I find it funny that you mentioned designing with no navigational HUD. I remember hearing a study many years ago which concluded that playing a game with a dynamic minimap caused long-term atrophy of the player's ability to navigate and memorize 2d graphs in general

A certain degree of "where the hell am I...?" or "how do I move forward?" can encourage exploration and ultimately enhance the experience... as long as the player doesn't stay lost for too long... because then they've become stuck. which sucks. Think of it as creating environmental tension and release.

This is chock full of things it felt like I "knew." But you've given me much better words and mental-scaffolding to be able to articulate them. You're a great educator Nicolas, I'll be looking for more of your talks.

I take this away from his talk: Design a level not by focusing on its manifestation in pixels, but by focusing on the cognitive image or map that is going to be formed in players' minds. From this perspective you can first design functionally, and then expand.

What made Morrowind such a great game with no minimap is that whenever you get lost is when you discover new interesting stuff! And they make finding your destination that much rewarding! I miss it so much!

Basically: Contrast. Just like in any art: Contrast is the main force driving interest, attention and focus. If you want people to remember/focus on something, create contrast in any way. Be it shapes, color, movement, value,

I recommend paying more attention to this point 15:00, because it can easily go unnoticed how useful it is. This can be used for a lot of things, like for example caches of ammo in classic FPS design. Grouping loot to specific spots makes it much more meaningful than just throwing several pieces of it around the level. I remember Doom 3 doing a great job at this.

One of the things I respect most in games is knowing just by glancing which are the secondary paths and which is the main one while exploring. If a game can tell me just by the layout of the level where TO go and where I CAN go thats a good level design

The cognitive mapping of Elden Ring comes to mind when you mentioned both landmarks and districts. The Erdtree for example can be seen from everywhere in the world and acts as an anchor in the story and in the way the player navigates the world.

Fascinating comments about GPS - the difference between one of my friends and myself is that she always, always uses a GPS, whereas I instead check a map at the start and look for main roads and landmarks before leaving to go somewhere... and she usually doesn't remember how to get somewhere she has been to unless she has taken the road dozens of times, but I can (usually) remember a route I took once a couple of months ago. However... sometimes I get lost if I don't plan well enough... and ironically my ego can get in the way of pulling up a GPS... so sometimes not using a GPS can also be egocentric, haha.

When I read Image of the City 12 years ago I spent a lot of time thinking about how it applied to world design in games. It makes a lot of sense in games like Shadow of the Colossus. Another great read on the topic is in Edmund Bacon's (if you're wondering, one degree. He was Kevin's uncle) Design of Cities. The way pilgrimages instrumentally structured the cities he covered are a great reference for those who want to design game worlds that teach the player navigation without a map. Thank you for making this video.

Just wanted to say while watching this talk, all I could think about is how most From Software games hit these notes so well. Really illustrates why great level design has been a hallmark of their games.

Incredible talk. Short, to the point, and incredibly informative. Really enjoyed this and it will shape how I design spaces moving forward.

This is the first talk I’ve watched in a long time. This is really good stuff

As an architect and a former professor, I can easily say that this video is better than most of my college classes. Great approach on Kevin lynch to creating environments.

Goes to show, design should be built around the players knowing there is a prize out there. The game itself is what drew them towards it, but they have to find it. Its the show, don't tell simplicity of storytelling that a lot of AAA companies and designers forgot about.

I think of myself of having a strong sense of my location, but I always get lost in towns because roads keep changing direction. Out in rural areas, where I am not limited to erratically winding roads, I can always find my way. And that despite being raised a city kid.

This is gold info and 100% applicable to sound design as well!

a real pity these video-conference talks dont allow for questions. this one is so rich and to the point that Im sure it could benefit from a generous QA section at the end

Thank you for this excellent talk. Highly recommend doing the small exercise. It was a great way of linking how one personally observes their surroundings to the context of this talk. Very enlightening!

This is going to keep me thinking back on it for a long time to come. Thank you.

The lack of a map in the HUD of FF: Origins makes the stages so much more exciting in tons of ways.

I saw the thumbnail and clicked immediately. I'm not disappointed, quite the contrary, this was an amazing talk full of useful information. There's nothing more satisfying than see a complex concept being break down into smaller, self-contained and applicable chunks. Thank you Nicolas!

great talk, thanks for sharing the info!

I appreciate you folks from TGC ! love your work and this talk is delightful

I wish AAA games would implement these too, there are AAA games that i get lost in their open world constantly, the map button is literally one of the main buttons i use several times an hour

Thanks for this. Very enlightening.

Great video! Thank you for sharing such a piece of knowledge.

i’m an architecture student who likes to learn about game design, as soon as he started talking i thought “oh is this gonna be about wayfinding” and then he said it! i guessed it right lmao!! very interesting video, it was really cool to see how wayfinding can be applied to a different medium. it makes sense because games are kind of like a built environment too, so i can see how improving navigation in a game would be similar to how you’d do it in a physical space.

What a useful compact talk! Thanks Nick!

Great to hear advocacy for allocentric navigation. Some of the hud markers make navigation too simple and harm exploration and the feeling of discovery. Btw I think From software were clever with Eldenring by minimizing use of hud nav markers and instead projected ethereal nav lines as hints.

