point? It isn't linearity that's the problem but a lack of memorable environments within games that leave it feeling lackluster. And now for an anecdotes: Titan Quest, if any of you have ever played this game, the environments were generally (if not entirely) awesome. They offered a sense of scale, a sense of wonder. That is until you had to do the whole dungeon thing. But the game was very enjoyable because of that feeling you were climbing a metaphorical (or in some cases literal) mountain. Sure it may not have been the best game, but it certainly did make environments much more enjoyable. Anyone remember the hanging gardens level? I mean that was possibly one of the most enjoyable levels in a clickfest-rpg purely because the sense of scale was epic and the environment was gorgeous and stylized. In summation, I guess I just wanted to know BT's thoughts on what makes enjoyable level design. I know for me, atmosphere and a certain emotion evoked within a certain level gives it much more flavor and panache than generic level design. That might be why I enjoyed the Hitman games. Colorful yet varied levels. While I understand that linearity does much to reduce the amount of fun, might I point out that linear levels can be done very well. COD: WAW for example had terribly linear levels but they were immensely enjoyable, if a bit cliched. Regardless, I open the floor.
Two aspects of level design, and game design as a whole, which I feel have the greatest impact on atmosphere are a clear and consistent theme, and attention to detail. A clear and consistent theme is the foundation for a solid atmosphere. It should be said before going on that the theme can change within a game, often several times even within the same level, the key is that the switches are well defined and within each "theme bubble" things are clear and consistent. A player must be able to understand what a level or zone is about, what's it's meant to look like, how it's meant to feel. If too many clashing thematic elements are included or certain elements come and go the player will constantly be trying to recalculate the atmosphere and never be able to build a sense of understanding or involvement. Since we're talking about video games I'll go into my own anecdote: World of Warcraft. Yep, first post and it's being brought up, queue the groans, but bear with me. Blizzard are masters of atmosphere and this game perfectly exemplifies the interaction of clear and consistent atmospheres. Every individual zone is its own little world and can be instantly understood and, with only few exceptions, does not stray from its theme. Feralas is a temperate rainforest-esque zone. In it you will find large trees, thick underbrush, moss covered stone ruins and vines. The atmosphere is wild, verdant and somewhat claustrophobic. Bordering this zone is (let's use pre-Cata) Desolace, a zone of gray sands, skeletal ruins, murky pools and streams, and centaurs. It's a hostile, lifeless and lonely atmosphere, almost the exact opposite of Feralas. These two zones have directly opposing themes and atmospheres but the transition between them is clear and within each "theme bubble" the design is extremely consistent and limited to only aspects which work towards the same atmosphere. Attention to detail is the second aspect of atmosphere and builds off the foundation of the first. Within a (hopefully) well defined and interesting theme bubble should be items and features which smooth over the unreality of the game's digital setting and facilitate the player's absorbtion into the atmosphere. What exactly attention to detail means can vary from game to game. It can include graphical detail such as random and sporadic cracks on an otherwise unnaturally perfect tile floor, or gameplay aspects such as being able to interact with background items. Players want to be drawn into a game and will, by default, be looking to think of the game as what it claims to be, it's not that the details increase reality, it's more that a lack of details will be a reminder of the game's unreality. CoD: WaW, a game I also enjoyed more than most, was actually surprisingly good for this. In addition to having well defined levels with clear and unique themes it also had a sufficient attention to detail to make even some strikingly linear levels seem interesting. The world looked believable, there's little reason to believe that you weren't in a real city with free roam streets or in an actual jungle where you could trot off into the woods. Of course, if you'd ever actually tried going down one of those streets or into the jungle youd'd hit a strikingly unrealistic wall and be sucked out of the environment, that's why it was critically important to make players trust their surroundings and keep up the facade. Many games lack on their attention to detail and suffer as a consquence, all it takes is one moment of "Huh, why are there no trash cans?" to make a player lose all of the immersion they'd built up to that point.
