Design rolls are ever -changing, ever -evolving, and new ones come, go.
But there are so many incredible design rolls out there, and let's talk about that.
hey everyone i hope you're well playing on and making the games that you all love you're joining me your host lead level designer max pears i hope that you're having an amazing evening or night or morning whenever you're choosing to listen to the show so thank you very much for your time and uh yeah really really appreciate all of you being here for it as i said at the start we're talking about a few different design roles again things have changed i feel like the last couple couple months have been me sounding like an old man you're like back in my day we didn't have this but now we do and just
kind of breaking that down a little bit um further for it and I think that's the bit that's very exciting for for me to see these changes and to also help educate right like the a lot of people coming through uni the education system is a slow slow process for many things and also others maybe looking at all i don't necessarily fit or want to go into these molds but maybe there's something else out there for me and i think that's what this is kind of really about in terms of these episodes i believe in january we had an episode we talked about different promotion chains and we're able to talk
about kind of which role kind of suits you for that as well and they're not being a wrong answer in that right and i think this is something something similar in that effect of okay well what kind of design do you like doing obviously this is more focused uh double a triple a versus that of indie which again any developers go off and do and there are amazing things doing so much by themselves wearing many different hats and i think this is just one again we're showing how when you have teams ranging from even say like the 60 50s 60s to the hundreds and more that there is obviously a lot more not very
splintering but being able to change hands in terms of who's in charge and what and also just encouraging you to experiment as well as many are saying I'm the lead level designer people can fly but i've done other design roles for it as well and I've known some incredible directors who've also done different design roles for it so i think it's not a bad thing to experiment with it but if you found something you loved work your way through that so let's go take a look all the different design roles available to you so these are different types of design that we do have we'll go through kind of one
individually and kind of discuss them for it but you can see there's a lot here and everything's kind of a little different and also So some of these are not available at every studio, and different studios have different definitions for it.
But let's go through this list. Instead of a traditional sponsor, what I'm offering now is that of joining the mailing list. Social media is constantly changing all the time, as we're seeing some people are leaving Twitter, others are choosing to remain, blue sky, threads, all of this.
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In game design, game design focuses far more on that of the mechanical side, creating if if you imagine, the ingredients for the teams to use thinking about, let's say, just to simplify it, whether it be something like Mario's Jump, or that of the Grappling Hook in Uncharted 4, or even something like the crafting and building abilities in Fortnite.
The game designer is in charge of making that.
Now it can go in two different ways that I've seen in different companies, where the designer will make a prototype and then hand it off to programmers is to make more optimized much more fluent and go from there but i've also seen it where the game designers make it and then that's what reaches the final end result so it can range again depending on your studio depending on timelines depending on pipelines for it and i think and other side of games i don't necessarily or we don't have to see is kind of the planning and and through line of the whole game right because we have that of pacing and progress
all the way through that actual video game itself so in that we have to be prepared as game designers to make sure everything makes clear sense in terms of either progress so that means tweaking numbers for in excel sheets i've seen some game designers which is all what they do is just they stand in stay in Excel for the most part.
Again that's not every place that's just some that I've seen and most the time though I've seen more involved with the actual mechanic side for it.
I think this one is definitely one worth how do I say worth assessing looking at each job description where you're going for with that Hey everyone, I just want to give a huge shout to hopefully have you vote for me for the game dev heroes.
What we do around seems to be more focused on that of the UK, but focusing on celebrating those who contribute so much to our incredible industry and it seems cheesy I know, but I would really love for all of you if you can to take the time and vote for for me for that of your Game Dev Hero.
Now I will send a link to this and have it down in the description below, but in terms of things that need to be filled out, along with your names and my name, for your nomination name which will be Max Peaz, category design, my email is leveldesignlobby at gmail .com.
My role is Lead Level Designer and the studio workout is People Can Fly.
