First let’s clarify what is a level designer?
In game design, a video game level designer combines the art, systems and gameplay features together to create the spaces, obstacles and objectives of the game world called game levels. In practical terms, they are building the game from the lego bricks created by the other disciplines.
They express their skillfulness through an understanding of space, direction and pacing.
Level design is much more than just block-outs and art. Level designers are responsible for ensuring that the game’s final vision is consistent, clear and compelling.
They will work with combat designers, quest/mission designers and systems designers to ensure that all of the game features are present, polished and functional.
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History of the level designer role
When games were first created, programmers created everything themselves. This was possible because games were small in scope and often just the novelty of the experience was enough to sell a game.
Initially, entire maps and levels would be input directly into the game code. However, as games became more sophisticated, programmers realized they could write tools to make the process of making their games easier.
As they did this, less technical people were capable of helping to create content for games.
In Japan, this role became known as “Planner”, as they would prepare the content for the game while the programmers were still writing the game and editor code.
The most famous planner is probably Shigeru Miyamoto, who hand drew the majority of Super Mario Bros on graph paper!
However, in the U.S, this job was called the game designer, a term which has stuck until today.
Going back as far as the early 1980s – many games were developed with level editors, but few released them.
In 1992, a fan reverse engineered a level editor for the game Wolfenstein 3D and it was a huge hit. So in 1993, John Carmack, John Cash and John Romero released Doom with the level editor attached.
Doom was first with a sophisticated, yet easy to use level editor. Doom supported mods and their community, something that would carry forward with other products, such as Unreal Tournament.
It was quick and easy for someone who only knew graphic design to use the level design tools to mockup a game environment and playtest it.
Drag the spawners, objectives, power-ups and pickups into place and you were good to go. However, as people wanted to create more diverse games, they asked for more and more features from the level design tools.
Blizzard’s Starcraft and Warcraft 3 level editors were so flexible and sophisticated.
They launched hundreds, if not thousands of unique games and game modes, which allowed people to experiment with level creation and the level design process without any formal training.
In fact, the entire DOTA/MOBA genre was created due to the flexibility of the Warcraft 3 editor.
Eventually, this lead to the creation of multipurpose game engines with the most famous examples such as
- Unity
- Unreal Engine
- Godot
Thanks to the previous eras, the tools became more consistent and streamlined. Allowing aspiring level designers to simply pick up a game engine and experiment with professional quality tools.
However, due to the general purpose nature, and an excess of freedom, video game level designers had to go beyond just creating game levels, instead learning to code as well.
It’s kind of ironic that video game level designers have a harder time working to block out environments and practice creating good level design in the modern era than they did back when level editors were first created.
What the level designer job description looks like today
A modern video game level designer needs to not only understand shape and space, but also game design and game mechanics. They need to understand just about everything that needs to be placed within their spaces.
They will go through several stages pushing a space from start to finish. Early on work is done with simple block-outs.
Being able to put themselves in the player’s mind to
- Quickly create a rough draft of a space
- Run through it in-game
- Establish landmarks and lines of sight
- Checking the pacing hundreds if not thousands of times on a single piece of content before it launches.
The game development process is iterative and often the level designers will need to work closely with the design team to help them experiment until a game mechanic works well.
By collaborating with the game programmers and game designers, an effective level designer can avoid hundreds of hours of lost work with careful thought and planning.
Most level designers work in a major engine, often with plugin tools to steward an environmental concept from a sketch on a page to a fully rendered experience in the game engine.
Most focus on the following:
- An intuitive sense of metrics
- A healthy understanding of architectural theory
- A vast love of video games
Only a portion of the industry, most famously the Bethesda family of Fallout games, also expect their level designers to be proficient with programming languages as well.
However, I would highly recommend any upcoming level designer learn some basic scripting to be more effective and competitive in the job market.
As a level designer, you can dramatically increase your influence on a design team when you have the ability to
- Set up simple events
- Position objects
- Create examples of the gameplay they want to propose
Is level design a good career?
Level design can be one of the most rewarding roles, if being close to the player and being deeply sensitive to their needs comes naturally to you.
However, the role varies between studios and some studios can be more draining than others depending on your outlook.
The video game industry has two different ways it treats level designers:
- One school focuses entirely on the artistic expression of the level design, with other designers, such as quest or mission designers, handling the content and scripting.
- The other school treats level designers as jack of all trades, expecting them to work closely and be gameplay designers, scripters, combat and puzzle experts and artists as well.
Who do level designers work with in the game development process?
Level designers often have the best connection and context to the player experience.
