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Abstract

This article examines level design processes and challenges at professional game studios. Thematic analysis of data, recorded through field studies and semi-structured interviews, identify four key themes: level design as an interdisciplinary effort; who is the level designer; the role of narrative in level design; and challenges of managing creativity in the level design process. Results indicate that while the role called level designer is often assigned to specific disciplines, the process of level design is usually highly interdisciplinary. Furthermore, this interdisciplinary collaboration requires management to maintain both creativity and efficient pipelines, by distributing ownership and facilitating communication and planning. The level design process seems particularly vulnerable to suboptimal interdisciplinary communication and planning, due to significant reliance on narrative design, game design, art, sound design, and tool development. While this article addresses level design specifically, most observations are comparable to previous findings on game development in general.

Keywords

game development game production game industry interdisciplinary level design field studies

Introduction

Game development is an interdisciplinary effort, requiring a wide range of specialists, such as artists, designers, engineers, writers, sound designers, and composers (Engström et al., 2018; McDaniel & Daer, 2016; Whitson, 2020). It is ever-changing and fast, requiring reactive and adaptable processes (Ernkvist & Ström, 2018; Jørgensen, 2019; Pereira & Bernardes, 2018; Schreier, 2017). As a consequence of this, many roles in game development could be described as fluid. For instance, McDaniel and Daer (2016) explain that the role of game designer could encompass tasks such as world design, system design, content design, game writing, level design, or user interface design, depending on experience, aptitude, game genre, and current stage of production. Just as game development as a whole requires several disciplines to work together to create a cohesive product, Seering et al. (2019) argue that this is applicable for specific areas of production as well. Kayali and Schuh (2011) specifically mention level design as an area of development, where multiple specialists collaborate. That level design to a large part involves interdisciplinary collaboration was confirmed in a previous study by the principal author of this article (Karlsson et al., 2020).Moreover, the study identified discrepancies among role descriptions for level designers, both on a regional level and between companies. According to articles by industry professionals, such discrepancies are common in the game industry (Piaskiewicz, 2014; Pugh, 2018; Sergeev, 2017; Stout, 2016).

This article aims to explore the interdisciplinary processes and challenges surrounding level design. Insights regarding common challenges and interdisciplinary processes can be useful for game development teams when setting up level design pipelines, while educators might utilize it to increase the quality of level design education. The primary data was recorded during participatory observation at a game company, during which the researcher took on the role of level designer. While observation allowed for a clear overview, participation provided insights into production details that would otherwise be difficult to discern. The participatory observation was supplemented by semi-structured interviews at the company, but also with a producer at a separate company. This allowed for method triangulation, as well as data source triangulation (Carter et al., 2014). Results indicate that the process of level design is usually highly interdisciplinary, even when some developers are assigned the level design role. The study shows how studios struggle to combine design, art, audio, and narrative elements. The level design process also involves a great management challenge—to cater for both creativity and efficiency. Thus, the nature of level design does mirror the characteristics and challenges identified for game development in general.

Game Development

The research community has shown an increasing interest in digital games since the turn of the millennium (Martin, 2018). The interest in studying game development in general and “in the wild” (i.e., as it is conducted at the companies), has however been limited (Engström, 2020). Instead, research has primarily focused on isolated parts of the process, such as game design as a solitary task, or on specific technical challenges such as graphic rendering. The development of serious games for research purposes has also been common. These games however differ from regular games in that player engagement is used to achieve functional goals related to, for example, education or training, rather than pure entertainment. This means that these games have dual, and sometimes conflicting, goals. As a consequence, priorities differ significantly between game projects conducted at the university and game companies (Holvikivi et al., 2018; Passarelli et al., 2020).

Game development contains a complex mix of challenges and differs from other media and software development in several respects. For example, game development is a collaborative creative process with a range of disciplines involved (Berg Marklund et al., 2019). Therefore, processes applied in other kinds of software development are not always applicable in game development (Murphy-Hill et al., 2014). In addition, soft requirements, such as player experience, make it almost impossible to accurately plan game projects in detail. Not only is game development furthermore different from other types of media production, such as movies (O’Donnell, 2011), but a great variation also occurs within the game development realm. Factors such as company size (Berg Marklund et al., 2019); regional and cultural differences (Izushi & Aoyama, 2006; Jørgensen et al., 2017); game genre (Murphy-Hill et al., 2014); and business models (Tyni, 2020) can have implications on the development process.

Productions in AAA companies can involve thousands of professionals distributed over hundreds of different roles (Toftedahl & Engström, 2019). These large productions lead to formalized management processes and company structures with a strong focus on economic control and return on investment. This in turn can limit the ability to create novel and innovative games. Cohendet and Simon (2007, 2016) report how a large Canadian game company applied a stage-gate process (Cambridge Online Dictionary, n.d.) which required creative teams to present new concepts to a creative committee, which decided whether it was worth to proceed with or not. They observed a loss of creative freedom and efficiency in the development team which eventually lead to an abolishment of the stage-gate process (Cohendet & Simon, 2016).

Small independent game studios many times have a lot less rigorous structure and they can support an environment where creativity and cultural expression can be valued higher than moneymaking (Styhre & Remneland-Wikhamn, 2019). As game development requires artistic, technical, and design specialists, smaller teams sometimes have single individuals holding multiple roles (Pereira & Bernardes, 2018; Weststar, 2015). The role of the producer has been identified as critical in game production (Whitson et al., 2018). The producer's role is to be the glue that holds everything together, for example, making sure milestones are met, interdisciplinary communication is functioning, and that developer motivation and efficiency are upheld (Whitson, 2020).

