Results: GCG’s Level Design Cues Challenge

Curious to know what the next generation of game developers can do? GameCareerGuide.com, Gamasutra’s sister web site for game development education, has been running a series of game design challenges, and the three strongest answers to a recent challenge about level design have just been posted. The readers were tasked with defining the cues and clues that would enable a player to solve a level, more specifically, a prison cell. This particular challenge had the added benefit of preparing some readers for future job interviews, as the challenge itself was inspired by an actual question from a game designer job interview. The meta problem to solve was: “How does the player know how to progress forward in a game?” Donald Squires, a recent graduate of ITT Tech and aspiring game designer or level designer, went with a multi-solution approach. He took first place in the challenge for focusing on giving players real choice. Also notable was his integrated use of a mini-game. Tamar Goldberg took second place for answering two questions very thoroughly: What is the player supposed to do, and what will the game do to help the player figure out how to do it? Finally, Louis Fontaine, MSc AI student at the University of Amsterdam, took third place for taking a risk by suggesting an untested detection system. To read the inventive solutions in full and find out what ideas the next generation of game developers is cooking up, see “Results from the Game Design Challenge: Level Design Cues” on GameCareerGuide.com.