Hmm, interesting, perhaps this is what killed Oblivion for me. A very broad brush but very little detail. Wheras STALKER always managed to interest me. Of course much to the annoyance of my brother, I spent quite a bit of time looking at the detail of brick walls, but I'm weird. My question then is, how is it that games today fail at this? It's very easy to overwhelm someone with detail to the point where the illusion is kept up. A clear theme can't be that difficult, I mean even Warcraft 3 managed to do this. This baffles me given that we have advanced so far into the gaming industry and content creation and yet we still lack cohesion and subtlety. Btw sloth are you a game designer by trade?
I know exactly what you're getting at here and have the same opinion for a lot of it. As Sloth said it's mostly the attention to detail which really makes the difference. One game which has really impressed me recently regarding this is guild wars 2 (admittdly an MMO so much bigger worlds obviously), there's stuff going on everywhere and always something interesting to find. A lot of the time the interesting and nicely designed things to find have no other purpose than to be there and be interesting, which impresses me that the devs have taken so much time and effort to make roaming the world a pleasant experience. Other games however have managed to do things like this in surprising ways. Take Shadow of the Colossus for example. In the entire game you only fight 16 (or was it 13?) things and there are massive expanses of not very much between them which you explore on horse back , literally there's nothing there and yet somehow I wasn't once even slightly bored. I have no idea how they achieved that. And sorry to bring up a horrendously flogged dead horse but Half-Life 2 is a classic example of this for me. Totally linear and yet full of atmosphere. There is not a single place you go in the entire game where you are not aware of what is going on in the 'big picture', there's evidence of it everywhere. I suppose it will all come down to the primary driving force behind the devs of any particular game. Are they in it purely to make money (obviously they are all in it to make money but some, looking at you EA [EA Sports in particular], quite clearly ONLY want to make money) where as others are in it to make a brilliant gaming experience. That, I think, is the real difference between the current gaming industry and the one from years gone by.
I think it also comes down to subtlety though. There's something about a game that not only treats you as someone who can understand but has an environment that is not only logical but represents a larger thing, a greater thing. As for Shadow of the Colossus, I can answer that one: It had 16 distinctive objectives, each of the targets had unique and distinct ways with which you killed them. You were never told why you had to. It was all very mysterious but did not feel inorganic. Not to mention that at the death of each Colossi, there was the inkling of a feeling that something was amiss. There's just something satisfying and captivating about any medium of entertainment that causes one to question themselves and their own purpose. And if at the end it re-affirms or denies, it has done something. On the other hand, meaning aside, I wouldn't say that the gaming industry currently is incapable of great things. We've seen miraculous things (STALKER, Amnesia..) but we've seen some terrible things as well. The problem I think lies in the assumption that games have to accessible. Design now rests on making a game as playable as possible without considering the consequences of a game without a purpose or a reward. When was the last time anyone had that grand sense of achievement? I might be looking at this from rose tinted glasses, but there is something about giving some kind of meaning behind games. So the point? Give a game some meaning and a greater purpose. If everything leads to a greater whole as a buildup. It might be great.
Can't argue with this, linearity may impact on replayability but it does not have to limit the enjoyment of the original experience. Games where you're running around in a random environment generator, or that feel way, are unsatisfying, whereas games where some effort to incorporate a sense of history, geography and personality into the environment to make it look like a real place rather than just cardboard walls are more engaging for me.
The problem with Random environment generators isn't that they're unsatisfying, just annoying if you have to trawl through them again. But they can have a sense of scale and personality. Look at Diablo 2. Most of the game was randomly generated (and annoying at times) but there were some truly stand out environments that were randomly generated, which were mostly in Act 5 but still... But it goes back to Sloth's statement of attention to detail, there really has to be much attention paid to create the perfect atmopshere. Or at least something close.
