It is the start of April, which means one thing for us all, and for those of you who may be new, it is us talking about great design references and resources for us all to learn about.
So without further ado, let's go into it.
hey everyone i hope you're well and playing and making the games that you all love you're joining me your host lead level designer max pairs absolute pleasure to be having you with me whether it be morning evening or night thank you very much for joining us really do appreciate it and yeah welcome this is the segment of the month where we go through great great resources out there for development we can all learn from everyone after all i do not know everything and i'm constantly trying to learn more myself so the more that we have the better so we'll be going through a few different things i
will say this month i don't know you guys and you know everyone's different and finding different things i really struggled to find anything that I thought was that engaging or educational I don't know what it well I know what some things are I think what in February again there was a huge shift of layoffs again yeah Ubisoft who else did we have sumo Bandai high res bioware yeah so I mean maybe that's part of the reason I'm starting to see lack of elements out there yeah I'm trying not to be too depressing but I think it's been on my mind lately seeing more and more amazing people lose their jobs
right especially at the start of 2025 well February when this happened so yeah quite a quite a challenge um but yes we'll try and keep positive energies out there guys um so yeah the the things that we'll go through all of these will be in the description down below so if you want to check them out there will be a link to all everyone's great works here and if you want to reach out and let me know about more amazing resources that i may have even missed then please do put them either in the comments email me reach out to me on twitter all blue sky plenty of places where i'd love to hear from you
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 me for that of your game dev hero now I will send a link to this and have it down in 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 would be max pairs category
design my email is level design lobby 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 over 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 seven 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 really appreciate that so let's go it's the very first one this one was a recent surprise find for me um and this one comes from a designer called andrew chambers who used to work at blizzard and in this specific video he's talking about the element where blizzard and this is not a normal thing i just want to share with you from many of the designs uh game development studios i've worked at where they have a separate day where they would allow their
designers to get together get talks from other designers and learn from them and what they can hopefully improve as designers with their craft as well and i thought it was just a really fascinating one to to hear about but he's talking about uh primarily in this episode where in triple a we kind of have an issue where we we refine the edges smooth out the roughness is how he defines it but the element of where we focus so much on playability obviously people spend a lot of money on these games and people need to be able to go through and progress you know another discussion with a the similar
value is the whole edges being yellow right and people getting fed up of that but yet people don't realize how if that stuff removed a lot of time through through playtesting people don't know where to go right it's not necessarily the case for everything but there are elements in that right but he talks about this kind of aspect and how world of warcraft has changed for the years i was a big wow player back in my teenage years it's crazy to think uh how that's still going i mean congrats to all the amazing team that work on it but it is a really fascinating talk on that right like how maybe sometimes
being too perfect or too accessible uh accessibility i'm not referring to that to anyone with any disabilities more in the sense of uh guidance is how i'm referring to accessibility here can be kind of a a sad loss for that of memorable gameplay moments you know we we hear all about that the souls like games that aren't for everyone but have such a devoted fanbase that really love them I mean even you could argue the world design of the most recent two Zelda games is much more on a less hand -holdy guidance way than any other open world games right and because of that they were both commercially
and critically acclaimed for this right so yeah fascinating one Andrew Chambers uh go check him out really good uh channel so i seem like a fascinating designer and someone who's worked at some of the best places as well so incredible resources for us there now we're going to go on to a bit more of the indie side which is quite uh quite cool to again see just how different sides of the the industry kind of go through develop and change right and that one is seven months of game development progress and this is by chalakade i believe i pronounced that correctly um him talking about kind of an update
that he's working on his own game now i will say he references the 80 20 rule and i don't agree with how he is saying it and maybe i've read it in a different way and he's read a different article elements like that but he talks about like a 20 years and like oh yeah you can get 80 percent of your game done within the twenty percent of the time but the last twenty percent takes eighty percent of your time and i'm going to be blunt bullshit um you cannot get eighty percent of your game done in twenty percent of the time yes details go to refining bug fixing iteration but bullshit uh the way that i
know the 80 20 rule is the element where you more think about it of tools right where you can get 80 percent of the work done by giving the user only 20 percent of like tweakability right especially when we talk about that elements um recently i've been working on a spawn system right and it was me and some other great designers and programmers that's all i'll leave it as there but how much do we need to give to that of the other designers who use it right and that was one where we we've made sure the designers don't have access to everything not because they're they don't they're not capable
of using it but because the fact that that doesn't really speed up their job we're really holding back on some of the tools to allow you to speed up so you can focus just on the elements you need to make it as quick and as effective as possible right so that's how i know the 80 20 rules so yeah but nonetheless that definition aside uh it's a really fascinating one to watch him develop his game talk about what he's developing these kind of aspects and kind of the choices that he's he's making and how he's finding developing that i said solo devs are always amazing to me to see and i really appreciate
everyone's hard work on any any game right so yeah i really really liked what he's going on about and some really cool ones so that there's resource number two 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 so it's really hard to reach out to all of you incredible aspiring and current game devs so what I'm offering here is that of a emailing list so if you want to be kept up to date with all of the great level
design news as well as get your free guide which is my 10 tips towards better level design then please join the mailing list you'll be making sure to get three emails a week with me sharing that of different resources ideas as well as what i've learned through my career and some q a's so if you're constantly looking to improve level design and instead trying to figure out where all this information may be then look no further than the mailing list. Check down in the description below to join now and get that of your 10 tips to improve your level design.
