What do you do?
I'm a level designer at Torus. A level designer is not the same as a game designer although there is overlap at times. We work closely with the game designers who provide all of the details about the actual game play and the game mechanics.
They provide the story. They will tell you about the locations 'here's what you are doing here', and they give you a brief on what the location is all about and what the level is all about. And, from there the level designer takes that information and says 'okay, I've got these components, and I've got these elements, and I've got these requirements' and then builds the level requirements around those requirements.
You are looking at level layouts; you are looking at enemy placements if it's a typical sort of shooter game. Obviously it's going to vary depending on the nature of the game you are making. You then either hand these to your level builders and work closely with them while they construct it, or depending on the complexity of the game and how many levels you need to create and what the tools are, level designers will often build, or assist building these levels.
How did you get to where you are today?
I was designing and building my own levels at home, working on release games that release their tool sets, like Quake - games where you can design and build your own levels at home. I was having a lot of fun with that and entertained the notion of joining the games industry and didn't really think about it too seriously because I thought it would be quite difficult to gain a job in the games industry.
Then one of my friends, who happened to be working at Torus at the time, gave me a call and said 'I need some level designers, think about applying', and so I did. I had an interview, then flew down from Sydney to take the job. It's been about four and half years now and I'm still happily working at Torus.
What skills are necessary for you to do your job?
You really need to understand and appreciate game flow and game mechanics. And, play games and recognise how the games work, if that's not too much of a generalisation. You need to be able to take those elements and rearrange them and put them in a different format and create lots of different levels.
I started out as a level builder essentially (and I guess I'm moving into more of a design role now). It's about constructing levels, being able to have a good game flow in your level design and understanding what things players need - visual cues and things like that - to understand those elements so you can make a good and fun level that people can easily navigate and have fun in.
I guess level designers often talk about it being both an art and a science, where to some extent you have to consider the aesthetics of what you are creating.
Whilst in a games development studio your artist will often have that covered, the level designer is also talking about the lighting and the textures and arranging all of this in a visually pleasing way, and also in a functional way so that players can see the way they need to go and what they need to do. And the science of it - the game mechanics - is technically how you construct these things and how you put them in the game.
How important was your education/training?
I guess it's a double edge sword at the moment. There is not really any formal education available, although courses are starting to pop up now, I guess. People are starting to introduce these things, and that's a good thing obviously. But it's not like many other lines of work where there is a recognised degree or path to the job. It's more a case of you needing to be able to demonstrate the skills that you need and the enthusiasm that you need to design and create levels.
Where do you see your career going?
With so many studios focusing on design now as games get more complicated, you have more game designers and more level designers. I guess the career path for a level designer is a lead level designer role where you would be managing a team and doing a little less hands-on work and more coordinating - coordinating people's efforts towards the greater goal.
Personally I'm moving into games design a little bit more now. That's a fairly natural progression too for a level designer, as you are quite used to basically gluing these games together. You need to understand all of the game design aspects and technically how the game works and how the game is put together so it's quite natural for level designers to move into a game design role if they feel comfortable with that and if they have the skill to take that on.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to enter the games industry?
The best thing possible for a level designer is to find some games they enjoy and that they can work with at home that have available tool sets and tutorials so that they can learn how to do level construction. Design and build those levels. Document how you've designed them - your level layouts and keep copies of those. Keep copies of any notes that you've done while you are doing that, and create these levels or work with other people to create these levels.
Demonstrating that you can do a variety of different genres is always useful - so make a first person shooter level; make a RTS level; make whatever you can make in different formats. You are trying to demonstrate the core skills of design and level building as well. You don't want to focus too much on one type of game otherwise you are going to limit yourself a little bit in your application.
Once you've built up your skills and built up your portfolio a little bit you should definitely be shopping yourself around and submitting your application to games development studios.
Definitely have a website where people can look at your screen shots or download your levels and read about your design processes.
Joining a 'mod' group is probably a very good move, which gives an idea of what it is like to work with other people in the game development business , and to see how well you go with that and see what other people require of you and what you require of other people.