If you wouldn't mind giving back, for me giving to all of this incredible industry that I have for the years I would genuinely really appreciate this as I would love to be part of this incredible ceremony with the game dev heroes many of you know I've been doing the podcast now for I think 7 years around there, crazy to think along with sharing all of my talks out there for you to see with books about that of exploration, traversal and combat and most recently that of the level design kit as well so if you wouldn't mind taking the time to vote for me and nominate me in the game dev heroes 2025
nomination i would sincerely appreciate that now the next one is obviously level design where i imagine very aware of level design with the fact that we've been listening to the level design lobby for it but we're the ones that make the actual playable spaces for the architecture of the world making sure we take those ingredients from the game designers and place them into the level in a more engaging way and figuring out how players will solve challenges and puzzles and kind of figuring out where maybe the best place for certain narrative beats may be now that brings us on to the third one for us
which was the actual narrative itself now narrative is a much more recent one that I've seen I know we kind of flied through that of game design and level design I feel they're much more of the common common known ones right back when I was getting into the industry it was as simple as game design versus level design for it and that was how it was described to me do you want to be involved more with with documentation because obviously that's a part of game design as well as planning out the design documents or do you want to involve more with the editor and again i've seen things change a little
bit so i've seen more designers involved the editor but it is a different way still for it narrative has kind of branched a little bit further from that right they work really closely with that of the actual writers.
From the experience I've had with working with narrative designers, they're not necessarily involved with the overall mission planning.
Where they excel is obviously taking the script, being part of the discussions and aware what the mission and quest designers are doing but then we'll take over the implementation of the more narrative narrative heavy areas and beats.
If we for example are level designers for it, we'll be more focused on okay well we know there's a scene here so we'll block out the scene art, we'll obviously help with transitioning that to a far more beautiful element, but then the narrative where it flows in will be more on narrative designers as we focus on more of the the gameplay heavy areas to make sure they're more engaging for that and you're seeing it more with like dialogues implementing them camera movements when i say that we don't mean like a proper cinematic but something more of an in -game scene where that's like a dialogue choices
for it or maybe certain animations playing in the background to catch players eyes they're far more in charge of that and then be using the tools around that so that's more i've noticed with narrative they're a huge part for it and again responsible for more than we're aware and i'm starting to see it become more of a commonplace now i have heard of narrative designers who are not as common in engine as well where actually they are doing more script writing and then translating that into gameplay in terms of either offering mechanics for it or coming up with guidelines for we talked about scenes
right what's the cinematic language for it then all the designers have to follow so i think that is the the big difference there because there are similarities with narrative design and quest and mission design quest and mission design are basically the same the same same job again different titles for it but they are far more focused on the overall mission flow.
Its a much bigger picture shall we say when I was at that of CD Projekt Red we had missions that took place in multiple locations and as a Level Designer I might be assigned location 3 in the mission and another designer might get location 1 we try to keep it and I believe they switched it over especially much much more with Phantom of the Lodgards we did as well, much more on the elements of a level designer working with a quest or mission designer all the way through.
A mission designer at Hangar was basically a quest and level designer doing pretty much everything for it, minus some of the narrative, as we talked about.
But what the job is to figure out the overall flow of the mission as we go the way through, how is it that we take, again, the script that we have, translate that into gameplay as well understanding this is the narrative section we talk with narrative designers they'll do this or what it was at CG Project was we give the more gameplay to the level designers and then quest designers will then move on to implementing the narrative section themselves so again there are some similarities but the biggest difference is they're much more macro picture than micro they obviously do implement as well but they're
figuring out the whole flow of the process and have a lot more control as they're communicating with the writers with the animators and really got a lot of responsibility for that and they think it's uh it is a lot when i was mission design hanger it was funny i would say like in terms of locations it's the least amount of locations that i have done on a game but yet the work was so intense because of the fact that we we had to implement basically everything on each location all the way through and there was a lot to try figure out how to deliver all of that especially to a high level for it right
and you're in charge of communicating with every team making sure that you get the feedback from directors communicate distribute that out answer questions, but try and get everyone involved as well, and it's really difficult, it is a challenge to have all of that there, but it is again much more of a overarching view of everything for it, so I think it's a different one, but it is one that's really enjoyable overall as I said, there are some similarities, like I said the quest and narrative from CD versus Hangar, the quest and narrative are very similar versus mission versus quest from hangar
to cd now a ubisoft mission design or quest designer when i was there it has changed i know that but when i was there they were they were just level designers who had more say with the narrative for it and that was a big one but yeah very nice to see different skill sets involved some incredible designers all in there but if you're want to focus on the big picture and trying to see where that all goes I think that's a great one now experienced designer that was my role at ninja and every place is very different for it and I've only ever heard this term at ninja but it might be different ones out
there as well what I saw with experienced designer was you were the level and the gameplay designer at once right Right.
So you would go through, plan the level.
At the time when I was there, it was much more art led than level design led for it.
So what you try to do is use the space that were provided to you, make tweaks and changes, but then you'd also go through and come up with mechanics for that level.