We're going to head off to resource number three now this one was one that I didn't necessarily I haven't played the game because it's definitely not in my genre or wheelhouse i believe it's an idle game but it's called green heart necromancer and it's really talking about that of uh basically how to the the title is green heart necromancer reinvents the idle game shows how to rethink predatory mechanics right it's not exactly uh the nicest things to say um but it's talking about how this plant is on your windowsill and basically you can while doing all your work on the other things can lose track
of it and it can sadly pass throughout the game now obviously there are other aspects that mean keeping their alive keeping the plant alive but the the one that i was really interested in was more on how the fact that it relates to they were sharing their story with kovid and how because of kovid um you know a lot of us got plants but sadly a lot of plants probably have died from us neglecting them there is a one plant that i have in this room there's more on death's door than the others the rest are very healthy but there's definitely one closer to the end and just sharing how they kind of took
that inspiration from kovid and brought it into their own system so i think that's really interesting is that i don't play any idle games i don't even think i fully understand really what an idle game is to be honest um but still fascinating to see and hear what inspired people right like you never know where you're gonna get inspiration from so to hear that from more developers i think is yeah it's great it's great to see um yeah uh that was number three so So number four, this one is a breakdown of Doom Dark Age.
I don't agree with the title.
It's Doom Dark Age development.
Detail shine light on the state of modern AAA production.
The article doesn't necessarily do that.
It really more focuses on, focuses more on, how do I say, like the great, I don't want to say accessibility, actually mean accessibility in the sense of people being able to tweak things to help with that, the interactability with the controllers or that who may be having uh suffering from color color blindness um and how they can tweak that right and talking about how id has uh basically looked into to that with for example it gives an example of a parry window timing that you can change and tweak um i don't necessarily and again i'm not on user accessibility but from games i've worked on recently
and yes some are triple place some are not it's not really being spoken about that much realistically i'll be honest and again i might not have a seat at the table for these um and i will say it's more companies with a bigger budget that can that can do that or will invest more into that should i say not that other great indie devs or other double a studios don't but as you're saying we're seeing a lot of people being laid off and i don't think people are gonna you know you look at the cost and i'm sure i've mentioned it plenty of times on this podcast but when you find out last of us 2 costs
quarter of a billion for a single player game don't get me wrong it was a very good well a good game and i think it was you know looks amazing you can never take anything away from naughty dog but you watch that documentary and they talk about like how much money it cost for their accessibility and you you don't know if that actually re -bought money in and I hate sound almost heartless in that sense because you know I've had many of people in my family who've suffered from disabilities it is a challenge to to make sure that they are tackled in a great way similar to like you see great charities
like special effects here in the UK which really help help you know push uh push that of devs uh and controller makers to to encourage those who don't have full functions to play great games right again i've done uh some runs and raised raised money for special effects big fan of their work it's that element where i don't necessarily agree with the title i think it's fascinating to see i'm just saying sadly you know i don't like having having to put my business hat on but I think it's it's something to just be aware of I don't see that as a standard AAA thing AAA is costing a shit ton of money
and we're seeing how like I mentioned at the beginning of the show right Bioware they sorry there's a fly there as I'm saying Bioware making a rude gesture laid off 100 people right and that's because the Dragon Age didn't do well right and that was probably not a cheap game either to make and it has you know incredibly amazing aspects to that game that i think are really good you know i think the world the environment's really amazing some of the mechanics are super cool but as you're seeing a company's really going to pay more into that when there's no sign of that being profitable comfortable,
you know. Still, cool to see, I'm just sharing.
I don't think that's where modern triple a development really is spending their time from what I see but, again, it's not my section, not my wheelhouse.
But, yeah, those are the four.
I know we normally have more but I said I've not necessarily found as much out there and, yeah, yeah, it's a a shame and uh you know my heart still goes out for all those who are losing their jobs that said i lost mine in 2023 and yeah i wish everyone nothing but the best i know people are aspiring to come into this industry and again it's it's it's really different from when i joined so yeah try again to keep positive but i do want to send out that notion though that i still you know wishing everyone the best regardless uh so we'll go through what we listed off, so the first one being which was a video
by Andrew Chambers talking about three indie RPGs with quote unquote bad game design that is better than AAA.
Then we had seven months of game development progress.
The third is that of the green heart necromancer working on idle games and the fourth being on doom and how development is changing in AAA.
So I hope that you do enjoy these always fun uh if you want to know more about level design please do subscribe to the newsletter you get three emails a week talking about level design one of those is answering any questions you have so you can email me we answer the questions regularly every friday which i think is a great way to end the week um check me out on social medias you can see me more again quite active on there at this moment in time we'll see how we feel as the year goes on and make sure to the subscribe like all of that for the podcast i really appreciate it so thank you all so much
i really really do appreciate everyone take care and i'll catch you all next time bye guys