The complex interdisciplinary process in game development, the demand for specialized tools and systems, and the need to maintain creativity show the need for researching game development in the wild (Engström, 2020). The game studies community also shows an increased interest to pursue this line of research (Sotamaa & Svelch, 2021). Currently, most studies can be found in the management and software engineering community. The field is however still relatively unexplored and studies in the wild are sparsely conducted in several central areas in games, such as narrative, art, and audio. As an example, the role of narratives in games has received a huge interest from the research community but almost no studies are conducted regarding how narratives are developed in an interdisciplinary game production context. One of the very few is presented by Linderoth (2015, p. 294) who concludes that “Storytelling in games is a constant compromise with different parts of the development process”. Studies such as this, suggest that the different components of game development can not only be studied in isolation but must be understood in their complex, multifaceted context.

Level Design

The level in level design points toward a portion or an area of the game world, through which the player must navigate (Salmond, 2021). As Smith et al. describe it: “Levels are the space where a player explores the rules and mechanics of a game; as such, good level design is critical to the game design process.” (2008, p. 75). Already by the turn of the millennium, Cliff Bleszinski from Epic Games stated that “It is becoming increasingly difficult to define the role of the team member known as the ‘Level Designer’” (Bleszinski, 2000, p. 1). This issue has been reiterated in more recent industry articles as well, for instance by Mojang-level designer Max Herngren:

I think level design is a really hard role to nail down. […] You’re sort of poking at so many different disciplines just by the very nature of what it is you have to accomplish as a level designer. It's very hard to define where you draw the line and how you actually define what you do. I think you’ll often find that level design doesn’t mean the same thing at every company (Herngren, 2019).

The perception that level design differs between companies and projects is one that is shared in several industry articles (Pugh, 2018; Stout, 2016; Taylor, 2013). Although some recurring factors can be found in industry articles and presentations of level design, there does not seem to be any clear consensus regarding exactly what it entails. Some suggest that level design is an artistic role that should focus on composition and visual storytelling (Piaskiewicz, 2014; Pugh, 2018), while others describe it as a design-focused role with a strong focus on game mechanics and metrics (Sergeev, 2017; Stout, 2016). Two recurring terms that are used to describe level design tasks are White boxing and Set-dressing. White box is described by Schreier (2017) as, “an outline of a game's level without any art assets attached, used for quick testing and prototypes. At some studios it's called gray box. At others, it's called black box. That even a concept as simple as this has no standardized name says a great deal about the youth of the video game industry.” (Schreier, 2017, p. 163). Set dressing, a term taken from theatre, is the process of decorating a white boxed level with art assets. Whether set dressing is considered a level design task or not differs between projects, ultimately blurring the definition of level design further.

Similar to the perception in the industry, level design has been referred to as an “important yet elusive aspect of 3D game development” in research (Milam & Nasr, 2010, p. 139). Although most research describing level design agrees upon the importance of it, there seem to be varied perceptions of the tasks involved, apart from a general description of it being an intersection between art, design, and programming (Adrian & Ana Luisa, 2013; Kayali & Schuh, 2011; Khalifa et al., 2019; Milam & El Nasr, 2010; Smith et al., 2008). In light of the quickly evolving industry and increasing demands on developers, Schertler et al. (2019) highlight the lack of formal descriptions and understanding behind the role of level design as even more problematic, saying that:

…there is little formal understanding of the [level] design process, as opposed to other aspects of game development. Especially since video games have become increasingly complex over the years and the size of the virtual worlds they are offering is getting larger and larger. This places great demands on the map and level design to ensure that the environment is not confusing to navigate, to help players orient themselves within the game world, and to make sure that they can find all the critical information and items necessary to advance. (2019, p. 613)

Aim

Despite the ambiguities regarding level design, it has repeatedly been described as an important element of game development, both in research and from an industry perspective (Herngren, 2019; Khalifa et al., 2019; Milam & El Nasr, 2010; Schertler et al., 2019; Totten, 2020). Meanwhile, research focusing on level design is sparse, and studies on the interdisciplinary and collaborative aspects of it are even more so (Karlsson et al., 2020). While more information on level design can be found in the game industry articles, postmortems, and video presentations, it is not always reliable, as companies tend to leave out, or simply forget, important aspects of the development process in their documentation (Politowski et al., 2021; Whitson, 2020). As the team leader at one of the companies investigated in this article so honestly phrased it, “I want to be able to say that we had prepared all of that [pre-production work], but unfortunately that is not the case, even if it probably will seem like it in the post mortem, because that is usually the case. You forget things, ignore or diminish problems in the post mortem.”

Taking both research and industry gaps into account, this article aims to investigate the nature of level design, by exploring its processes and challenges at professional game studios.

Method

Similar to previous game development research (Hodgson & Briand, 2013; Jørgensen, 2019; McDaniel, 2015; O’Donnell, 2014; Pereira & Bernardes, 2018; Seering et al., 2019; Whitson, 2020), this study is mainly structured on ethnographies on game development, to achieve an understanding of the daily practices of game developers and get an intimate perspective on game production. The methodology draws from both workplace studies and studio studies. Workplace studies have emerged from several disciplines, such as sociology, social anthropology, cognitive science, and to some extent computer science. Their sociotechnical emphasis predominantly focuses on collaboration between humans as well as interaction with tools, technologies, objects, and artifacts in the workplace (Luff et al., 2003). Studio studies, while also focusing on both humans and technology, are more focused on interdisciplinary creative and cultural production, making them suitable for game development research (Ignacio Farías and Alex Wilkie, 2016; Jørgensen, 2019; Whitson, 2020).

