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

This article examines level design processes and challenges at professional game stu- dios. 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 owner- ship and facilitating communication and planning. The level design process seems par- ticularly 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.CC BY 4.0Corresponding author(s): Tobias Karlsson, School of Informatics, University of Skövde, PO Box 408, 541 28 Skövde, Sweden. Email: tobias.karlsson@his.seThe author(s) received nofinancial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication ofthis article.