That’s why after the game director, the lead level designer is usually the vanguard for consistency between gameplay, story and art in most studios.
Therefore during the entire development process, level designers work closely with
- Environment artists
- Narrative designer
- Gameplay designers
- Game engine programmers
This means they need to not only produce strong game levels, but also be able to communicate effectively with the rest of the team including
- Try out new features in the game and give valuable feedback to the rest of the team.
- Provide gameplay insight to ensure everyone is on the same page.
- Support narrative designers with environmental storytelling skills.
- Etc.
Level designer vs game designer
There’s often a lot of confusion between the role of Level Designer and Game Designer.
Level designer is a type of game designer: All level designers apply game design principles, but only some game designers focus on level design.
Game designers are a diverse bunch:
- Combat & creature designers will create enemies.
- Class & systems designers will create core gameplay mechanics and loops.
- Narrative designers will create the content and systems through which the story will be told.
Level designers put all of those pieces built by the other designers to the test.
Level designers create the stages for all of the other designer’s work to play out and often are the first to envision the game as it will be played. However, they usually are not steering the vision for any individual game element (class, monster) on their own.
Level designer vs environment artist
Here is the difference between level designers and environment artists:
- Environmental artists are experts in shape, style and texturing. The “Environmental artist” role is under the “game artist” umbrella.
- Level designers are experts in space, placement and visibility. The “Level designer” role is under the “game designer” umbrella.
These 2 roles collaborate to create a cohesive game level experience.
Simply put, level designers use the art assets created by environmental artists.
For example: If a level designer wants to create a garden, an environmental artist might model the bushes, paint the sky, texture the grass – and in some cases paint over an existing greybox created by a level designer.
How much does a level designer make?
According to glassdoor, the average salary for a level designer ranges between $50,000 to $83,000, while the average game designers salaries ranges from $78,000 to $135,000.
Why are the salaries for level designers lower than other roles under game design umbrella?
It’s because to the effect of supply and demand of the role in the video game industry.
Due to the increased supply of level designers, due to the ease of access to tools, immediately visible feedback of their craft and so on.
However the tradeoff is the availability of level design roles is significantly higher.
Here are some examples of famous level designers:
- Shigeru Miyamoto
- Studio: Nintendo
- Games: Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, etc. (Here his complete list of his work)
- Hideo Kojima
- Studio: Konami
- Games: Zone of Enders, Metal Gear Solid series, Death Strand series
- Hidetaka Miyazaki
- Studio: FromSoftware, Inc
- Games: Dark Souls series, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Elden Ring, etc.
- Chris McEntee
- Studios: Ubisoft, Moon Studios, Respawn Entertainment
- Games: Rayman series, Ori and The Will of The Wisps, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
- Mohammad Alavi
- Studios: Activision, Respawn Entertainment
- Games: Call of Duty series, Titanfall series, Apex Legends, etc.
- John Romero
- Studios: id Software, Ion Storm, Romero Games
- Games: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom series, Quake, etc.
- Scott Mercer
- Studio: Blizzard Entertainment
- Games: StarCraft: Brood War expansion, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne expansions, Overwatch
- Matt Morris
- Studios: Blizzard Entertainment
- Games: Diablo I and II, StarCraft series, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft
- Mike Heiberg (One of my mentors at Blizzard)
- Studio: Blizzard Entertainment
- Games: Starcraft series, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch
Note: Many of them has evolved to director, lead, principal, or senior level roles.
It is very important to point out that the level design role has grown to require entire teams to deliver these experiences.
What makes a good level designer?
A good level designer has a balanced understanding of art and gameplay design. A great level designer, combines that with fantastic communication skills and deep empathy for the player.
For example, an average level designer would make an experience that is easy to follow, while a poor one would make one that is frustrating to play. An expert level designer can utilize both clear moments and frustrating ones to create an emotional experience without overwhelming the player.
Here is a overview of how my my colleague Chris McEntee designed the best level for the award winning Ori and The Will of the Wisps:
How to become a level designer?
The path to become a level designer is similar to become a game designer. The main difference is you’ll want to focus on the sub discipline of level design.
Here are the 4 parts that will determine whether you’ll make it into the video game industry as a level designer.
Part 1 – Hone your relevant hard skills
- Game design skills – The ability to implement overall design principles that creates “fun” gameplay experience.
- Level design skills – The ability to implement principles specifically design a great level experience.
Start by breaking down your favorite games. Sketch concepts of the levels, their spaces and the objectives within.
Play lots of different games, then start using this insight to begin developing your own skills. Start with pencil and paper, then recreating levels or sequences you love, then branching out and creating your own.
