LFTE: The Art of the First Level (July 11)

I've known many a great developer over my time at Game Informer, so sadly I can't remember exactly who I should attribute this sage advice to (if I had to guess, it would be design legend Mark Cerny), but I'll try to paraphrase it to the best of my ability.

Make every other level in a game, then make your first level once you have mastered all the nuances of your design and completely understand the essence of your game experience, as the first level sets the table for everything to come. As the cliché states, "There is only one chance at a first impression."

This statement comes from the late '90s in the age of PlayStation, when games still had "levels" and triple-A game development didn't require months - if not years - of preproduction. The particulars of the message may not entirely align with today's high-budget products, but the main thrust of it is still relevant, and I can't imagine a day when the lesson doesn't have value.

The art of the first level most certainly isn't lost, but I believe the demands of big-publisher marketing and a desire to have "mass appeal" in a world of casual gamers, have created an environment where opening scenes aren't an introduction to a world where gamers can discover and explore, but a series of tutorial exercises that far too often bore or handhold to an absurd degree.

When Halo first had me look up or down to set whether inversion was true or false, I gasped at how such a simple idea had escaped video game creation for so many years. It was an elegant solution to address a jarring mechanic like game settings in a subtle way so that gamer never had to break narrative or exit the world in those crucial beginning moments when a gamer is birthed into his or her new pixelated paradise.

It's been over a decade since that eureka moment, yet games still have a love affair with explaining every X, triangle, or red button; driven home in a series of mundane tasks bulging with jarring instruction boxes or insipid dialogue.

I love that gaming has gone mainstream, but are gamers now considered so dumb that we can't be left to our own means to find and discover the powers that the circle button or left trigger can unleash? Is opening a door or jumping over a chasm that difficult of a concept to grasp?

Don't get me wrong, some developers out there are getting it right, but far too many get it wrong. Until the gaming industry finds a better way to bring games to life and engage the gamer in those opening moments, we will always be cutting the game experience short from the very second we hit start.

Follow me on twitter!