Investigating the Elusive Role of Level Design

Karlsson, Tobias; Sato, Yukiko; Kurabayashi, Shuichi

doi:10.1109/cog47356.2020.9231624

Cited by 2 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Kayali and Schuh (2011) specifically mention level design as an area of development, where multiple specialists collaborate. That level design to a large part involves interdisciplinary collaboration was confirmed in a previous study by the principal author of this article (Karlsson et al, 2020). Moreover, the study identified discrepancies among role descriptions for level designers, both on a regional level and between companies.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Level Design Processes and Challenges: A Cross Section of Game Development

2022

Self Cite

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This article examines level design processes and challenges at professional game studios. Thematic analysis of data, recorded through field studies and semi-structured interviews, identify four key themes: level design as an interdisciplinary effort; who is the level designer; the role of narrative in level design; and challenges of managing creativity in the level design process. Results indicate that while the role called level designer is often assigned to specific disciplines, the process of level design is usually highly interdisciplinary. Furthermore, this interdisciplinary collaboration requires management to maintain both creativity and efficient pipelines, by distributing ownership and facilitating communication and planning. The level design process seems particularly vulnerable to suboptimal interdisciplinary communication and planning, due to significant reliance on narrative design, game design, art, sound design, and tool development. While this article addresses level design specifically, most observations are comparable to previous findings on game development in general.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Level Design Processes and Challenges: A Cross Section of Game Development

2022

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“…The second coding pass categorized specific paragraphs in each article as an effort to facilitate cross-referencing and comparing subtopics in the gathered literature. Game Industry (Ernkvist and Ström, 2018;Jørgensen, 2019;Jørgensen et al, 2017;Karlsson et al, 2020;Keogh, 2019;Mirza-Babaei et al, 2016;Pereira and Bernardes, 2018;Seif El-Nasr, 2019;Whitson, 2019) Indie Companies (Jørgensen, 2019;Keogh, 2019;Mirza-Babaei et al, 2016;Pereira and Bernardes, 2018;Seif El-Nasr, 2019;Whitson, 2019) Regional Differences (Ernkvist and Ström, 2018;Karlsson et al, 2020;Keogh, 2019) Company Structure (Ernkvist and Ström, 2018;Jørgensen et al, 2017;Whitson, 2019) Harmful Aspects (Ernkvist and Ström, 2018;Jørgensen, 2019;Pereira and Bernardes, 2018;Whitson, 2019) Management (Berg Marklund et al, 2019;Cohendet and Simon, 2007;Cohendet, 2016;Hodgson and Briand, 2013;Pereira and Bernardes, 2018;Whitson, 2020Whitson, , 2019 Interdisciplinary Management (Cohendet and Simon, 2007;Pereira and Bernardes, 2018;Whitson, 2020) Maintaining Creativity (Cohendet and Simon, 2007;Cohendet, 2016;Pereira and Bernardes, 2018;…”

Section: Content Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Literature discussing regional aspects of the game industry often aim to distinguish and elucidate critical factors regarding the evolution of the game industry in a specific region. For instance; studies describing the evolution of the game industry in Australia (Keogh, 2019) and Japan (Ernkvist and Ström, 2018;Karlsson et al, 2020) reveals, not only regionally specific backstories, but also presents different issues affecting each region. The following paragraphs will present examples of issues concerning the game industry in Australia and Japan.…”

Section: Game Industrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Japan is a strong player in the game industry, with several large blockbuster game companies, they do not face the same issues as Australia. Instead one of the primary issues in the Japanese game industry is related to company structure (Karlsson et al, 2020). Progressing from the manufacturing industry, via arcade games, to being one of the forerunners of modern video games, the history of the Japanese game industry has greatly affected its company structure.…”

Section: Game Industrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This meant applying a strict vertical company structure, as opposed to the more flexible horizontal structure common in western game companies. This modus operandi was very successful for creating level based arcade games, but has proven less optimal as technology has quickly progressed and games today allow extreme levels of detail, vast open game worlds, enormous amounts of content, and intricate storytelling (Ernkvist and Ström, 2018;Karlsson et al, 2020). Thus, some Japanese game companies have begun to scale up and restructure their game development teams (Karlsson et al, 2020).…”

Section: Game Industrymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Intricate Collaboration and Technical Integration

2021

Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction 2021 and 14th International Confe

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This article presents a literature review of game research that focuses on the interdisciplinary, collaborative, practical and social aspects of game development. It investigates recurring research questions, topics and suggested purpose of current research in order to generate a coherent summary of the state of research and future possibilities. Due to the interdisciplinary, technical and creative nature of game development, it constitutes a broad and complex research field. However, as researchers often approach game development from a specific research field, the interdisciplinary aspects and complexities are set aside. This has created a substantial gap between academia and the game industry. Thus, it has been suggested that an overarching understanding of each element of game development, as well as their interconnectivity is essential to reduce the gap between academia and game industry, and generate research that is beneficial to both sides. The presented literature review focus on research that applies a more overarching approach, in an effort to explore and distinguish key factors and propose future research areas. Based on the gathered data, it is clear that the investigated field is still in an exploratory stage. However, comparison of recurring topics generated indications towards research areas that could potentially be of importance to both industry and academia.

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Investigating the Elusive Role of Level Design

Cited by 2 publications

References 12 publications

Level Design Processes and Challenges: A Cross Section of Game Development

Level Design Processes and Challenges: A Cross Section of Game Development

Intricate Collaboration and Technical Integration

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