Right. If you were looking to create a certain emotion, it was on you to prototype, pitch it, see if you got accepted rejected think about this mechanic you're making can it be used in other missions or is it just a one -off that would help with production for it but that was the big difference was you were designing the levels and the mechanic for the levels and there was a lot of freedom uh in that because you were able to conjure up different ones but the challenge was obviously time for that right like not only you're trying to figure out your overall level and flow but you're also trying to
figure out do you have time to make this?
Is this actually good enough to get in?
etc So that's the big difference with experience for it, or what I saw I haven't seen that term used much more around but it is there for it and one you may run into The next one is RPG designer RPG, obviously more related to RPGs I've seen this come a bit more common now obviously it's larian is one of the ones i've seen it at and that obviously used more work on rpgs than a fighting game surprisingly still a very respected and hard thought job right if you're thinking about we use balls gate as the example right with dungeons and dragons there's so many abilities aspects that you can spec your
character up not to mention just out of roles as as well and how you when you level up what does that change in terms of your spec sheet and you've got to really take a look at all of those aspects for it right and really understand okay well what is it that we can do what when does it become overpowered how do we balance this out how would this integrate or mess around with that like you've seen that stuff still even at like wizard of the coast of the magic of the gathering i don't think it's just a video game role for it but there's a lot to take in especially from the competitive side as well
right like if you look into how a lot of things can change just by tweaking certain numbers you can see certain abilities get nerfed in pro leagues whether that or change the meta league of legends overwatch elements like that where it's not necessarily traditional rpg but changing an aspect even reducing a player on the team right overwatch used to be 6v6 then it went down to 5v5 i know I know they've brought back some classic 6v6 now.
But that can just change the meta instantly.
And as we talked about with that of Magic the Gathering.
So much of that changes as well for it.
So it's again a fascinating one to see.
And I've not had really much involvement with any RPG designers for it.
I've seen game designers do certain aspects of that.
now obviously with um cyberpunk and division which have very like stat -based systems going on especially in the behind right like it was more of a game designer who would take on those roles for it um but it is now coming its own thing as i said it's not just in video games there are other ones as well uh for it but if you're into the abilities the numbers balancing systems then And this roll may be one for you.
Now, I'll talk about another one here that's very similar, which is economy designers.
I think the first place I ever saw this was at Valve.
And this really is, again, economy, where you're looking at how different currencies...
Like, you can see there's...
I think it's in Fortnite, there's four, three, four, maybe more different currencies in games.
Like, on Division, there was multiple currencies in that.
But your job is to look at the currency exchange.
What does it different mean?
Like mobile games have loads now, right?
You've got diamonds, coins, all of these tokens.
And try to figure out what is the pricing of certain objects.
Will this break it?
Will one now value of certain currency feel that have diminished after you have now added in a new currency?
Will that change everything?
thing elements like that I think is really not actually thought of all the time but I had a chance to work with an economy designer once on Nyan Heroes and I mean look she was just incredibly smart I definitely felt like the dumb one when we had conversations um and probably just was but the elements of where she was thinking and again we didn't overlap that much obviously we're talking about where you know what were the rewards at the end of a level can we place certain loot will that affect it how much can we place in a different level how will that change aspects for it so i think again it's
another one worth looking at valvo she had an economist for their own internal ones for steam as i said i think they then went to work at like really high position in the White House or something, there's a big story on that back in the day.
And yeah, just not necessarily what you think about, but for live service games it is a really important role for it, and yeah.
Definitely, again, those two are definitely not necessarily the same, but very important with numbers for that, and that's kind of why I've put them back -to -back for it.
Now, we have that of and we actually moved to Technical Design Explorer to put that on the list. as some of you know i was a technical level designer at ubisoft there are tech designers as well and again people way smarter than myself but your tech designers are involved with kind of we talked about in certain game design roles where they hand off a prototype some of that will go to the tech designer who is there to build systems right for it and make the the mechanics getting more optimized much more easy to use if we look at for example the level design kit that I built recently or you have those
I need you have different light door frames and window frames and you can choose the sizes in you know single door double door in that and then you have drop -downs it this is a golden path side path locked path elements like that they build the tools to help make our lives a lot easier they'll look into to optimization if there's any issues for it but really taking that of the prototype stuff and making it actual into a fully fledged element worth using for it in different systems i've met some amazing tech designers in my time and again really in charge of set pieces as well i've seen them take
responsibility for that so it can range on a few different things but they really are focused on giving the tools to that of your team whether that be the gameplay or level design team and then focusing on changing the tools to not only be best optimized but best used right there's a there's a very famous rule which is like the 80 20 rule which is all about that of being able to do 80 % of the work with 20 % of the tool right like and when I say that is is when we were building open world, I guess, prefabs for that division, one of the things we did with that was kind of specifying, well, actually,
which inputs do they need, which outputs do they need to be shown?