Try using things like Super Mario Maker to create levels and experiences, the move up to more difficult tools and challenges.
Part 2 – Build a strong portfolio
As you are honing your skills, start building your level designer portfolio (along with resume and cover letter) in parallel.
The key is to have a completed cadence where you can contextually demonstrate
- Thoughts behind your
- Design process
- Approach
- Ideas
- Understanding of spaces and how they affect players
- Knowledge of good gameplay
- Skills and mastery of the tools
You don’t have to purely use “original” work, even recreating levels of your favorite games are fine.
(Level design portfolio is similar to game design portfolio, but mainly focused on showcasing level design discipline.)
Here is a great example by Abdul Banglee that helped him land his first game design job at Calypte (a Virtuose studio).
In his portfolio, he recreated a level in Sekiro, which demonstrated his skill.
Part 3 – Network
You need to network if you want to drastically improve your odds to enter the video game industry.
I can’t stress how important it is, here is why.
When studios are looking for entry level positions, they typically ask for referrals through their team’s network.
As a result, many of these openings are initially shared on their team member’s social media and private network.
And if they’re unable to find suitable candidates, then they will open up the position publicly to seek additional candidates.
You want to have as many opportunities for first dibs as a referral before the positions open up publicly.
Places you can network with professional game developers:
- Game Developer Conference – The biggest annual in person game developer conference. This is where you can network in person.
- Design Den – Level design focused Discord group founded by my colleague Ryan Smith
- Funsmith Club – Game design focused Discord community where you can get network with other pro game developers.
Part 4 – Keep applying, it’s a numbers game
As you continue to level up your skill, portfolio, and network will only improve your odds.
However it’s still a number’s game at the end of the day, don’t get discouraged. Keep applying to the same positions for the same studios.
“There are 100 reasons why you don’t get the job and only one of those reasons is ‘you’re not good enough.’ My advice is keep applying, don’t stop applying. And until they tell you like ‘hey STOP’ I would just keep doing it.” -Candace Thomas, Principal Game Designer @Riot Games
I had a colleague who had to apply to Blizzard 8 times before he got in, then quickly out-leveled many more experienced designers (including me). Here is the story:
What are the requirements to become a level designer?
A deep understanding of space, aesthetics, composition and the ability to translate concept art into playable experiences inside of game engines.
In addition to creating a game level, learn all of the parts that make a video game tick. A level designer is more than just a creator of spaces – they are a creator of experiences.
Learning tricks from cinema, characters, environment art, as well as a smattering of computer science and graphic design will help you become dramatically more flexible.
Do you need a degree to be a level designer?
While a bachelor’s degree doesn’t hurt, studios will hire level designers based upon the quality of the execution in their portfolio.
So between the two, if you have a portfolio without a degree, you can get hired depending on your portfolio quality. However, if you have a degree without a portfolio, you won’t get hired (or even be considered).
Level design is a maker’s craft, which means the hiring studios want to see what you’ve made and your design decision process and the result of those decisions.
See How You Can Learn the Gameplay Design Abilities Game Studios Are After To...
- Get more interview invites & job offers
- Replicate decisions that make games fun
- Learn faster with mentorship guidance
With that said, the visual nature of these level design portfolios does tend to bias heavily towards those who are also good at artistic execution, but if you can compose an effective level with clear understanding of the needs of gameplay spaces and scripted elements created with purchased assets, you will be fine.
Do level designers need to know programming?
Programming is one of the most useful skills in game development, but it is not the core craft of level designers. So while it can be helpful for proving out ideas, outside of several studios, such as Bethesda, learning programming languages is not a hard requirement for level designers.
Most studios have light scripting languages (i.e Python, LUA, C#, etc.) or in the case of Unreal, visual graphs, which level designers can use to setup simple event triggers, doors and so-on.
These vary from studio to studio and game to game, so you’re expected to learn on the fly.
Keep in mind that scripting is easier to learn than programming and it provides your with the capacity to influence the team, so I highly recommend you pick up scripting.
What software do level designers use?
Level designers should generally be proficient in one of the game engines depending on the type of game you’re making such as:
- Unity
- Unreal engine
- Godot
- GameMaker Studio
- Stencyl
- RPG Maker
- etc.
In addition, be familiar with version control software such as
- Perforce
- Plastic
- SCM
- Git
- Subversion
And other art pipeline tools, such as photoshop, illustrator, substance painter and so on.
One Response
It was very helpful for me move forward with my upper graduation .And where should I improve my skills and what they expect that a level designer should be like . I have some more doubts. So I need some one to guide me.