Level Design: Best Practices from the Best in the Business

Want to have all of GDC's Level Design in a Day tutorials at your fingertips? This book's for you. Level Design: Best Practices from the Best in the Business is a culmination of the best content from the first four years of the Level Design in a Day tutorial presented annually at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA. From humble origins in Joel Burgess' soulful 2010 talk "Level Designer, Storyteller" to Matthias Worch's landmark 2013 dissection of the fundamental change in human communication, this book presents advanced concepts in level design, game design and narrative development for games in 25 focused, illustrative, entertaining segments. Like other segmented books of its nature - Game Programming Gems, for example - Level Design provides readers with a variety of perspectives on high-level challenges from some of the best, most respected level designers in the industry. This book is not meant to be a 101-level introduction, but more a deep exploration of the art of level design and the role of the level designer within this constantly evolving craft. * Culled from the hundreds of slides presented over the past 4 years of Level Design in a Day tutorials this book reflects the diverse teaching methodologies of respected speakers * Feature boxes provide commentary outside o the core flow, with transcribed "Best of" Q&A from past tutorials * Gain deep insights into the level design process for our industry's biggest games, including Gears of War, Bioshock and Skyrim .