Level Design Part 3: The reason for the open secret

An open secret in level design is that the same techniques and designs for schools, malls, and other public places make for great levels. The reasons why have been discussed with this small series of essays.

First, the level design world does not have a lot of good advice anyway. We discussed how most books barely cover the subject for artistic or technical skills.

Second, Level Editors tend to get into editing on their own, and thus don’t have terms for using architecture. There are a few levels and games that do reference real world architecture, and even fewer architects who design levels. The deathmatch levels that do show up with offices, schools, or others are made by fans.

We now look for the reason why so much of it is not referenced. Specifically, why is a school, mall, or airport taboo to show within a game?

The answer is that having a school means having to talk about school shootings. It gets even harder to talk about when one of the Columbine shooters made levels for Doom. Talking openly about architecture, its design, and that schools make a great level would then be scrutinized from the angle of the Columbine shooter. Making levels with a school, mall, or airport means taking the subject head on, or trying to dodge around it.

Half Life 2 originally had children in it. A beta version was released by a hacker, and the models of children were in the game. In fact, there would be child corpses in one part called Ravenholm, and child workers in various facilities. The release of the game did not have any children models at all, and a new part of the story added that a suppression field stopped fertility.

In a book on how the game was made, Character artist Moby Francke had this to say:

"We designed the Citizens of Half-Life 2 to look oppressed and downtrodden. Their costumes reflected the location and environment they lived in using standard issued clothing to give it a prison-like atmosphere. Half-Life 2 spans three days, and we wanted the Citizens to correspond with the time and location of events throughout the game. Citizens appear in almost every map of the game, but couldn’t overpower the player visually. We wanted them to compliment the world and not stand out."

He was commenting on more than just the children, but the quote works well to explain what had happened. The sight of children in harms way, or dead was too much for the game. A child would have stood out too much, and thus, the suppression field story was created.

The idea of children being harmed is against any values people will have. The sight of a school in danger creates a sense of dread, and foreboding.

In this clip from FEAR 2, the player goes through a school. At no point does the player see children in it. In fact, the level itself is designed more to scare than thrill. As soon as you get out, people to shoot appear. The symbolic dread of children in harm is used to create a true sense of fear. A school is a place where children are. We hold the place in a certain amount of sacredness because our own protective feelings.

We have real life symbols that create this emotional moment. People walk into schools, day camps, malls, airports, and other places that are supposed to feel safe, and then begin to shoot. It makes the newspapers, and the people who did it are scrutinized because no one can imagine a sane individual doing such a thing. In fact, one of the first conclusions jumped to is that the person must be insane.

The connection with videogames is that one of the Columbine shooters made levels. He started out just like any other level editor of the time. The only difference was that he actually went into a school with a shotgun, “just like F@#$ing Doom.” One of the playtesters for his levels was the other shooter.

Doom Wiki has a great rundown of the events. The level creator included his desires to shoot up Columbine highschool with outlines for levels he made. There had been a long standing rumour that one level was made just like his highschool. In fact, some families who lost loved ones sued the companies that made or promoted Doom. The same rumour has been declared a hoax because no such level has shown up. From one of the lawsuits we read:

Companies named include: Sony America, AOL/TimeWarner, ID Software, Atari, Sega of America, Virgin Interactive Media, Activision, Polygram Film Entertainment Distribution, New Line Cinema, GT Interactive Software and Nintendo.

The text of the lawsuit alleges: "Absent the combination of extremely violent video games and these boys' incredibly deep involvement, use of and addiction to these games and the boys' basic personalities, these murders and this massacre would not have occurred."

As was said in a previous essay, many game companies used violent images to gain attention from boys. Part of the reason was to do taboo things, and part of it was because the game creators themselves were not that much older themselves.

Doom is probably the best example of this idea. The game creators were geniuses of their time. John Romero had incredible skill in designing a level, and introducing you to the gameplay. There wasn’t a need to have tutorials because the levels taught you everything you needed to know. Likewise, John Carmack created an entirely new game engine that let a player be in the game. Doom became the inspiration for First Person Shooters, which we still play today.

They purposefully made the game as bloody, and violent as they could. There were sections of the game in hell, and graphics of people being tortured were everywhere. It was perfectly known to both John’s that the game was controversial. However, if you begin to read about how they created the games, and how they sort of didn’t grow up, you realize a truth. Neither of the John’s realized why something was controversial, or even the meaning behind their moves. They were geniuses, but not grown up.