The fact that this applies to thought & mapping concepts is crazy. Amazing vid, really useful stuff

Very well articulated. Thanks for sharing

SUPER useful, this is what I’ve been looking for

Super concise and cohesive. Great talk!

I would be interested in seeing a follow-up on this that talks more about conveyance than simply creating a navigable space. I find it's pretty rare in games that I actually get _lost_ in the truest sense of the word. Usually that only happens if the level designer literally copy-pasted an area to pad out the length. What happens a lot _more_ is I get stuck because I don't understand what the level designer expects me to do. Usually things like a switch hidden in a corner somewhere or a door that doesn't look like a door, that sort of thing.

Thank very much Nicolas ♥ It's clear and useful. You're doing great :D

great video, great talk, great presenter! awesome thanks

The start of this is a perfect appeal to ethos, I just think that many people shy away from attempting this as one often comes off as long winded and unnecessary. In my opinion, 10/10 opening

I remember playing Journey, ABZU, HoB, Rain World and Subnautica, i almost never used maps and other type of navigations mostly (in HoB and Subnautica) and just walked/swam everywhere to find everything on my own, with mistakes and learnings, it was such a pleasant and beautiful experience, seeing all those sceneries and just traveling everywhere and chilling

Exceptional talk, so useful. Thank you :)

Great shout out to "The Image of the City", by Kevin A. Lynch. Brought me back to Diane Ghirardo's ARCH 314 class. Fight On!

Good stuff, for things beyond game design, too!

This is such an interesting and helpful talk! :) I really enjoyed it.

I will never look at a map the same again 😁 Super insightful talk, thank you 🙏

I love this video!!!! VERY HELPFUL!

Amazing, thanks for sharing that knowlege !!!!!

great talk in terms of content and presentation, thank U for sharing :)

Thank you, good information!

Great talk and tips!

Fascinating thank you 🙏

great talk Nicolas thx

It’s easy to get stuck in a “I know what I’m doing” mentality. With illustration experience comes an irrational complex. Game changing in the literal sense. Thank you 😁

Makes me appreciate the level designers pajama Sam so much more, they know their landmarks

This approach to level design is actually genius.

I really liked this, I study a lot of in game maps (levels not the M key). For my broken brain, this would have read a lot better if he showed some in-game examples as I spent a lot of time trying to find a good and bad game example of each thing in order to visualize it in a design context. Currently playing Dragon's Dogma 2, DD1 is one of my favorite games and I wrote a lot about map changes that would make it perfect for me. It seems to have a map design that encourages getting lost with high cliffs that frequently block landmarks and paths that branch not only into smaller trails but longer out-of-the-way roads that still lead to the next node but take you further out into the wilderness often accidentally. It would be interesting to hear a talk on how game designers can use the information in this talk to subvert player choices and force them into desired content. Akin to Bethesda placing a quest on the opposite side of a POI but using the player's perceived choices instead. For example, placing a boss monster in route 6 instead of some cheese.

The Image of the City is so good!

I think of Dark Souls as an example of how great level design negates any need of a map. I never really got lost in those games despite how dreamy and logically impossible their layouts could be. I still feel like I know the worlds of those games even though I haven't played them in forever. I didn't need a map. I was the map.

Very well articulated, thank you. It's a great toolset that can also be inverted to reach different goals. In Red Dead Redemption for example there were different characteristic regions. Each had their own climate, vegetation, etc. However the transitions between these districts blurred into each other. This created smooth transitions, making the world feel more believable and larger. Going off the beaten path and the ability to get yourself lost within that world was an intentional part of the experience. It gelled nicely with the theme of trying to escape the advent of civilization in the west.

Great talk!

Very interesting and insightful

I think, now - this video is best material for learning for all newbees in Level design.

Really good video, i also studied architecture and its amazing how often design and ideas from that area of education can help one in other aspects! Great tutorial for urban environments and layouts I do have one caveat and that was the phrase "if you go outside there are no maps" and i would have to disagree, stars, rivers, and natural land formations can all act as maps or cues in which one does not write down on paper. I am interested in how these natural navigation cues can tie into your theory on cognitive maps

Awesome!

Very interesting, thank you

very educational!!

Think the Xenoblade games are experts at designing good worlds with landmarks that melt into the game in a brilliant way. Don't think I ever gotten lost in their games. The road solution is sorta dumb as that can be immersion breaking.

