Feature: Lara Croft Creator's Tools For Design Delegation

Author: by Staff

Toby Gard, the original creator of Lara Croft and longtime designer on the Tomb Raider series, shares his tools for clear design that serves player needs, story, and game creation processes in Gamasutra's latest feature. Writes Gard, "I have seen creative directors who seem to have no vision of their own but merely act as filters through which their team's ideas are strained. I have also seen creative directors who form a rough image of what they want in their heads and then delegate the design to their team after loosely describing it to them. Inevitably the team then repeatedly fail to deliver his expected "right" solution. A better approach than searching for mind-reading designers, is for the creative leads to express clearly both what they want and where the flexibility is, so that their team can know how to take ownership without getting lost in the creative wilds." According to Gard, "The first step in the clear communication of vision for level design is delivering the Level Flow Diagram," a solution he shares in this article, the first in a new series of design articles for Gamasutra. "The goal is not to be exhaustive, but to define the skeleton of the level; the core of it. On average I find that at least half of the final level goals will actually be added by the team during the next stage, so it's important to keep these simple because the level will at least double in complexity from here. If you can't fit the flow on one page, then it is probably too long. The types of elements that you would include will be different depending on the type of game you are making, but the goal is always the same; keep it simple," writes Gard. Gard's feature, Action Adventure Level Design, Part 1, is live now on Gamasutra.com.