The primary data consisted of participatory observation and semi-structured interviews at game companies. Furthermore, method triangulation (consisting of interviews, observation, and field notes), as well as data source triangulation (examining convergence of data from different sources), have been utilized to increase research validity (Carter et al., 2014).

Thematic analysis was used to identify, analyze, and distinguish themes within the gathered data, due to its ability to highlight similarities and differences across data sets, as well as its usefulness for working within a participatory research paradigm, and summarizing key features in large bodies of data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). An inductive approach, focusing on exploratory and open-ended analysis, was utilized to facilitate the detection of patterns in the data (Hodgson & Briand, 2013).

Field Study and Interviews

As accounted repeatedly by researchers in the past, it is difficult to gain access to game companies (Jørgensen, 2019; McDaniel, 2015; McDaniel & Daer, 2016; Whitson, 2020). However, the organization Sweden Game Arena (SGA), which constitutes a collaboration between the municipality of Skövde, the University of Skövde, and Science Park Skövde, provided a platform for reaching out to local game companies. In addition, the principal author's experience as a game developer provided leverage when negotiating access for participatory observation. With an agreement that the participatory observation would not result in any time loss for production, field study access was granted at a game company with approximately 40 employees excluding outsourced labor. The company has released over 10 games for PC, console, and mobile devices since they were established in 2007. At the time of the field study, they were creating a third-person, narrative-driven 3D game. However, due to non-disclosure agreement (NDA), neither the company name nor current project can be revealed in this article and will henceforth be referred to as C1 and C1-game, respectively.

The field study was conducted over a course of 4 months, between April and August 2021, and the researcher held the position of level designer. At C1 the level, designers were part of the design team and responded directly to the lead designer and indirectly to the creative director and producer. Apart from two level designers, the design team had two technical designers (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

C1 company hierarchy (simplified).

The data was gathered using an approach inspired by Whitson (2020) and included the following items:

Semi-structured entry and exit interviews;

Observation of development process;

Observing meetings,

Observing individual team members working, and

Observing digital communication channels.

Documenting progress;

Field notes and

Audio recordings

Coding and analyzing data iteratively.

The items described above were divided into four phases (Figure 2) which were subsequently reiterated twice. (1) Observation of processes, interdisciplinary collaboration, management, and pipelines. Field notes were produced through participation and shadowing. (2) Semi-structured interviews were conducted with respondents based on recurring themes derived from the observation stage. (3) Preliminary analysis of current data was produced to solidify findings. (4) State of research was presented at C1 to evaluate analysis, while data from the following discussions were utilized to help iterate specific themes.

Figure 2.

Field study process.

Succeeding the field study, a semi-structured interview was conducted at another game company, to allow for data source triangulation and juxtaposing findings between companies. Apart from questions regarding level design processes, interview questions were based on analysis made during the field study at C1, to evaluate whether those findings were company specific.

The second game company had approximately 40 employees and had released five games for PC and console since they were found in 2010. The current game being developed at C2 was a top-down, open-world, 3D game, that relied on thematic world building, as well as visual and contextual narrative. Neither the company name nor current project can be revealed in this article and will henceforth be referred to as C2 and C2-game, respectively. The respondent was one of C2's producers, who effectively was team leader for the environment art and level design team, responding directly to creative and art directors and indirectly to the game director (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

C2 company hierarchy (only displaying level design branch).

Data Recording

Observations of processes and daily activity were primarily recorded as field notes. As most dialogue and meetings took place digitally during the pandemic, written discussions could be copied from chat windows, and the pace of video chats allowed for live transcription. Occasionally meetings were recorded, and in accordance with guidelines by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet, 2017, p. 27) participants were, in those instances, informed that:

the recording would not be copied,

the recording would not be used for any other purpose than for research,

no other analysis will be carried out in addition to those first stated,

the informant is entitled to demand a copy of the recording as a registry excerpt under Section 26 of the Personal Data Act,

there would be no links between the recording and other personal data, and

the recording would be stored safely, and deleted once transcribed.

The author's prior experience in game development and level design provided principal insights and expedited understanding of processes. Furthermore, the knowledge of terminology and concepts, not only allowed pursuing issues more thoroughly, but might also have helped gain respondents’ confidence, and thus encouraged disclosure (Coar & Sim, 2006). At the same time, the interviewer's expertise constitutes a risk of the respondents perceiving interviews as a scrutiny of their profession (Coar & Sim, 2006). To avoid such misconceptions, each respondent was thoroughly informed of the purpose of each interview and how the data would be used. Before consenting to interview participation, each respondent was ensured that anonymization would be performed, and that they were allowed to review quotations before publication. The latter was especially relevant, as the quotes in this article have been translated from Swedish to English, and consequently paraphrased in the process (e.g., by changing sentence structure and removing hesitations). To anonymize participants, pseudonyms have been used for each person, as well as their respective company affiliation (Table 1).

Table 1.

Respondents’ respective company, position, and pseudonym.

