Skyrim's Modular Level Design - GDC 2013 Transcript

Skyrim’s Modular Approach to Level Design

Originally presented @ Level Design in a Day, GDC 2013
Co-Authored and Co-Presented w/Nate Purkeypile
Slides available here.

While many developers understand the basic concepts behind a modular system, and some have dabbled in it for a project or two, very few have made a career out of it.  That’s exactly what Nate and I have done, however.  Our current project will be our fifth together in the near-decade we have known and worked with each other.  Every one of these projects has taken this kit-based approach, including those we worked on before joining Bethesda.

We recently realized that there are many unspoken understandings we and our colleagues share; expectations and assumptions taken for granted as part of our process. We've struggled to explain ourselves in detail for new artists and designers who had joined our team.  This talk was a way for us to explore and articulate this accumulated knowledge.

To understand our approach, it’s useful to know where we’re coming from as developers, and where Bethesda Game Studios is coming from as a whole.

GDC 2011 Transcript: Motivating Players in Open World Games

Since I don't use speaker notes, my slides from GDC 2011 are basically useless on their own.  Because of this, I wanted to post this transcript of my talk online.  I typed the majority of this out on the plane to San Francisco, mostly as a way to practice the talk quietly, so it follows what I had planned to say pretty closely.  In fact, I realized through the week that I had forgotten to make several minor points which are captured here.

Fair warning - this is long.  Turns out I speak about 7,000 words per hour.  Transcript after the jump.

GDC Slides: Motivating Players in Open Games

GDC has been an amazing time so far, and the main conference hasn't even started yet. I've hardly had time to sleep so far, but I did want to get my slides posted online for anybody who wanted them.

Here they are on slideshare: "I Want To Go To There: Motivating Players in Open Games"

I should caveat, however, that my slides aren't going to be very useful except as a reminder for folks who were at the talk and are looking for a rough refresher.  I was able to avoid using too much text on my slides and don't really use speaker notes, so for most it will just be a bunch of loosely connected images. Audio will be released on the GDC Vault, though, and I did write out a rough transcript of the talk on the plane ride into San Francisco Sunday, so I may clean that text up (it's around 6,000 words and I didn't get through the whole talk!) and post it here for more general use.

I also had a cutting-room floor talk about non-linear level design that I hastily composed from a portion of the talk that we didnt' have time for.  I'm still deciding what to do with that, though.  It's obviously much less polished than what I presented on Monday.

Thanks again to everybody who attended, all who asked questions and anybody who #LDinaDay hash tag to sound off during the day. It was a ton of fun for us, and I hope you enjoyed it too!

GDC Slides: Level Designer, Storyteller

I was hesitant to release my slides as-is, but I decided to go ahead and make them available. I'm not sure how much use they are by themselves, but they should at least be handy as a refresher for folks who were able to attend. Speaking of those who were able to attend, here's where every one of them was awesome and went along with my prodding to do the wave before the talk began: