Game Design Lessons from Theme Park Design: Part 1
As a game design professor at Northeastern University, I have been teaching a course on ‘Level Design and Game Architecture’ for undergrads. (The same course is called Spatial and Temporal Design when I teach it to grad students who are paying for fancier words ;) ) One of the units in the course looks at theme park design and talks about the techniques used there and how they can apply to games… so when I visited Disney World this spring I couldn’t keep myself from taking reference photos and overanalyzing every detail of the parks. Read on if you want to suffer through that with me!
The thought is that physical theme parks are so expensive to build that very careful thought has been given to every decision that goes into them. Also that they have been around for somewhat longer than games and have paid more attention to the effectiveness of their designs. And also that they persist in active use longer than games so they can be studied over time… and so on. Suffice it to say they are a good source of data.
But why does that data relate strongly to games? Consider that Theme Parks are the first, and still primary physical places that are built from scratch to create a themed, artificial user experience intended to entertain. Essentially theme parks are the closest thing to video game levels that we build in the real world.
So, all of that said for the rest of this article I will be showing and discussing photos of particular design techniques I saw on this trip to Disney World and how I think they relate to games… Let's go!
Architectural Weenies
That slightly inappropriate-sounding phrase was actually coined by Walt himself, he described the tall buildings visible from a distance as being like holding out a little sausage to a dog to lead it where you wanted it to go. We do this ALL THE TIME in games!
You can see this technique constantly in Disney world, here are some more examples:
The Shipwreck is interesting in that it is not an attraction itself, it just helps you stay oriented within the park. This style of weenie is found elsewhere in the park with sights like Bell’s Castle (pictured in the header image) or Repunsels Tower which you can never get to, but which help you stay oriented.
Turning to Games
It’s pretty clear how this technique is useful in games, but let me say it out loud just for clarity. First, they help players navigate your games. This can be useful within a single level but has become even more important in open-world games. Interestingly in some sprawling side-scrolling games, this technique is adapted to create a sense of three-dimensional location within a two-dimensional game world, look at Ori and the Blind Forest for a great example.
A secondary purpose of this technique is to help set the theme. If you place something in your world that players will see over and over making it iconic and meaningful in your game world helps players understand the nature of the world they are in. There is a huge difference between the beautiful and poignant giant tree in Ori and the ominous castle trapping Gannon in Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Stay Tuned!
Ok, clearly this article will be way too long if I put everything in one post so I will break it up by topics. In the next parts of this series, I will look at Diagetic Gameplay Affordances, Texture Use, Layering, Forced Perspective, and more!