Company	Position	Pseudonym
C1	Level Designer	Level designer 1, C1
C1	Level Designer	Level designer 2, C1
C1	Creative Director	Creative director, C1
C1	Lighting Artist	Lighting artist, C1
C1	Lead Designer	Lead designer, C1
C1	CEO	CEO, C1
C1	Producer	Producer, C1
C1	Sound Designer	Sound designer, C1
C2	Producer/Team leader:Level design and environment art	Team leader, C2

Thematic Analysis

Data analysis followed the six phases for thematic analysis suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006, pp. 16–23):

Familiarizing yourself with your data: During the field study, initial areas of interest were observed to familiarise and keep track of the continuous influx of data.

Generating initial codes: When the data set was completed, the data got initial coding in MaxQDA (2018), to get an overview of recurring and potentially interesting topics.

Searching for themes: The codes were sorted into different categories and reviewed to pinpoint patterns in data and facilitate analysis and search for specific themes.

Reviewing themes: The coded data extracts were subsequently collated into each theme.

Defining and naming themes: The final iteration of analysis and collation of data was performed, and the resulting themes were named.

Producing the report.

As the author's prior game development experience could potentially influence data gathering or interpretation of data, a risk of observer-expectancy effect was present. However, since the decision to utilize thematic analysis meant having no predetermined hypothesis, both data gathering and interpretation necessitated an open and exploratory approach, mitigating the risk for such bias. Due to the utilization of a single researcher, potential bias should not be disregarded, as Braun and Clarke's (2006) thematic analysis suggests multiple researchers. Additional researchers would also have allowed for investigator triangulation, adding breadth to the analysis and findings (Carter et al., 2014).

Results

The initial thematic analysis resulted in 209 codes. An initial sorting of codes created three main areas containing a total of 24 sub-topics. After analyzing and reviewing patterns in each area and sub-topic, four themes could be derived, namely level design as an interdisciplinary feat; uncertainty regarding who should do level design tasks; late or lacking narrative; and issues of maintaining creativity. Several coded segments were subsequently discarded, either due to irrelevance with regard to the themes or due to obscurity (e.g., seemingly unique occurrences). Similar codes were combined, and fragmented codes were divided into separate codes. Each code was categorized as “high”, “medium”, or “low” relevant to each respective theme. The themes got more succinct naming and a thematic map (Figure 4) was created.

Figure 4.

Thematic analysis map.

The following subsections will account for each main theme accordingly:

The first theme accounts for level design as an interdisciplinary effort. Although C1 and C2 only had one or two disciplines assigned specifically to level design, all disciplines were involved at some point.

The second theme investigates who is the level designer, as there were discrepancies regarding how the role was assigned.

The third theme discusses the Role of Narrative in level design. Whether dependent on written or visual narrative, data from respondents suggests that down-prioritized narrative was a causal complication in the level design process.

The fourth theme regards challenges of Managing creativity in the level design process; particularly, issues of maintaining creative freedom while still meeting production demands in a top-down management structure.

An Interdisciplinary Effort

Over the course of the study, several of the game developers were asked what they thought level design was about. Although the most frequent answer was that it differed between projects, there was a consensus that it was about “developing an experience for the player”. Another recurring description was that part of level design is about navigation. One of the level designers at C1 described that the task of level design is to decide what the level should look like and how the player should navigate in it. Taken together, descriptions included artistic, narrative, and game design elements. A similarly broad description was also provided by the team leader team at C2, who explained level design as:

…it's about using game mechanics to create the space that should obey and enhance the game's rules. Few things become as concrete as during level design. You become the DJ, or rather the editor of a movie. You put everything together and make sure that core mechanics are adapted to the game world, that the narrative is highlighted and that the whole of the game is actualized. (Team leader, C2)

Given the descriptions, a level designer combines visual, navigational, narrative, and gameplay aspects to create an experience for the player. This claim was reiterated by developers at both C1 and C2 when discussing level design processes. Figures 5 and 6 show an idealized level design process described at the respective companies. These models have been created by the principal researcher based on interviews and observations and they have been validated by respondents. As can be seen in these figures, the different companies adhere to different processes, and allocate different specialists to the different tasks. At C1, former game designers were “converted” to level designers and put in charge of creating levels based on game mechanics and systems provided by engineers and game designers (Figure 5).

Figure 5.

The idealized level design process at C1.

Figure 6.

The idealized level design process at C2.

Whereas at C2, the level design process started with artists creating levels, using tools provided by engineers, before collaborating with game designers to add gameplay features to the levels (Figure 6).

One level designer at C1 described their interdisciplinary collaboration as follows:

The closest [level design] collaboration is within the design team, but the lead designer and creative director is involved a lot as well. Apart from creating sounds, the sound designer helps a lot with tension design, already in white boxing. The art team does set dressing, and the animators work on advanced traversal animation. Engineers aren’t that involved currently, but they provide information about systems and helped a lot when we designed UI for the levels. (Level designer 2, C1)

This suggests that most of the team is involved in level design in one way or another. The quote also indicates that the process is not as linear in practice, at shown in Figure 5. To handle level design as an interdisciplinary effort, there had been discussions of a task force:

We were supposed to assemble task forces where one level designer has the authority and works together with artists, engineers and so on. That never really happened, and we weren’t really given any authority. That might partly be due to the pandemic. (Level designer 1, C1)

Although the task forces were never put into effect, C1 did conduct brainstorming sessions with the whole team, which gave them the opportunity to share ideas and raise concerns regarding levels. This procedure was appreciated by the level designers, who expressed that “the brainstorming sessions have been really great, and fun, although sometimes there are a few too many people involved” (Level designer 1, C1), and that “it has been very helpful with so many different viewpoints” (Level designer 2, C1). However, the brainstorming sessions did not equate to the suggested task forces, which would consist of specialists from different disciplines, who would be assigned specific levels and work on them from start to finish. Thus, their current process, where each level was handled by one specialist at a time, remained. This segmented level design pipeline led each team member to focus solely on their discipline-specific task, something Linderoth (2015, p. 289) refers to as “tunnel-vision.” In contrast, C2 utilized their own version of task forces for their level design process. The team leader at C2 described the interdisciplinary collaboration as:

Designers and artists brainstorm ideas throughout the level design process so that no one gets a “locked” level by the end of the pipeline. Changes are made by both disciplines continuously. That's where my role is extra important since I provide interdisciplinary overview and communication management between the different disciplines. (Team leader, C2).