I've never played a STALKER game but that was one of my own complaints about Oblivion, too many points where it fell short. Things like noticing two NPCs having the same voice actor, all of the guards being the same, more remote areas of the world lacking in detail, all sorts of small things which were constant reminders of it being a game and the various corners the developers cut. That's a good question. Just thinking as I type, part of the problem might indeed be that it's so easy to overwhelm someone with detail. With the vastly enhanced processing and graphical capabilities of today's consoles and PCs it's no problem to clutter, say, a bedroom with a bed, chest of drawers, picture frames, bedside lamps and all sorts of other basic nick nacks. It may very well look like a real room would, but it lacks feeling. When graphics weren't as capable a level designer would have to consider how to best create a scene with limited resources, that same bedroom might only get three basic polygons with fairly simple textures and need to convey the same information. The bed sheets might be blue and red checkered pattern, or there might be a human-sized stuffed animal in the corner of a child's room, or a fun interactive mirror to watch your character run around in front of. The counter-intuitive thing is that these items may not actually be more realistic, but they're more personal. They give the impression that an individual lives there, not just an NPC, which is more important than just having realistic but stale graphics. Anecdotes again! Two things come to mind. The first, anyone who's played Pokemon (spefically the early ones) can look at Ash's room and recognize it. The most iconic feature was, in my mind, the TV with game console. Many people playing the games will have a similar setup at home and can relate to it. This relation makes players imagine Ash's room being similar to their own and envision that it is actually much more decorated, even though it's really quite barren. The second is the exact opposite and goes back to Oblivion. Despite earlier complaints there are details, when you're in areas they focused on more, but there's rarely any attention. Even people who've never played it are aware of the confusion "why did I find a fork in this person's bedroom chest of drawers?" that often takes place. It's detail, but it has no meaning or emotion and it's randomness and lifelessness often causes it to do exactly what it was intended to do and ruin realism. Okay, I said two, but there should be a third. Amnesia since you mentioned it is indeed a modern game that's good for feeling in its details. All sorts of notes and messages, and clutter which feels livable, like someone was actually there before you and set it up not just some game dev dropping in chair_04, sidetable_02 and bookshelf_12. That attention in attention to detail is all too often left out but is critically importantly like you say above. And no, not a game dev, just a gamer who likes to ramble about games.
Same here man, I spend more time thinking about games than playing them sometimes. You know there's something about making a world that seems like a very convincing reflection, and then making a world where it reflects something that is human. It's like that uncanny valley thing where the closer it gets to reality, the harder we accept it. With this in mind there's something to be said about a sandbox game that is barren and a linear game that is very detailed. Surely there must be a combination of the two. And to be honest, there probably is. That balance I would say would be the Grand Theft Auto games. There really isn't anything there that I find terribly out of place or inorganic. It feels as if you're looking into a world in of itself. Yeah there isn't much deep detail but it still manages to establish a very good sense of scale if not a good sense of placement that you aren't the only thing in the world. Not to mention the people in GTA have always had awesome interactions with the people, the environement not so much. I guess it doesn't just relegate itself to level design then, but game design in general. Making a game enjoyable is not only one where the mechanics are solid but the environment is both logical and immersive, technical prowess or not. You really should check out the STALKER games, they're not perfect and the voice acting is atrocious, but there's this very good attention to detail (especially with the lighting and environments) that make the world seem like a world unto it's own. Great sense of scale. Not to mention the term only human makes you realize what you are. I do miss the old era of unique graphics where it wasn't just how many polygons or how high resolution the textures were, but how interesting the world around you was and how much time you could make the player sink into the world without breaking the system. It's kind of why I always enjoyed games that made you feel a bit small, because perspective is awesome if not engrossing. It's also why I loved the original witcher (having not played the 2nd). You were powerful yes, but utterly mortal. That's important. Mortality makes games fun, if it's fair. On another anecdote in this increasingly large post; I feel the need bring up the travesty that is Far Cry 2. The game had many cool details, many details. But it was marred by a lack of being memorable if you ask me. The game was fun, very fun actually (minus kevlar Africans). But the huge gaping problem was the question of why there was so little to do with this giant world, why the game had no free roam, why you could't add things to it, why there was only about 5 vehicles. This was a game that had the potential and it failed in it. That saddens me because technically, this game is still one hell of an achievement. It's gorgeous. But it seems there was a severe lack of vision and attention to making this technically advanced world into something that would be more than just a coat of gloss. Point being? Advanced 3D engines are awesome. Amazing even. But what's even more amazing and memorable is something that resonates and forms it's own identity.
