04:23 1- Good level design is fun to navigate. 06:47 2- Good level design does not rely on words. 10:46 3- Good level design tells what to do but never how to do it. 13:35 4- Good level design constantly teaches. 16:06 5- Good level design is surprising. 21:07 6- Good level design empowers the player. 25:16 7- Good level design is easy, medium, and hard. 28:13 8- Good level design is efficient. 32:55 9- Good level design creates emotion. 37:26 10- Good level design is driven by mechanics. 41:50 Recap

41:50 Recap For any level designers who come back to refresh their minds but don’t want to watch the entire thing again.

"If the player does something you didn't expect, you should not chastise him, you should design it into the game." -- Dan Taylor

He forgot rule 11 always add a water level

This made me realize that a Civ game is just one really long level

18:00 One of the greatest paradigm shifts has to be Halo 1, with the Flood mission. The buildup to that was so out-of-nowhere and terrifying, wondering why the Covenant were afraid, or dead before you got there.

Go to 41:49 for a summary, if you don't wanna watch the whole video.

The Ishimura scene in deadspace 2 is the most horrific part of all horror games i ever played. nothing happened all the time but the psychic terror to go throuw that ship that nearly killed me in the first game ... and remembering all the terrors ... it was horrible ... the worst i ever felt while playing a game .. i loved it!

This was awesome! A real lesson by an experienced designer AND speaker. The way he connected each point of the presentation was gold.

i guess one way to provide ammo for a boss without spoiling is putting the armor on the boss stage, or through minions that drop ammunition, maybe even increase the drop rate on normal monsters before a boss instead of straight giving the ammo, like an unaware enemy that is actually just there to give you the items you need for the next battle

This remains one of the most important and relevant game design talks I've seen. I find it useful to see the recap at 41:50 from time to time, but once in a blue I'll watch the whole thing again to catch small but very useful things I might have neglected in my recent designs.

One of best level design talks ever recorded

6 minutes in and I already learned so much. Such a wonderful and useful resource.

If you close your eyes this sounds like a games lecture delivered by Simon Pegg.

Love hearing insightful, simple to follow and practical tips from industry pros, thank you as always.

41:49 is the recap if you’re the TLDR type although I’d recommend watching it through because he gives great examples and elaborates on them.

55:40 I had that problem even before I started learning game design, even as a small child. You can almost always tell when a boss is coming. If it's not items, it's something else, but there's always a strong tell. I don't think I've ever been surprised by a boss (except maybe the fish that ate me because I kept shooting the water in RE4, but the legit boss fight was not a surprise).

This presentation contains an absolute wealth of important information! Thanks for making this available to everyone that wants to learn more about level design

This is gold, thanks a ton!

Respect how he handled the first “question”- I’d not be sure how to respond.

Very nice Talk! Excellent general guiding rules; not just level design but for game design in general. Especially beginning from the desired emotional response and then selecting the elements that together create that emotion, is a really helpful way to do it / think about it.

Great Talk and great questions at the end!

Looked up Dieter Rams' "Good design" principles on wiki, very nice.

so far this is one of the better level design videos iv watched, the last video i watch one of the parts told me to stare at old maps... like bruh i looked at camping grounds for 20 minutes, this didnt make me any better. there was some good points in there, but this video was full of things i could write down

This is a ton of good information. Thanks for the presentation!

This guy's pretty brilliant! Wonderful talk.

That was a great talk, thank you for sharing it!

37:09 DAMN THAT'S AMAZING

Very much appreciated, thanks!

Very great talk!

"Real life sucks" - tell that to the Farm and euro truck sim players.

imo, Level design is everything on a game, no matter how much you put in a game, without a good playground to use those features the game won't perform well at all

Loved this talk

haha, you can really feel the age of this talk when the Q&A begins and he struggles with questions about about games that pursue experiences outside of player empowerment, or how to deal with the paradox of giving the optional bonuses to players who've proven they don't need the help. Still, a solid set of guidelines, I think. Just don't forget to apply your own critical thinking.

what a convenience..this is what i need to study

One of the principals for describing something is to not use the word you're trying describe in the sentence.

33:06 "Last year the US supreme court declared gay videogames were legaly art"

"If you want to make the player feel persecuted put an enemy AI into the level that constantly hunts him." *E.M.M.I. has entered the chat*

Great talk. I'm unsure why it is so blurry from the audience view.

47:30 That's actually good question I want see what he would say about multiplayer level design!

Thanks for the insight!

Honestly, I think when designing a prison, the last thing you want is to make inmates feel imprisoned. If you make the whole thing feel open and inviting without compromising safety and security, you'll have a much better prison population.

Someone give this man an award for drinking like 5 bottles of water in less than 45 minutes. 🏆

36:58 I remember that, It was so annoying. I fought so hard, and kept restarting the level before I got down to those last two guys because I thought I failed. I was kind of pissed when it ended up being waste of time trying to win it.

Halo 3 thumbnail, Final boss of clickbait :D

he sounded like such a small little guy at 22:06 when he said almost as many people that played dead space 2 lol

Rockstar should take some notes. Let's look at RDR2 for an example. When it comes to the open world of that game, the level design is excellent. but in main quests it's so on rails it almost feels like QTE.

Outstanding !!!

Also I think good level design is that it builds on the previous level, and prepares you for the next one.