Suddenly having someone taking your game in a way to destroy others has a meaning you didn’t expect. To continue to make their beloved games, game designers had to defend them. Companies worked to distance themselves from the tragedies. A lot of rhetoric has been made connecting videogames and violence. In other words, it was a bad idea to mention a school in a level.

Within TV-Tropes there is the idea of “Funny Aneurysm” moment where one thing takes on a whole new meaning. For example, in the wake of shootings, bombings and other attacks things from Calvin and Hobbes will probably never be done again.

• In one strip, Calvin pretends he's flying a fighter plane and ends up blowing up his school. Watterson apparently got a few angry letters when it was first published, but defended it by saying that any kid Calvin's age has probably dreamed about blowing up their school at least once. Now that school shootings have shown themselves to be all too real, there's little chance it would be published at all today.
• In another strip, Calvin draws a squadron of B-1's nuking New York in class. Due to 9/11, there's a slim chance a strip like that would get the green light.

Although comics continue to talk about life in school, very few will ever mention being angry at it the way Calvin did. The reluctance to do menial work for someone who may not even know how to teach you is a common theme in life. Because of things like Columbine, and many other… we need a better term for this. I was going to say Tragedy, and then shooting, and then bombing, but none worked. Something like this does not have a real word because it is just so uncommon.

Videogame designers still put schools, and airports into games. Like comics schools tend to be mentioned in a way that will not show someone with a gun shooting up kids. In fact, because of the tragedies we end up with two ways of showing a school or airport. The first way is to make the school setting as part of life, a school girl’s story if you will. The second is to do things specifically that take away from the reality of the school. The third is to try to confront the images made, usually badly.

In many Japanese story games, you can find the school as a setting all over the place. There isn’t a feeling of tragedy, partially because the creators themselves don’t have the images in their minds. There is also the simpleness of having a common place we all know, and situations we can recognize.

The second use is that of games like Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk ProSkater 1 and 2 have levels called School. You skateboard around the outside of a school. In fact, the levels are based on various real life schools. Because it is about skateboarding, the thought doesn’t even cross your mind.

Finally we have people trying to confront our fears and feelings about shootings at schools. For the most part, they do this very badly. The reason why is that most game characters are archtypes of super powerful heroes doing amazing things. Placing a political statement within those contexts is a bad idea for any form of art.

Within movies, there has not been a good movie about 9/11. Many directors have tried, but none of them know how to talk about the problem. This becomes even more awkward if they try to cover the subject as an action movie.

Imagine if someone made a terminator movie about 9/11? The terminators were the terrorists all along. Rambo 3 has Jon Rambo fighting off Russians to aid the -get ready for this- Taliban.

The same thing happens with most games that try to confront things like school shootings, airport bombings, or any other tragedy of this nature. Once again, there is no real word for it. As I posted in the second essay on the subject, a guns and action game tried to talk about airport shootings by having you go through an airport and kill people. It is a very badly thought out idea.

The big and popular games right now are about gun violence. Heck, gun companies run ads, and sponsor some games. Cracked.com has a great article on the subject. I would place a quote, but there doesn’t seem to be a perfect one. They show that gun violence is down, and most gun owners are just living a fantasy with their purchase.

Heck, this isn’t my first time writing about the issue either. I wrote out equations for how fast you have to be to save the day from a shooting. Then I wrote an equation showing how places are chosen out.

Right now, the training, and understanding of bombings, shootings, and others are very limited. There isn’t a lot of patterns to follow, and it isn’t easy to figure out how to stop it. In fact, people who study terrorism work to stop those preparing the bombs and plans, because finding out about the problem will be too late to stop it.

Because one person connected his love of Doom and level editing with killing actual people it has been an open secret that your school would make a great deathmatch level. Videogame companies don’t want to talk about such a subject, and don’t have the skill to really deal with the subject anyway. Because of the PR problems, you won’t hear a level editor mention an airport, or college campus. Those who do use schools work to separate the setting from the tragedy for the most part. There are some games that try to talk about it, but they ultimately fail because of how they use it.

The next essay will round us up to why your school, mall, airport, or park would make a great level. Hopefully it will be in tomorrow or Wednesday. After that I am off to the big Arcade show in Tacoma. Expect pictures, and stories from that for the rest of the week. Then after that is E3, which I will cover as best I can. It’s going to be a busy time, and I hope to finish off this essay series before I have to leave.