Sony’s recent PS3 release Little Big Planet 2 features some of the most extensive level creation tools ever released in a videogame. While the original LittleBigPlanet was also all about user-generated content — you could download and play many thousands of excellent levels created by users worldwide — LBP2 has the whole community agog with excitement with its polished, versatile and powerful toolset. With some patience, perseverance and imagination, you can build a wide variety of games with the tools that come with LBP2 — and we’re already seeing some amazing content starting to appear from the user community.
What Sony has done with LittleBigPlanet is perhaps the finest example of a phenomenon that has existed for several decades in PC gaming — mod making. Starting with DOOM and Quake, Id software provided the tools for interested gamers to build and release their own levels for these games. Despite the fact that these level editors were far from easy to use, we saw thousands of passionate gamers plunge headlong into creating content, and much of it very good indeed. Many famous game designers such as Richard ‘Levelord’ Gray and Minh ‘Gooseman’ Le (of Counter-Strike fame) started their careers this way.
Level editing tools have come a long way since then, and most modern games offer sophisticated tools with which you can create great content with little or no knowledge of programming.
Neverwinter Nights provided a fantastic toolset with which users could create complete role-playing adventures from scratch, with no programming knowledge. It led to a glut of user-created modules available for download — some so good that they were bundled with later editions of the game. RTS and FPS games have always come with powerful map editors that allow players to create and release multiplayer maps. Halo 3’s excellent Forge mode provided a whole new take on level design — allowing players to modify and edit levels even while multiplayer matches were going on, giving a whole new spin to multiplayer gaming.
Will Wright’s Spore was a dream for wannabe game creators, allowing users to create and share all sorts of content within the game — creatures, buildings, vehicles and spaceships. The sophisticated creation tools provided by Spore gave gamers the opportunity to design elaborate objects and see them come to life within the game, thanks to its procedural animation technology. You could create an orange-skinned monster with green stripes, eight legs, four eyes and two mouths, and the game would animate it seamlessly — you would see it run, jump, swim, eat, hunt, fight and even dance.
Steven Spielberg’s award-winning Wii title Boom Blox allowed players to design their own physics-based puzzle levels, using intuitive and friendly tools that made creating levels almost as much fun as playing them.
Anyone who has even the slightest interest in game design would do well to start by trying out their skills in level design by experimenting with these tools. Games such as LittleBigPlanet give you a tremendous opportunity to learn the basics of level design and game design, without having to learn complicated programming languages. You can build levels, test them out by playing them, fine-tune them, share them with other players and get them rated — all within minutes.
Experimenting with level design toolkits that come with modern games is fun, challenging and rewarding. Chances are, you have a game in your collection that comes with a level editor. Why not give it a shot? You may discover the game designer within you.