BioShock 2 Secrets of a level designer | Hacker News Reader

BioShock 2 Secrets of a level designer

fullbright.blogspot.com

13 pointssp3326 comments

The author, Steve Gaynor, is one of my favourite video game bloggers, one who frequently argues with perfect clarity views about gaming that I nebulously felt internally but could never articulate. However, this particular post isn't a particularly interesting fit for the HN audience.

But while we're here, I'll link to a much more interesting post of his from last year, in which he gives some insight into what makes for interesting and engaging level design:

http://fullbright.blogspot.com/2009/02/basics-of-effective-f...

Curio and easter eggs from specific levels in the game, not advice about how to design good levels. Pity.

There are very few level design resources out there in general.

As a side note, the designer responsible for Fort Frolic in Bioshock 1 and The Cradle in Thief 3 (if you haven't played these games these are highly acclaimed, innovative levels) took the role of Creative Director in Bioshock 2.

Good level design is a closely guarded secret, but you can break-down and study all the great levels yourself. However, some really interesting stuff can be found on the World Creation chapter of the World of Warcraft: Behind the Scenes DVD. Chris Metzen starts by talking about how important it was for them to get the trees to feel right before they could really do anything else. It is pretty fascinating.

A note somewhat related to level design that I am always reminded of is OldManMurray's Time to Crate review system for games: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html

Actually, that OMM link reminds me of the developer commentary in Valve's games (the people behind OMM write for Valve), such as Portal. Quite often they explain the thought processes behind areas of the map. I think the free Lost Coast tech demo explains a lot about the fundamentals.

Looking through my collection of links, I've found this one which is pretty good at describing how to pace a level. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4024/examining_game_pa...

Good point. The dev commentary for Half-Life 2 and Portal is really awesome, and very useful for level designers. For Half-Life 2 they talk a bunch about setting up dramatic scenes and in Portal they cover a lot of the ways they had to stop people from cheating. The Portal one is great for really learning how to do a great interactive tutorial. I remember a specific part where they talk about why they had to place a wall in a certain spot so that people would learn to use the portal gun in a specific way.

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