MatthewDoyleArt.com Blog

It’s not enough to just have a blog these days, nor is it enough to post random thoughts and occurences in your life on a blog, if you expect anyone to continue reading your blog from day to day. If you really want to contribute something to net-ciety, you need to help educate people who are interested in learning something about things you are familiar with. For me, that would be game design. So, in keeping with that opinion, and in the hopes that I give more of you a reason to return to my blog regularly, I am going to begin writing more informative blog entries about game design, level design, the business, and other related topics. My first topic will analyze what practices a good level designer uses in preparing to design and construct a level.

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One of the largest issues in game development is that of scope management, particularly in this day of MAG (multi-action genre) games such as Grand Theft Auto. Game designers have a tendency to think big; more and bigger levels, more features. There is nothing wrong with this, in fact thinking big is critical to the process of developing innovative gameplay and innovative gameplay is the key to being successful as a company. The real trick however is to know when you have crossed the limit of your time and budget. This comes with experience. Veteran designers develop a sixth sense for knowing when they are approaching the limits of feature implementation for their projects; however, even the most senior among us still need to step back from time to time and begin cutting to stay on schedule. A secondary effect of scope management arises when designers are not willing to cut features and instead of doing one or two things well, their game ends up doing several things poorly. There are a few simple guidelines you can follow that will help you keep your game design lean, while maintaining fun and interesting gameplay.

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