Level Design Workshop: A Narrative Approach to Level Design
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- čas přidán 5. 06. 2017
- In this 2017 GDC talk, Ubisoft's Jolie Menzel explains why a shared understanding of narrative gives a level designer a guide for everything from the pace of their level to an understanding for which assets should be placed where to tell a convincing story using physical space.
(A scene from Die Hard has been removed from this talk for copyright purposes.)
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Dude I love this woman. You can tell she genuinely loves her work and the way she geeks out over the old Die Hard game is hilarious.
I know because it's so similar to my own process -- anybody like that would be so much fun to have creative sessions with along those lines
Please make a Die Hard game. If you're that passionate about it, you can't possibly be wrong.
Yeah, Ubisoft handling a movie license, what could go wrong? >_
The King Kong game good
That's a pretty great way to break down a theme and translate it to mechanics.
Great talk. I have been trying to work on my game's level design and it being a narrative driven game meant that this presentation was exactly what I needed! Perfect timing xD
And the presenter did a great job and seemed genuinely interested in the subject.
Really liked it. The incentives and deterrent part really made me think. I also thought that the Die hard example would be gimmicky, given the high-level nature of the talk, but it was really enlightening.
Fantastic talk, anything that couples story and gameplay I find instantly fascinating!
Thanks for the nostalgia on Die Hard Trilogy, that game kicked ass.
Very interesting talk. I particularly like the use of why, who, where, what, when and how at various levels of the story and the examples she gives. I can see this approach to be very useful when designing an RPG adventure/dungeon and maybe for tabletop board games. So this not just valid for just computer games.
Great presentation and fun presenter.
Great talk. Informative with a very natural speaking style (a rarity). I enjoyed it... thanks
22:20 I remember playing the PS1 Diehard back in the day. Time sure flies.
a lot of common sense, but brought with an actual method for expressing and managing it. Cool.
She is so lovely I love her smile and she is so inspirational!
really enjoy this one tahnks :)
What an awesome presentation. Die Hard games are always good, DH ARCADE BABY!
Fantastic talk.
oh my god that laugh!
Cool presentation
Good talk!
Epic Talk!!!
I remember meeting Jolie at pax a number of years back when she was working the Telltale booth (she was cosplaying, it was awesome). She helped me get a Tshirt, and was super nice the whole weekend ^_^
I then met her again a year or so later when she moved away from Telltale to be a level designer, but I don't think she remembered me...she just handed me a business card and walked away lol...
Fantastic talk! It shows why narrative games are difficult to do well. And now I guess I need to watch Die Hard...
This spring was my first time watching it and 30 yrs later it still holds up as a great movie.
All over this video.
Aw yeah GDC!
As long as you kept gun fighting elements to a minimum, and the puzzle elements high. I think a Die Hard game made with modern design principles would make a pretty decent survival horror game (I suppose thriller would be a better term but that's not a commonly used descriptive for games).
I feel the talk was a little -to- too narrow in focus to have such a broad title... It should have been more expressive of the limited breadth of discussion.
Good nonetheless though.
This is a good starting point, but it does not really address level design. This talk seems to be more about very high-level game design, which is necessary for level design, but not the same thing. You could have all this stuff planned out and promptly have levels that are designed with no regard for narrative at all.
Also, there is some implication that there is only one narrative, which is incorrect. For most games, 'environmental storytelling' cannot be ignored. The reason is that in reality, every place, no matter how boring, has a history. In games, the places the player visits should have some sort of history too. It's just as important as music as one of those things that you forget is there (unless they do a *very* good job), but you always notice if it's not there, or if it's bad.
Contradicting the description, this talk did not appreciably mention assets or physical space at all.
It really sucks that this had to be edited becasue of the movie excerpt. :/
But very neat presentation, thanks!
nice
i love her
Can some one tell me what she means by IP? Love this video btw.
IP - intelectual property. Just replace it with "franchise" and it basically works every time. If you make a story, you own the IP, so if anyone wants to make a toy for your character, then they have to contact you, since you are the owner of IP.
Well seems like someone is having a lot of fun doing her presentation aha
Very interesting and well done though.
Actually the laughs in the beginning, I find them annoying.
But watched until the end and I really learned something and that is important.
Good job Jolie!
