[Game Theory] Designer Brand Levels?

I'm sure you've all heard of designer brand clothes. But designer brand levels? Alright, I'll admit it's just another term I coined. But that doesn't mean there isn't any truth to it? Come with me and take a look into one of the key elements of the gaming industry, and what I believe to be the most important to a franchise. Aside from characters, that is.

Level design is a very important part of the game development process, and is becoming more and more important every day. Hell, the college I'm planning on going to has not one, but two courses on it. And it's not just in platformers, RPGs, and other adventure games that you would expect. Even sports game are adapting some emphasis on their level design now. Even if it's as simple as adding weather effects to a field, although we're getting to a point where that doesn't even cut it anymore.

Recently I've been playing a lot of games that are famous for having some of the best level design in the industry, and by sheer coincidence. I have to admit that this article is a bit spontaneous and a little inspired by these games, because a lot of these games are personal favorites of mine. Games from the Megaman, Metroid, Mario, Advance Wars, and Zelda franchises, as well as some individual games like Oblivion and even a flash game called Use Boxmen(which by the way, you should all totally check out) all come to mind as I write this article.

Poor level design is one of the biggest things that can easily ruin a game for me. All too often I play games that have good mechanics and control, pretty good graphics, and maybe even a decent story or interesting characters, but I just get bored less than halfway through the game. Why is this, you ask? The levels just suck. They are uninteresting, uncreative and feel a little too much like that recurring dream you've been having. Few things bother me more than poor level design, and I'm beginning to realize it's one of the reasons I keep enjoying games of the same franchises.

Often times franchises like Mario, Zelda and Megaman in particular have their games feel like they are built off of a model that unifies them all. And this of course does lead to some repetitiveness, especially in basic play mechanics and level design. But while this can be a bad thing, for Mario and Zelda it usually ends up being a good thing. Personally, I love it when game franchises make games of very similar style but with defining differences. That feeling of an open world Mario level or a puzzling dungeon from a Zelda game. . . It's the very essence of what branding is supposed to be. And branding is the key word. Some game developers just don't seem to understand the difference between branding, and selling the exact same product, just in a different package.

It's quite hard to place my finger on what specifically makes level design truly shine in a game, but I urge any game developers(or future game developers) reading this to take this little nugget of wisdom: Once you have something that works, a framework, a blueprint, hold onto it. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time you make a new game. Especially when working within a franchise.