As opposed to the task forces suggested at C1, the task forces at C2 consisted solely of environment artists and game designers. The remaining disciplines were, similarly to the situation at C1, indirectly involved:

Every discipline is indirectly involved in the level design process: without programmers’ tools and systems there would be no level design. If you need a chimney puffing out smoke, you need someone working with visual effects, and if you need a certain mood, you require sound designers and lighting artists. (Team leader, C2)

Thus, even though C1 and C2 approached the level design process differently, they both treated it as an interdisciplinary effort. Level design as an interdisciplinary effort is also highlighted in a GDC presentation by campaign designer Dana Nightingale at Arkane studios Lyon, who states that “no discipline works in isolation and game development has many moving parts and level design must work with nearly all of them.” (Nightingale, 2021)

Who is the Level Designer?

C1 had dedicated level designers with a design-oriented focus, working mainly with white boxing, navigation, and visual scripting to create gameplay. Visual and narrative aspects were left to the art department and creative director. One of their level designers described their process as:

We set pacing, ‘when should the game move fast, when should it slow down?’ We need to know what the player can do, ‘should there be puzzles? What kind?’ etcetera. Finally the art team makes everything look pretty and the sound designer makes it sound nice. But it should be fun to play the level as soon as the level designers are done. (Level designer 2, C1)

C2, on the other hand, treated level design as an artistic task assigned to environment artists and game designers, focusing on visual narration and composition. The design-focused approach applied at C1 was criticized by the creative director, saying that:

When designing narrative games, [design-focused] level design is directly counterproductive. Our level designers focus more on technical aspects: that the level works, rather than how it works, what story it should tell, or how the visual composition guides the player. Then the artists get tasked with figuring out the narrative, but they are afraid of changing the white-boxed layout they received from the level designers. (Creative director, C1)

The artists expressed that something was missing between the level designers’ white box phase, and the artists’ set dressing:

There should be a phase in between, like… ”Environment design”. A phase that focuses on setting up preliminary lighting and adding important artistic, compositional elements. Such a phase could also help environment artists, as preliminary lighting and composition would benefit prioritization; assets in dark corners or occluded behind objects could for example be down-prioritized. (Lighting artist, C1)

The lighting artist means that there at the very least should be a discussion regarding lighting and composition early on in the level design process: “Lighting is useful to provide mood, affordances and to guide the player, but currently it is one of the last things that are added, and since level design and environment art are set in stone when it is time for lighting, it is too expensive to adjust composition for optimal lighting” (Lighting artist, C1).

The idea of a preliminary lighting and visual composition phase is also something the lead designer had considered: “I feel that we need more art influence already in the white box phase. Artists can help [level designers] by discussing lighting to guide the player and so on” (Lead designer, C1).

The lack of a common view regarding level design resulted in the level designers feeling that their levels were shot down way too often, due to the creative director's demand for more visual narrative. The demand was especially upsetting as the level designers regarded everything visual to be the responsibility of the artists, “The level design experience mainly revolves around puzzles and functionality, and we also feel that artists want to focus on the visual narrative” (Level designer 2, C1). As it was not apparent what the level designers should do, they questioned their own role. This, in turn, caused a loss of creative freedom, a lack of ownership, and consequently diminished motivation.

“In a perfect world, the level designers would have more mandate to affect things, and to create cool [visual] compositions. But in a perfect world we would first and foremost know what we as level designers should do and are allowed to do. That is the unclear aspect; the amount of responsibility we get has changed during the entire project, and that leads to confusion and lack of creativity.” (Level designer 1, C1)

Although the level designers did claim that pipeline and interdisciplinary communication had gotten better over the course of the project, they stated that “the planning between disciplines is not perfect, the art team and design team are often out of sync.” (Level designer 2, C1). This was reiterated by the lighting artist, saying that it was an issue that “the artists are further ahead than the level designers, which might affect [the level designers’] will or ability to create at their full capacity” (Lighting artist, C1). Thus, the challenges associated with the design-focused level design process persisted. C1 had previously tried a process where the art team created the bulk of the level before handing it over to other departments. Although this pipeline generated artistic quality, other problems arose:

[Early in production] it was mainly the art team creating levels. But it wasn’t really level design, but rather just some sort of architecture with beautiful rooms. So when I got involved at this point, nothing really happened in the game, which made it difficult to create sound design and compose things. Since then [when level designers took over the level design] I have been able to create basic ambiance and sound design already in the white box stage. (Sound designer, C1)

The sound designer at C1 seemed to play an integral role in the collaboration surrounding level design. Already in the prototyping stage, the sound designer was part of discussing tension points in each level and provided feedback and concepts on ambiance and mood. This was partly an effort to increase the quality of the level design, but also a preemptive measure to provide early iterations of sound design, as most of the work would have to be done by the end of the project. Although this was an isolated account of the potential collaborative aspects of game audio, it indicates that sound design constitutes an important factor in the development process. However, current academic studies on game audio seem to provide somewhat isolated accounts of audio production, thus leaving out collaborative aspects (Engström, 2020).

