| Welcome to Beginning Game Level Design, the book that finally makes sense of low-carb diets and whether aliens did indeed seed the planet with humanity. Or maybe that’s my other book, Low-Carb Diets and Alien Conspiracy Theories for Blockheads. This book is about creating great mods or levels to impress and bring joy to your fellow gamers.
If you’ve picked up this book, you’re probably someone interested in making computer or video games, have some experience playing those games, and hate being talked down to like some ten-year-old child raised by sloths. However, this book is for beginners, so I’m going to take it slow.
I’ve been a level designer for about 6 years, making games for the PC, the PS2, the N64, and the Xbox. One of the problems I constantly encounter is people asking me what I actually do for a living. I’ve found that an “I make computer games” satisfies most, but, for more inquisitive folks (like your mom), some deeper explanation is usually required. My funny answer that usually doesn’t work is when I explain level design as a process not unlike making macaroni paintings. A mom will instantly know what a macaroni painting is, and will get this reference, because she probably has a couple of these hideous things stored somewhere in her house that her kids made in 2nd grade. People without kids usually look at me like I’m stupid.
Anyway, level design is like making a macaroni painting. A macaroni painting is where a highly adept individual, most likely a child of eight or an elderly woman reading instructions in a lady’s crafting magazine, tries to create an image on a piece of paper by gluing pieces of macaroni to it. In this process, the craftsman doesn’t make the macaroni, or the paper, or even the glue they use to haphazardly adhere the macaroni to the paper.However, by using these components, they create art. Or, at least, they try to. |