Some #leveldesign advice: Don’t worry about always having to be aware of every piece of theory and shoving it all into your work. Sometimes it feels like everyone is holistically balancing flow, metrics, lighting, colour theory, composition, goal signaling etc but they’re not. You rarely start with a fully formed idea and implement it. Part of design is discovery. Once you have something fun, you might look at ways to improve composition. You might have an idea that specifically involves lighting and change something or resolve some pacing issues.

Getting to that time of the year where I log in to LinkedIn. 500 notifications. Logging out for another year.

Gonna talk a bit about non-linear #LevelDesign in #WorldOfWarcraft because I've obviously been thinking a lot about it recently. To catch people up, WoW has gone back to a linear progression through zones from a "go where you want" mentality during the levelling experience. It's played with these concepts on and off for years. Once you hit max level obviously you go back to free roaming but levelling is where the majority of the story is experienced and its here that these concepts of worldbuilding matter most.

One of the hardest challenges on The Last of Us Part II was creating a context for specific events without the player noticing. For example, a buddy character opening a door and stumbling into an ambush that doesn’t feel contrived (e.g. what if I’d arrived at the door first?) Generally we always want buddy characters ahead of you, simply for the fact that their animated performances can elevate an experience and build their character. But we can only vaguely guess where the player will be in the future, lest we resort to VERY linear level design.