(This post is adapted from my micro talk "Teaching and Rethinking Level Design" at the GDC 2025 Educators Soapbox session. That's why it mentions "students" in the slide above.)
People want to do level design. They grow up playing games like Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite — all 3D games with 3D worlds. And to create 3D worlds, supposedly you need this thing called “level design.” Then when you search YouTube, you'll be told that level design is about implanting secret lines that "guide the player" into walking down hallways. Such is the power of ARCHITECTURE!
But this is not how architecture works, nor how level design works. Imaginary invisible shapes cannot mind control players, and even if they could, no one needs to be mind controlled to walk down a hallway.
No one plays games like this, but why do we think we do? What's going on here?