Lady on the right looks a lot like the actor Jewel Staite
Man she just spoiled the whole story for Die Hard, I really wanted to see that movie ;0
Gameplay wise. Metal Gear Solid 1 is the ultimate Die Hard game
*THIS*. And I'd argue, not only gameplay-wise. I might be a bit biased here because MGS1 is my favorite game of all time, but if you distill both MGS1 and DIe Hard to their rawest form (even using this talk as a starting point) the structure is there. Macho, action-oriented main character? Check. Sense of isolation? Check. Response to ultimately misleading terrorist demands against the clock? Check.
Every time I rewatch the damn movie I can even find blatant references in MGS1, the most obvious one being McLane climbing to the top of the building, only to be forced to jump and rappelling down with the fire hose - if that didn't inspire Snake's Comm Tower descent, I'll be damned.
Didn't learn anything about level design. I don't get the hype in comments neither.
Folks use the terms "high-level" when discussing the Jolie's talk at GDC. Much of what is discussed is representative of the big picture of the machine that is the product. It's the basis of implementing a product. You need your "who, what, when, where, why and how." You need to be clear of those things, understand what they are, stick to them, and all that you feature in your product will derive from this basis. Jolie's talk is about the foundation, the highest level guidelines. When making a decision to place a character onto the map, to feature dialogue, to feature music, make sure what you implement speaks of the setting, the plot, and all the things Jolie speaks about. The narration must be told by all facets of the product.
It's just very generalized, broad-spanning topics. Design is as simple as it is fine, really. One of design's foremost concepts is consistency. Jolie's talk is in part about being consistent that your product refers to the story and all that is established in the narrative approach so that no part of your product is implemented feeling irrelevant or out of place.
I wish for you to be helped in understanding Jolie's chat.
So allison mack's became game developer at ubisoft after smallville ?
A little awkward at the beginning, but interesting.
Start watching, presenter laughs in an adorably awkward way. Scroll down. Every comment seems to be focused on her and not the talk.....
Geez folks, can't she be adorable without you all going there?
//edit: this comment thread was posted an hour after this video was posted. It may not be applicable any longer/may have kept more comments of referenced nature from being made.
You say 10 hours later....
(I posted an hour after the video went up. Context you dumb fuck)
/edit: it seems the commenter deleted their comments
did you check the post times, moron?
1 - posted an hour after me
2 - one of the few of it's type before my comment
3 - posted 4 hours after me
4 - THAT'S MY OWN FUCKING COMMENT, YOU FUCKING IDIOT. I posted it AFTER THIS THREAD.
I'm not going to waste my time with the rest.
Seriously, before you make a judgement such as you have, improve your deductive reasoning skills because they are severely lacking.
In this case, you've just been an idiotic piece of shit wasting my time.
I hope you're aware that your post also doesn't focus on the talk.
Commenting on this doesn't set a good example, doing what you want others to do does. Otherwise it's just ego stroking.
I posted this at the beginning of the video. I had scrolled down and seen the referenced comments.
I did so 1 hour after the video was uploaded, with the hope it would preclude _new_ instances of such comments.
Seriously, just how slow are you people?
Are you illiterate?
My comment has absolutely nothing to do with time. You chose to make a comment about how people are not talking about the presentation, meaning your post also wasn't about the presentation. It's like those people that whine about people whining.
Newsflash. Next time just comment on the presentation instead of focusing on off-topic (and possibly negative) comments. But if your goal was to join in on the off-topic posting then by all means ignore this post, because then you succeeded.
or the telltale name "cinematic designer" ... ppppffffffhahahahaha ...
Mitzos SirReal cinematic artist, your welcome ;)
i dont get it... ooohhh u corrected me! thx! where would i be without u??
(and btw, it is "you're welcome", smartass)
not to nitpick, but im pretty sure it was cinematic artist, not cinematic designer
omg are u serious???i - i dont even - what...? ...
u know what, thx man... just - thx
Cool, but I still can't make it past that weird "Uplay Sign Up" level that all the games she's worked has at the beginning...
Storytelling is wildly overrated, and essentially unnecessary, in gaming. The gameplay is game, story is filler.
textbook shit....101
honestly I hate it when unfunny people try to be funny, make a serious talk and go. not everyone can deliver a deus ex postmortem or a devolver digital you don't need a f@cking publisher talk!
She is drunk
That's my secret, I'm always drunk
I'm not surprised
I bet you're fun at parties