Space is not a wall: toward a less architectural level design

Summary

(This post is adapted from my micro talk "Teaching and Rethinking Level Design" at the GDC 2025 Educators Soapbox session. That's why it mentions "students" in the slide above.)People want to do level design. They grow up playing games like Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite — all 3D games with 3D worlds. And to create 3D worlds, supposedly you need this thing called “level design.” Then when you search YouTube, you'll be told that level design is about implanting secret lines that "guide the player" into walking down hallways. Such is the power of ARCHITECTURE! But this is not how architecture works, nor how level design works. Imaginary invisible shapes cannot mind control players, and even if they could, no one needs to be mind controlled to walk down a hallway. No one plays games like this, but why do we think we do? What's going on here?It starts with a shred of truth: level design often has architectural aspects, and architecture can influence behavior. Our main duties as working level designers often involve making game spaces by drawing layouts and building blockouts (simple rough draft 3D levels), which both resemble floor plans and architectural models. This also reflects the basic division of labor in most game studios, where level designers design and environment artists decorate.So from there, it's reasonable to assume that good level design requires an architectural understanding. We're doing so much work that looks like architecture. A better layout drawing and a better blockout model = a better level?Here the typical level designer skill progression tends to follow this viral meme image below:Here the (supposedly) BEGINNER level designer spams disorganized shapes everywhere, while the (supposedly) INTERMEDIATE level designer organizes intentionally but adheres to an axis-aligned grid and room-hallway-room pattern. Then the (supposedly) ADVANCED level designer adopts minimalism and elegance, making efficient use of walls and verticality, to plan spaces that ...