It's late, i've only skimmed the thread so if i'm going off in the wrong direction or repeating what others have said i apologise... personally i think half the problem is a lot of modern game levels are designed either as a film set, for lack of a better term, where the environment is designed solely so the big cinematic gunfight action scene can unfold in a suitably dramatic manner. Or it's like a high-end theme park ride where you walk a set path looking at whatever shinyness the devs want you to [usually on your way from one cinematic gunfight to the next]. Either way it's just a backdrop, something that's there - don't stare too closely at the flaking paint and wobbly walls and move along please. They're somewhat relying on the action to be memorable and distracting enough so that you don't notice you're in the gaming equivalent of the BBC quarry. Another failing in a lot of level deisgns is the whole designed by comittee predicatbility. How many of you have sat playing a game and thought 'gunfight coming' because of how the upcoming area is laid out, the strategically placed cover for you an your enemies often with conveniently placed and in no way out of place/context large supplies of ammuntion. It's even more jarring when you're confronted with a conspicuously open piece of terrain after a spell of confined and often linear tunnels/forest/streets. It's things like that can than ruin even the best looking and realistic environments. Most of the above is mainly levelled at shooters, most [and i emhpasise *most*] RPGs seem to have more thought and effort put into their environments. There are a few notable exceptions to this, such as Dragon Age, where you spend most of the game fighting in the same few locations, just with strategically place boxes to alter the layout slightly [see also: Mass Effect]. You're normally spending a lot more time in each area of an RPG so you get the feeling more time and effort has gone into making the area... believable I suppose, that said lot of RPGs [JRPGs mainly spring to mind here] also whisk you off to a non-descript field in the middle of nowhere for the combat [and we're back to the BBC quarry]. ...I'm making a hash of explaining myself so i'm gonna quit while i'm behind... hope i've got the bulk of what i wanted to say across...
I see what you mean. But at the same time, there's a certain appeal for creating and fostering a cinematic experience. Which is truth be told quite misguided. It isn't that a linear cinematic experience is necessarily bad. But more that this cinematic experience is stale. It's predictable. It's unrelated to the reality with which we live in. That's not to say Sci-Fi isn't good, but good sci-fi (and writing in General) depicts a certain aspect of the human condition. Games too should share this ideal. I won't deny there are games that are mindless and satisfying. That have no narrative. Hell it barely has things that register as levels. But those are games with very solid mechanics. I mean very solid ones. An example I would bring up would the be the Street Fighter series. There is no narrative, no progression, just fighting. But even the characters have color, they have style, the levels are vibrant. It's its own unique style. Perhaps that's what modern games need: Style. Cheers for the replies. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who has contemplated this.
After a few rounds of Mount and Blade this thread got me thinking again: MB essentially relies upon random environment generation. There is nothing there that isn't necessarily randomly generated (the battle fields that is). Yes it represents parts of the overworld in the game, but there really isn't set environments. The game itself isn't very flashy in presentation. My question is: how is this game so enjoyable? There aren't distinct identites. You are but one person in a million.Although that might have some bearing on why it's so enjoyable.
I'd say the fact that with the randomness allows you to develop your own narrative for what is happening. That and means almost every experience is unique and will play out many different ways. Contrast with something more linear and while can still be engrossing there a limited number of ways each set piece can be carried out.
Good linearity though still trumps bland randomness. As far as I can see though. A well plotted linear story that is consistent and works well (Diablo 2? Light on story but still pretty awesome) is far better than no direction at all (Just Cause 2, which was fun but not nearly as engrossig).
