Elements of game design, part four: environment

Level designers are the people who design and construct the environment. They use a variety of ways to help players navigate through a level. The main one is lighting. Lighting can be used to direct a player around a level. A good example of this is half life 2, where subtle hints of light can help direct the player towards where they are meant to be going.

This can be done with the environment as well, as the player is more likely to want to walk towards interesting points in the environment. The designers have to be careful not to make the level too maze like (unless they are building a maze level) as it can be really frustrating to get lost in a game and ruin a players emersion. another problem is making and environment too large. Sometimes designers will want to show a sense of scale, yet large open spaces with not very much in them can become boring to traverse. For example, there were complaints that the wasteland in fallout 3 was too empty and large. Problems like this can be solved by having either smaller and more interesting environments, creating more in a large environment (which can be difficult for developers of a strict deadline) or creating a sense of scale by seeing large areas, but not necessarily having the ability to travel across all of it.

The environment is very important to the atmosphere of the game. Even little things such as weather can affect the mood of a game, for example the silent hill series would not have the same effect if it was set on a sunny day instead of foggy day. Were the game is set can affect the atmosphere, and also how it its lit. As with films, lighting is very important in games for conveying a mood but is often overlooked.  The environment can tell a lot to a player about a games mood and story.

There is a balance that can be struck between realism and stylisation. The main thing to make a game world believable is consistency. As long as a game world follows its own rule, it can be believable to its players. For example, the world of crash bandicoot is as believable that of the call of duty series. 

One environment that I like is the citadel from mass effect 1 and 2.  It's a giant space station made by a civilisation that is long gone, but it functions self sufficiently. I think I personally like it because of the interesting shape it is, a ring with extending arms, with the city built on the arms and inside the ring. The luxurious waste of space in the presidium (in the ring), for example the lake, is in contrast to the poorer and packed in space in the wards (on the arms). Despite its large size, the citadel seems to be based off of real life space stations, and the designers could have drawn influence from  them.