In C2´s workflow, the artists did not perform any white boxing, but rather built the levels with premade assets and rudimentary gameplay. The team leader stressed that the gameplay the artists added should work but it did not have to be good, since the game designers would tweak it later. However, he also highlighted the importance of everyone in the team having a talent for both design and art, saying that “a level designer needs to be in the middle of design and art, because one or the other is not enough” (Team leader, C2). According to the team leader, the division of level design between art and design worked well, but there had been some management challenges at C2 prior to the interview. The team leader emphasized the importance of his role as coordinator to resolve issues between both management and the production team, as well as between different disciplines. He explained that “the role of interdisciplinary coordinator is usually missing at indie companies where developers generally want to work solely with their own discipline, rather than coordinating the whole” (Team leader, C2). The importance of uniting the team to maintain efficiency is also discussed by Whitson (2020, p. 281), who highlights the role of the producer as key for upholding interdisciplinary and technical collaboration.

While C2 seemed relatively content with their process, it does not necessarily mean that it was significantly better than the process utilized by the less content C1. Given previous claims of fluid roles, one reason for process discrepancies might be that different projects require different processes.

Role of Narrative

The terms “narrative”, “story”, and “storytelling” were frequently encountered during the field study and interviews, often interchangeably to describe what the game (or a portion of it) was about. The uncertain terminology regarding narrative seems recurrent in game development (Koenitz, 2018). However, as most respondents favored the term “narrative”, this article will utilize it exclusively to provide coherency.

C1 and C2 had different types of narrative in their games; C1-game was driven by a written narrative, while C2-game did not have a central written narrative, but instead relied on thematic world building, with visual and contextual narrative. Disregarding whether a game is driven by a written narrative or not; producing a level that guides the player from start to finish requires knowledge regarding what the player should experience along the way (Kim et al., 2018; Menzel, 2017). Despite narrative differences, it seemed as though both companies faced a similar issue, namely that game narrative was down prioritized. As certain narrative elements might increase the workload (e.g., by requiring more art assets or animation) narrative down prioritization is sometimes based on economic factors (Linderoth, 2015). At C1 it caused a delay in the narrative, which in turn had a negative impact on the level design process. Since C1-game was supposed to tell an intricate narrative where each level played a crucial part, the level design team struggled to create levels based on loose descriptions while feeling that the lack of vision was increasingly cumbersome.

It is so frustrating that the art director and creative director have a clear vision of what the narrative should be, but we get informed after we are already done and consequently have to change a lot. On top of that, the art director and creative director do not always agree with each other, which is an additional problem. (Level designer 1, C1)

The importance of a clear narrative, especially in narrative-driven games such as C1-game, was expressed by Santa Monica Studio's lead level designer Rob Davis during a GDC presentation, saying that since the narrative was an integral part of God of War (2018), the game's narrative permeated each level design choice (Davis, 2019). The benefits of knowing the narrative when designing levels are also expressed by one of the developers in Linderoth’s study (2015), who was working as a level designer and game writer simultaneously:

I think it is very exciting to combine these tasks, because you can work with the dynamics in-between […] Now it is a more mysterious part in the [narrative] and then as a level designer you tune down the tempo and avoid action. (Linderoth, 2015, p. 292)

The delayed narrative at C1 did not only make level designers uncertain of how to shape their levels, it also made them unwilling to put too much effort on each level, in case they had to scrap them when the narrative was written. Similar issues were recorded at the game studio Obsidian, during the production of Pillars of Eternity (2015), where a delayed narrative caused problems for level design (Schreier, 2017). As production progressed at C1, the narrative was written but not finalized. Levels were reworked or sometimes even scrapped far into production due to sudden updates in the narrative, and level design was eventually paused for narrative and feature design to catch up.

However, it was not solely level design that suffered the negative effects of the delayed narrative at C1. Issues could also be seen in other disciplines. The sound designer mentioned that production had been problematic due to the lack of documentation, saying that “in a perfect world, a director would have presented a clear narrative and details, so that the team could apply their various expertise and envision them” (Sound designer, C1). The art team faced challenges when levels were delivered for set dressing and lighting:

As there were no final decisions regarding narrative and features, the levels we received were kind of non-descriptive. This led to a conflict where environment artists wanted to see lighting in the level to be able to decide upon mood for their art, meanwhile I needed their art to create said lighting. (Lighting artist, C1)

The team leader at C2 suggested that companies tend to be a bit too eager to get into production, consequently missing important documentation and pre-production. Exemplifying that C2 should have worked out a basic narrative in the pre-production stage:

We did a huge mistake of going directly into implementation, and this is a huge mistake that many [companies] we know do, because no one really has the time or energy to document and create pre-production material […] Our level design demands a lot of visual and contextual narrative to be coherent, but no narrative was prepared before the level design work commenced, so the narrative has been written during the development process. […] Narrative design should have been done during preproduction. (Team leader, C2)

Although the lack of narrative caused some issues in production, a detailed narrative design would probably not have worked perfectly either.

It must be said that even if we worked out a narrative or vision, it would have been reworked during development anyway, because that is how it works. Details are always clearest when things fall into place and then we need to tweak things. There should really have been some basic narrative, but it should have been flexible enough to be adjusted during the development process. (Team leader, C2)

This remark was also echoed by a developer in Linderoth's study, who claimed that a narrative cannot be pre-made, as it always needs to be adapted during production (2015).