The first Gothic games applied this really well, there's no minimap, compass or other navigational HuD, when dropped into the world, you're just given a path to follow and the information that there's a huge camp further down the road. Following that road down the mountain it leads into a larger open area, and from the top of the cliff you're already able to see said camp, establishing it as both a landmark and a hub district. Dialogue with NPCs then establishes names and desciptions for specific locations and minor landmarks within, like the main and south gate, the entrance to the fortress at the center of the camp, the arena and trade district, with quest givers referencing all those points of interest, combined with "real" directions, like the third hut left of the main gate, or that one hut set back against the fortress wall. Pointing to locations outside of the hub works much the same, with descriptions using established paths, landmarks and terrain to keep you on track, ever expanding your known area. As for the much longer journeys to one of the other hubs, there are NPCs that will escort you through the wilderness, thus letting you learn the right path and experience all the wayside landmarks yourself. Even later on when you actually aquire a map, those are kind of low detail, unlabeled, hand-drawn maps that focus heavily on paths, landmarks and terrain. It's not a replacement for your mental map of the world, but an enhancement, like a memory aid to help assure you where exactly you are, if in doubt. While rather small for an open world, It is quite the testament to these games' organic feeling world design, that to this day I'm having a harder time laying out the path to most locations on the ingame map, rather than imagining the way by chaning together landmarks, paths and directions.

I hope this leads to less compasses and minimaps in games, and more immersive and interesting navigation and exploration using a players own mental maps.

This is a galaxy brain level talk that I should rewatch when I'm not getting ready for bed lol. Incredible insight here.

Fantastic

Interesting subject

Very good food for thought

That would help explain why I enjoyed my play through of Breath of the Wild more when I used the pro hud which removed the minimap

An edge doesn't have to be sharp it can be progressive like as you're traveling things start to slowly change maybe things start to die I mean I'm not remembering exactly but if you look at elden ring you kind of can tell that you're in different areas just by kind of what the scenery looks like like you know you're not in the same area you were before and even the enemy start to look a bit different too

interesting talk

hi archi bro thanks for good talk

Just wondering what is the source for the thumbnail, looks really interesting

Basically why I hate The Witcher's map and never really explored the world. And if you try to play the game with no map you WILL suffer.

A modern game that applies these principles very purposefully would be Deathloop, which relies upon you framing your position through experience. It's a little disorienting when you're accustomed to either linear maps or open maps that provide a minimap, but it was the right decision because lacking that players wouldn't engage with the areas correctly. In fact I think the degradation of cognitive mapping amongst players through habitual use of minimaps is partially why that game struggled on release despite it having wonderful level design and gameplay mechanics throughout. We're all becoming a bit crippled when it comes to navigational skills.

And yet, despite all these wonderfull metods to create navigability, most developers just say fuck it and cover the screen with arrows and minimaps.

in additive, there would be another way I think quite effective. this was quite interesting to me.... I had experience long time ago to make cognitive space by color planning like cognitive water dive depth with color change. I wanna adapt that other environment also but result.... I don know lol

Miyazaki really make caelid fucking memorable landmark :v

👍🏻Talk!

this is good

I wanted to like Fez, but I kept getting lost. It was extremely difficult to create a cognitive map. Its the only game I quit playing because I kept getting lost.

What are some games that exhibit Ouejijan's talk? What games have great cognitive maps?

High Details + High Variation of Height & Depth + Several Gradient of Shadow -> High Realism

It's always wierd to me how most people simply does not "feel" where they are. You know exaktly how you moved, therefore you know where you are in relation to the earlier points you've been at. I can go days and weeks knowing exactly where I am whereever I go. If i somehow do manage to loose track of my orientations i feel lost until I manage to orient myself again. I'll start on a new "map" while figuring out where I am and when I finally make it I simply align the newest data with that.

The links of reference at the end. The city image and its elements The perfect selfishness of mapping apps Path integration and the neural bias of the cognitive map Path integration in desert ants Embodied interact on with a 3d uses 2d mobile map Death to the mini map Cognitive maps in rats and men Visual map and instruction based bicycle navigation Variations in Cognitive maps understanding individual differences in navigator

I think one thing video games do and then they fail at is they don't remember they're making a video game. I'll give you a perfect example cyberpunk 2077 it's flat this isn't Grand theft Auto this is the future it's cyberpunk there's skyscrapers things being built on top of each other's and the environment feels so very flat it feels like every other City You have mechanics in a game you have mechanics to move around and I don't think enough people when they make maps are making the maps in mind for the game so the players can really experience the most of the movement that they can do in the game. I mean also the the overall teams can receive the same blame for this but. Another example of this would be like Warframe they have 0 maps that go vertically and it is a game where the mechanics could definitely allow for it where your progressing a map or down a map. There are many games that do not include vertical map making because they're thinking of making a map like they would in real life. And sure it wouldn't work for all games but there's a lot of games where it's not just about necessarily platforming but when you're kind of feel like you're stuck on a 2d plane it feels a lot more like a game especially when it's a game that could have more three dimension and I don't mean flying around

I am actually working on a housework for my studies about wayfinding in games atm. Good to see that the topic is not completely forgotten. There are way too little resources on it in my opinion.

Could "Arrow Mazes" be a good starting point for creating these "cognitive maps"?

Is it possible to get the references somewhere? Would be great instead of having to type every title in there.

I clicked on the title because it thought it hase to do with psychology and cognition.. Didn't realize it's about designing video games.

at which company?

Landamark: Cluckin' Bell in Las Venturas desert...

10/10

14:50 the group on the right is much simpler to determine than Dwarf Fortress's entire game. The left one is child's play, haha

He uses "edge" like "border" when I'm used to hearing it in conjunction with "node" to refer to the lines of a graph...