And it would go back and forth.
Sometimes we'd add more, reduce some, because sometimes it'd be too overwhelming and they never actually used it other times.
They didn't have enough control for it.
And that was the big element with that.
And I really thought that was a great one.
to to share and show uh with it being able to communicate and give everyone the freedom still in these tools to still be able to go off and make great elements with that and tech design really valuable uh for it so yeah really incredible ones uh the next one is that of uh combat design combat design now again i've seen it similar to what we talked about with design where they actually might make stuff in terms of uh elements you can put in the game or they might pay for prototyping handoff to that of a programmer and tweak numbers it depends where you are and which studio you're at but your focus
obviously is the combat how do you make that engaging how does that change over time what new abilities do you get which abilities do you lose elements like that that are really focused for it my first time working with combat design was CD Projekt Red.
And that was a tough one to figure out like where to balance elements as in who is in control with what.
We would set up the space, they would then tweak like what enemies were available or best used for the encounter what weapons we should do depending on where this mission was based in the timeline of the game.
They would obviously work on designing the weapons and and different kind of set up for it.
So yeah, those are real big ones with it.
And yeah, I'm seeing more and more of combat design becoming more of the norm for it.
Kind of more specialized game designers with it.
There's some really nice people that I've met in that position for it.
We now have urban design.
Urban design is kind of like architecture where they're planning the overall world map like i've seen it where actual architects have joined or people with architecture educational background join the team and they'll plan out the overall world right like whether that's the road system depending if you have vehicles for it what's the architectural style on all these sub -districts and then they're really helpful especially for level designers we can go to them and be like okay we have this mission this is what it's about where do you think that's best going to be they can plan on the map i think
this works here and they can give us then these tons of references of like okay the architecture style is this so you need to make sure you sell that and you'll block out and they've also done some great ones where i worked with uh jay who did the art for the first book as well as just an all -around great friend and she was really helpful on a couple of uh missions where we worked together together before she went to the open world side where she would do like the 2d maps actually for me in terms of the exterior of the building we'd work together on the actual floor plan in terms of she would say
okay well if this is what type of building we're making it needs to facilitate these rooms we'd switch it around to figure out the objective and it was a great one it really helped me learn a lot about architecture i don't see this uh very often as well but there are some some roles out there for it now we talked about this one I've not really ever done this role but it's like cinematic designer now this one I've seen solely at um supermassive games who are famous for their kind of cinematic gameplay with that whether that be um the quarry I think is one of the more recent ones or the dark pictures
anthology right there aren't level level designers per se, but really focusing on what cinematics you can give in that space.
What gameplay, especially with their tools, are you able to use, set up correctly for these?
So I wish I could state more on that one, but it is one I've seen a fair few designers that I like and respect go through as a role.
So those are the range that I have seen.
There's probably more as I said.
I know there's UI, UX, but then not under the umbrella of game designers, I guess how I'm viewing it.
Still very vital roles, and really well needed, but not one that I see per se communicating.
UX is really important for it, and I do really respect that.
It's just a slightly different branch, but still designers for it.
So that's all. Again, some great roles from great people out there that do all that amazing stuff.
I guess with mine as well, I'll just share that I've gone through a few different design roles, obviously primarily level design, but I have done experience design, tech design in that as well for it.
So I've dabbled with some game design too, and you never know where your career can go for that.
There are script designers, which are basically just more scripting.
You don't do any of the actual building of the space.
for it i know that's how rockstar delivers their work for them but yeah i just want to share that hopefully it's interesting to all of you as it was for me and you can kind of see again where your career may take you maybe something you're more interested in different elements there that can be really enjoyable for you so thank you all very much i really do appreciate it if you want to reach out and maybe you've got some more design roles that i didn't mention please do email through me at leveldesignlobby at gmail .com you can reach out to me on social media whether that be twitter or blue sky
both with the same tag which is at maxpears please do sign up for the newsletter as we've got more great level design tips there and if you're looking to build more then please do check out either my books, the Let's Design series or that of checking out the level design kit alright everyone, thank you very much, take care and I'll catch you all next time.
