Experience, for example, the wonder of PaRappa the Rapper for the PlayStation, The Sims for the PC, of Crazy Taxi for the Dreamcast or of a yet to be written game about a lunatic who mail orders everything and never steps outside. Or perhaps, more correctly, how could this person think that someone else could take a loose idea, craft it into a finished game and expect that game to embody the spirit of the original inspiration. Eventually the non-programmer position of game designer evolved. And somewhere down the line, when a player is being chased by mall security guards in the shipping game, the player is going to have to decide whether it s quicker to run around the fountain or to try to hide in the Macy s dressing rooms. This isn t some grunt task, but the job that bridges an engine and a game.
Level designer is an impressive term on a business card, and rightly so.
There may be one designer, six programmers and 15 level designers on a good sized project. If so, it is the job of the game designer to design such a construction kit rather than a finished game. If baseball were designed by a game development house, one inning would take place underground, the next on a rock floating in a pool of lava and the next on Easter Island. And the bases would always be in different places, and maybe there would be 10 bases on one level spaced hundreds of feet apart and dinosaurs roaming the outfield of the next. Okay, that s over the top.