Everything I Learned About Level Design, I Learned from Disneyland
The world is the best narrator.
—Ken Levine10
I believe that it is within a game’s level where the story should actually be told. Using space to tell a story isn’t a new concept; this approach has been used in architectural design for centuries. When I first started designing game levels, I found that theme parks held the answers to many of my questions on how to tell a story as well as inform players. I pored over theme park maps11 and studied how they were laid out. I found that theme parks are designed to move guests from one adventure to the next in the most effective way possible, much like a well-designed game level.
Disneyland, in particular, proved to be a source of great inspiration. I read about Walt Disney’s imagineers and how they went about designing their own world. Walt Disney had a deep love of miniature railroads, and Disneyland was structured around a train track. The imagineers...