Managing Creativity

One challenge that led to recurring debates at C1 had to do with creative freedom. Discussions on ownership, top-down management, and motivation were frequent. At one point the lead designer said:

Level designers have gone from feeling that they own the level design and gameplay, to feeling like they only work towards living up to the brief they get from the creative director. Their own assessments have been thrown aside and they have not gotten any authority for making design decisions. This negatively affects creative freedom. (Lead designer, C1)

The top-down decision making and perception of gatekeeping somewhat resembles the stage-gate process reported by Cohendet and Simon (2007). The creative director at C1 decided whether to proceed with a level or go back to the drawing board. While C1's process was less formal and less one-sided than the stage-gate process, it did cause similar negative effects, namely a loss of creative freedom and efficiency. This issue had been ongoing for a few months when the field study commenced and tensions had grown. The CEO described the situation as,

…a vicious cycle that needs to be broken. When the level designers do not feel any motivation to argue for their choices, they are met with a similar tone [from the creative director], which only aggravates the situation. (CEO, C1)

This cycle was stipulated by a level designer during a postmortem discussion held at the end of the first iteration of the level design process:

When working on [level x], the creative director got to see the level early on but chose to wait with feedback until our review meeting. I spent weeks finalizing it, before finally finding out that everything needed to be changed. Now I don’t do detailed white boxes anymore, because I know I will have to throw away half of my work. However, that [the lack of white box details] makes it harder for the creative director to understand the level, which isn’t good either. (Level designer 1, C1)

The level designers expressed that the lack of creative freedom had led to self-censoring, where they would stop themselves from designing things they thought could be entertaining in fear of having to throw it away. They felt that it was not simply a loss of creative freedom, but a lack of authority and trust. Many discussions on how to solve the increasing lack of creative freedom were held, and the producer suggested that:

While we need to follow the creative director's vision, micro managing the level design team is not an option either. Simply put, the creative director should supply the level designers with a vision brief. The level designers create a prototype and have one review meeting with the creative director, where the creative director has final say. After that the level designers own the level completely. (Producer, C1)

The idea of a vision brief was not new, but it had previously been a preliminary brief that could change during production, which made the level design process very uncertain. The suggested solution would require a final vision brief, which was not to be changed, before starting production. However, this decision was made too late into production to be put into effect, as most levels were already in production by then. The CEO suggested that another reason for the growing tensions and uncertainties could be that “we are living in the midst of a pandemic and can only meet digitally. We don’t know each other, so everything that is bad now is worsened by the isolation” (CEO, C1). This perception was echoed by a level designer, saying that “I believe that we have lost a lot [of personal connection] from teleworking. It was easier to solve issues when we sat together and discussed things more informally” (Level designer 2, C1).

The level designers sensed a loss of creative freedom due to unclear assignments and direction. Not knowing what was expected from management furthermore diminished their motivation and initiative. This phenomenon also appears in previous studies focusing on project management within game development (Jørgensen, 2019; Pereira & Bernardes, 2018). At C2 the team leader had been working hard to maintain creative freedom by making sure everyone felt ownership on whatever they were currently working on, because:

…otherwise you kill motivation and creativity. It is tough to navigate, because at any time someone can feel overruled and then their motivation and initiative will disappear. […] However, it is problematic since we do not really have a democratic structure but rather a dictatorship where everything is decided top-down. It is necessary for a game company, otherwise nothing would get done. But we try to leave some creative freedom for the developers, even though I have final say. (Team leader, C2)

The importance of ownership was also highlighted by the lighting artist at C1, who suggested a clear division of ownership, specifically when it comes to interdisciplinary tasks such as level design:

Maybe it would be good to divide ownership, or rather combine ownership in tasks that are difficult to assign to a specific discipline. Level design is fundamentally an interdisciplinary task and should be treated as such. (Lighting artist, C1)

However, assigning ownership, providing clear assignments, and balancing creative freedom with business interests are complicated tasks. Prior research has recorded similar issues at several game companies of various sizes, and in many stages of production (Engström, 2020).

Conclusions and Discussion

The aim of this article is to explore and document level design processes and challenges. Through thematic analysis of data gathered from field studies and interviews, four main themes have been identified and cross-examined with previous research, as well as industry articles and video presentations. The thematic analysis suggests an uncertainty regarding what level design should encompass. What constitutes level design seems to differ between companies, projects, and even phases of production. This picture is also painted by game industry professionals (Herngren, 2019; Pugh, 2018; Stout, 2016; Taylor, 2013). While C1 assigned level designers to work specifically with level design (Figure 1), analysis showed that all disciplines were involved in the level design process, as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7.

C1 company hierarchy. Disciplines involved in the level design process.

Similarly, to C1, the level design process at C2 involved nearly every discipline. At C2, the role of level designer did not exist. The lack of level designers is also common at Japanese game companies (Karlsson et al., 2020), who instead distribute level design-related tasks among various specialists (Casper & Storz, 2017). Meanwhile, many Japanese games are praised for their level design, suggesting that the lack of level designers does not equate to subpar level design.

