#level designer

Fun fact: I am a game design and cognitive science student at my university. Woah. Neat. Right now for one of my classes my team is making a larger scale project compared to the rest of the semester, and I am a level designer both for the team but also as my specialization that I am working towards becoming.

wow look work cool

So in this level there is an underground cave system that I had blocked out like this

and i needed to cover the walls with the rock models my artists made.

so i did that

oooo nice

and then this happened

yeah

i spent all morning redoing it because we're play testing in like twoish hours and this section needed to exist

(ngl i did a lot better job my second time making the layout and i did it waaaaaay faster so silver linings)

First the bad news - level design generally has very little crossover with programming. Most of level design is about the mastery of space and objects placed within that space. It’s a lot more about interior design or architecture than it is about code design or computer architecture. Level design one of the most touchy-feely disciplines out there, the only real systematic elements to it are the constraints from gameplay systems involving movement - how far a character can jump, how fast a character can move, etc. which directs what kind of spatial layouts you can make (e.g. visually jumpable vs unjumpable gaps, climbable vs unclimbable heights) and the necessary size constraints on those spaces.

The good news is that it is entirely possible to make this transition. Most of the time, this involves obtaining your lead’s approval, promising you will continue to handle all of your current responsibilities, and then setting up an apprenticeship situation where you learn from a more experienced level designer on the team where you get to do small level design tasks under supervision in addition to your engineering work. This would likely proceed for the remainder of your current project and possibly to the next while you continue to earn level design experience and level up, at least until an internal opening for a level design role opened up (likely a more junior position). Then you would interview with the team involved to transition over to that role, while also handling the necessary knowledge transfer to whoever would be your replacement on the engineering team. 

There is one major caveat I wanted to add. I will tell you what my boss told me long long ago when I told him that I wanted to jump tracks to become a designer rather than stay a programmer. He didn’t tell me no or try to persuade me not to. Instead, he told me that the primary criteria I would need to meet is to take a pay cut. Designers in general earn significantly less than engineers in our industry. That’s something you (and your family if you have one) will need to be ok with as well. It may not be that important to you now, but it is something that will affect your overall livelihood and career employment prospects in the future. 

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I thought about this question a lot while I was out sick because it’s a pretty interesting one. When I was starting out, we didn’t have super user-friendly tools like this available. Mario Maker can teach a lot of very important level design principles and concepts. However, Mario Maker’s tools are also limited in scope as to what you can do with it and that hurts its potential as a tool to gauge mastery of a skill. Overall, if I were to consider hiring for a junior designer position I would want to see more than just Mario Maker. There’s a couple of elements that hurt Mario Maker as a useful gauge for determining whether I want to hire somebody. 

Firstly, you’re kind of limited in what you can do with Mario Maker. You’re mostly building a 2D platformer, [weird 3D forced perspectives notwithstanding] and you’re limited to Mario and the library that Mario Maker provides you. The 2D limitations are probably what hurts most, since level designer jobs for 2D games aren’t super abundant unless you’re in the indie space. If you want to get a job there, you probably need a lot broader skillset than just level design due to the small sizes of their teams. For a AAA job, you’ll probably need to understand fundamentals of 3D space and how to lay out objects and geometry to create a scene. It’s a much broader field than 2D platformer level design and it’s something that any AAA team would require in a junior designer.

Secondly (and perhaps more importantly), I feel like somebody who is really interested in becoming a level designer would, after a while, hit those upper end constraints with Mario Maker’s limited rules and library. They’d make some Mario levels and have fun with it, but it would only whet their appetite for more. One of the things that professional game devs have to do all the time is learn to use new tools. That means figuring out how to make them do what we want, but also what they’re good at and what they are bad at so that we can play to their strengths. A promising candidate would probably try picking up tools for other games - Valve’s Hammer editor, old Quake or Doom map editors, RPG Maker, GameMaker, Unreal, or Unity. As you may have guessed, each of these editors also has its own limitations and foibles - some of them are good at doing these things, some are better at doing those things, and some are more limited than others in what they can do. 

This is not to say that having a candidate with Mario Maker on their resume is a bad thing. It’s certainly a good starting point and there are a lot of things to be learned from it. However, I don’t think I would hire a candidate who picked it up and stopped. I want to hire designers who are not only capable with a set of tools, but able and interested to learn new tools and new things. I want to hire designers who have a good understanding of both concepts of 2D and 3D layout and space. Mario Maker experience is a fantastic jumping-off point and worth consideration, but I would hesitate to hire somebody who starts there and never leaves on their own to explore more of the world around them, especially when there are so many options available today.

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Adecco is currently recruiting for a Level Designer for a 12-Month contract with our Client in Vancouver, BC. This contract has the possibility of extension up to 18 months. The ideal candidate is someone who is passionate in game design, with experience on large-scale, multiplayer projects.   The Level Designer will have the following responsibilities: •Assist with the design features and multiplayer design structure; •Create in-engine prototypes of levels and gameplay ideas; •Collaborate effectively and take the initiative to bring parties together to execute on the vision for the levels; •Design execution of engaging multiplayer levels from concept to building and tuning; •Playtesting and feedback, while collaborating with the rest of the design team; •Fix bugs or issues with maps to ship them at a high level of quality; •Work with the Level Design Lead to create metrics and standards for play; •Share your creativity, knowledge and best practices with other level designers; •Use our gameplay systems smartly and find inspiring ways to make the game/level shine; •Incorporate feedback from playtests and user research.   The Level Designer must meet the following mandatory requirements: •Hold an undergraduate degree in engineering, computer science, or equivalent of the related field; •2+ years of working in game development for a mid-large size project; •2+ Years of experience with the full life cycle of game development; •2+ years of experience with 3D level design tools (Unreal, Maya, Kismet, etc.) •Must hold a practical understanding of physical and architectural spaces; •Ability to effectively manage time to meet deadlines and objectives; •Samples of level design from previous experience for review.

If you are interested in applying to our Level Developer position, please submit your resume as soon as possible by clicking on the 'Apply with Adecco' button. MSTC.

1) I was an awesome level designer.