Modern Warfare 2 wasn't done by Treyarch, but you gave them credit for good level design on it. [Edit] Though it sounds like Treyarch may have helped out on some maps around that time, hard to verify which games. Where'd you get this info?

this guy has crazy CV the amount of big studios he has worked at.

In the year 2040, someone will look back at this video and realise where the worlds fresh water reserves went

This is gold

Feel so late to this video. been watching these. although i may not get into game dev super seriously i love the insight. it provides understanding and appreciation for the story telling as well as the thought process in creating these games.

This is my dream job

6:34 MW2 was Infinty Ward, not Treyarch.

I think level design would be my dream game dev job

I can't figure out if i've commented already. KZfaq hard. But, i can't get past the "I'm about to spoil Deadspace 2" part. Been meaning to play it for years... And I always turn the video off at this point. How bad is the spoiler? I spend way more time learning than I do gaming and I really wanna finish this video lol.

God, this is a very good talk! 😳

Useful principles.

That note about Bethesda making modular levels is why I always get bored of their games and put them down.

Very interesting! Thank you! :-)

25:28 YES! This man gets it! I knew I wasn't the only one.

If the player does something you don't expect, my friend, that is interesting gameplay

loved the influencer references- great talk, but lol, dry crowd

First half of DS1 just peaks everything

A good designer does not punish the player for doing something unforeseen. The best designers anticipate even that which is impossible and create something unique for that occasion that 99.9 percent of players never will see playing themselves.

Is it me or does Dan sound a lot like Simon Pegg?

Does every slide have to have picture of a game? Also it obscures the words a bit.

32:28 thanks for squat-leaving :) and not blocking the view

How can, in 2013, do a conference on Level design and not talk about Dark Souls? Still, amazing video, lots of very interesting points!

>skyrim >nebulous objectives i'm sorry but WHAT

the part about a good design teaching something new is how i approach every dungeon in zelda botw, what is this sage trying to teach me ? and when i "cheat" i don't think the levels is bad, because the sage says " you are resourceful"

6:28 It's funny that a different talk by an Epic artist was given referring to this same level as visually incoherent and being highlightes as a major drop-off point for players. Of that data is true, this level is significantly less fun to play (it may still be fun to navigate - without enemies I suppose?) as players seemed to have been abandoning the campaign during this level.

The Original Ghost Recon level design as the first and only tactical open-terrain (not open-world) level design. Unfortunately the sequels deviate from the level design and tactical gameplay mechanics.

Very attractive

Yes.

5:09 but sometimes I like a game that lets you get lost.

Cod campaign designers should watch this

It's weird to see Skyrim used as a good example for any form of story telling, but the Dark Brotherhood quest was way above the rest of the game in that aspect.

What is the name of the book he tells on number four?

What about always gives you experience points in your stats?

I enjoyed watching the whole thing but if you want to jump straight to his ten principles 4:21

great talk, but i couldn't help but notice the speaker was completely unable to decide whether to roll with 'him', 'him/her' or singular they. lol

6:38 Treyarch? You mean Infinity Ward?

5:58 - I'm not sure that MW2 mission was really 'fun'. I've heard in another talk that Favela level was number one drop point in MW2 single player campaign and multiplayer map based on it was one of the least popular maps. That's the talk: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fcBpbMpyx5q4YKM.htmlm7s

Is that Errant Signal at 59:05?

The only part I benefitted from was when he explained architectural theory.

43:55 Q&A

1 hour? :O

29:50 is when that Halo 3 thumbnail you came for comes into play.

I wanted to hear bad Yoda :(

38:30 too many HD words, he's lagging

I guess the game of life is a very well designed game then. The levels fulfill all of these 😅

Wait... Square-Enix Montreal make games? Aren't they a publisher in the US? I thought Eidos developed Hitman... sure they're a subsidiary of Square-Enix but they're still known as Eidos...

14:00

Why do old people always sigh like that when nobody gets their outdated references 😂

Dark souls 1 blow my mind with lvl design

PARA OS BR QUE NUM ENTENDE INGREIS :D Um bom Level Design... 1. É DIVERTIDO DE NAVEGAR cria uma linguagem visual clara porém se sinta livre de colocar um pouco de caos. 2. NÃO DEPENDE DE PALAVRAS use narrativa implicita e emergente do que explicita para contar uma história, sendo a implicita a abordagem que não deixa claro para o jogador e a emergente que tem envolvido as ações do próprio jogador. 3. CONTA OQUE MAS NÃO COMO Faça objetivos claros para assim o jogadores completarem de qualquer maneira ou na ordem que eles quiserem. 4. ENSINA CONSTANTE Mantem o jogador engajado com introdução ou subvertencia de novas mecânicas. 5. É SURPREENDENTE não tenha medo te correr riscos com estimulação estética ou outros elementos. 6. EMPODERA O JOGADOR videogames são uma forma de escapismo então faça o jogador sentir o impacto das suas ações. 7. É FÁCIL, MÉDIO E DIFÍCIL use risco e recompensa para então o jogador setar a dificuldade de forma dinâmica. 8. É EFICIENTE Feito para modularidade pelo direcionamento e "não-linearidade" e outros. 9. CRIA EMOÇÃO começa no final com as respostas emocionais desejadas e retrocede para selecionar a mecânica adequada para eliciar a resposta. 10. É DIRIGIDO PELAS MECÂNICAS Acima de tudo mostra as mecânicas do jogo através do nível para reforçar a natureza interativa unica de video games.

12:17 Rockstar Games, are you listening?