Consequently, level design might be described as an ambiguous role. Similarly, ambiguity has additionally been observed in other facets of game development (McDaniel & Daer, 2016; Pereira & Bernardes, 2018). Reducing such ambiguity by formalizing, structuring, and clearly defining roles and tasks might sound rational from a macro perspective. However, such an effort might actually be harmful to game development, as flexible approaches are often a necessity in the fast-paced, reactive and adaptive process required (Ernkvist & Ström, 2018; Jørgensen, 2019; Pereira & Bernardes, 2018). As observed in the field study; too much rigor and supervision in the creative process can lead to a lack of motivation and inefficiency. This is a recurring challenge in game development (Cohendet & Simon, 2016; Engström, 2020; Tschang, 2007). While vague roles might be challenging, clear coordination and interdisciplinary collaboration might mitigate such challenges, as described by both the team leader at C2 and Nightingale (2021). The necessity of a wide range of specialists and interdisciplinary work processes has recurrently been highlighted in game development research (Engström et al., 2018; McDaniel & Daer, 2016; Panourgias et al., 2014). The task of coordinating the team and making sure interdisciplinary processes are working often falls on the producer (Whitson, 2020; Whitson et al., 2018). However, aligning planning between disciplines is a complex task. This study depicts unsynchronized planning between artists and designers, between management and production, and between narrative and level design. Challenges within the level design process can often be traced to interdisciplinary and communicatory issues, which strengthen the argument that an interdisciplinary task force, dedicated specifically to level design, could mitigate challenges and streamline the process. Given the wide array of tasks required to produce levels, an ideal task force would consist of artists, engineers, animators, game designers, narrative designers, and sound designers. Subsequently, a coordinator should be appointed to synchronize planning and facilitate cooperation between each discipline. From an organizational point of view, this process could be likened to a combination of Japanese and western game development. Japanese in terms of distributing level design tasks between various specialists (Casper & Storz, 2017), and western in terms of maintaining a more horizontal management process (Karlsson et al., 2020). Previous research has identified challenges in the organization and management of game production at a general level (Cohendet & Simon, 2016; Hodgson & Briand, 2013). To the best of our knowledge, there have been no studies on how the organizational structure relates to the game genre and game characteristics. It is possible that the organizational design could be adjusted according to collaboration requirements stemming from the nature of the game being produced. Further research would be required to specify how such a process could be applied and subsequently evaluated.

To further increase interdisciplinary collaboration, a design methodology focused around including each discipline and improving cooperation, such as the Overlay Design Methodology proposed by Kim et al. (2018) could be implemented into the level design process. While the Overlay Design Methodology is derived from landscape architecture, other facets of architecture are often referenced when discussing level design (Güttler & Johansson, 2003; Moura & El-Nasr, 2015; Salmond, 2021; Totten, 2018). Similarities and transferability exist between level design and architecture, especially regarding how to utilize space, evoke emotion, or provide guidance. However, it could be interesting to expand the scope and include areas that focus on interaction and pacing, such as store planning and theme park design, to improve upon level design methodologies.

While this article specifically addresses the level design process, each theme and their inherent challenges largely resemble interdisciplinary, collaborative, managerial, and process-related findings in previous studies on game development in general (Cohendet & Simon, 2016; Linderoth, 2015; McDaniel & Daer, 2016; Pereira & Bernardes, 2018; Whitson, 2020). Such similarities suggest that level design could be viewed as a sort of cross section of game development. However, although recurring processes and challenges have been suggested through the thematic analysis, more research is required to validate their pertinence. Both companies in this study have around 40 employees. This is a relatively small size on a global scale, but it still puts them among the top 20% of the 659 Swedish game companies (Grafström et al., 2020). Both companies started as small indie studios but have grown after successful productions and external investments. Previous research (Berg Marklund et al., 2019) has shown that the flexibility and creativity in game companies become difficult to maintain when they grow. It is thus likely that the challenges in providing creative freedom observed in this study are an effect of this expansion.

The relevance and prominence ascribed to each process and challenge by the companies researched in this article might not reflect level design processes in general. One primary limitation of this study is that it is based on data from two rather homogenous studios, whereas aspects such as different team sizes could provide different outcomes (Seering et al., 2019). Furthermore, the data triangulation at C2 was recorded from a single developer in a managerial position, potentially providing a distorted view on matters regarding creative freedom and in-depth process perception. Validating the suggested themes in collaboration with more game companies could provide more detailed and pertinent data. Subsequently, this would allow for focused research questions, where solutions or ways to circumvent common challenges are suggested, which in turn could streamline pipelines and expand research within level design. Furthermore, providing educators with insights regarding common challenges and interdisciplinary processes utilized in level design might also increase the quality of level design education, which in turn would provide the game industry with better level designers.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Tobias Karlsson

Henrik Engström

Author Biographies

Tobias Karlsson is a PhD student at the Division of Game Development at the University of Skšvde. His research interest is focused on game development practices, highlighting interdisciplinary processes, production pipelines, and managerial aspects related to level design. He has previous experience from the game industry, working as a 3D-artist, animator and level designer.

Jenny Brusk is a senior lecturer in Informatics at the University of Skšvde, Sweden. Her research interests span from game dialogue systems to inclusive game development. She has experiences from professional game development and is currently working as business coach and innovation manager within Sweden Game Arena.

Henrik Engstršm is a professor at the Division of Game Development at the University of Skšvde. His research interest is focused on the game development process with a particular emphasis on its entangled, multidisciplinary nature. He has had the role as project leader, producer and developer in a number of game projects.

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Level Design Processes and Challenges: A Cross Section of Game Development

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Game Development

Level Design

Aim

Method

Field Study and Interviews

Data Recording

Thematic Analysis

Results

An Interdisciplinary Effort

Who is the Level Designer?

Role of Narrative

Managing Creativity

Conclusions and Discussion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

Author Biographies

References