“it begins with, she says, something the studio has nicknamed “the white rabbit”.”
"”This is the thing that catches the players attention,” she explains. “Whatever it is in the environment - either it’s a specific enemy, it’s something they want to go get, it’s a doorway, it’s a clue in the story - it’s what gets them on the right track.””
“It’s followed by the infiltration phase. “We always have this infiltration phase,” she says, and it’s here you typically find a barrier of some kind - physical or otherwise - barring your way. You have to work out how to get past it”
"”Then, of course, there’s the interior map - that’s our big sandbox playground space. That’s where things can get very freeform,” she says”
"”But then it has to narrow back down to - we call this ‘the last metres’.” And it’s here the design becomes more bespoke depending on what it is you’re trying to achieve at the time.”
"”After that we always want an exfiltration,” she says. “We don’t want to just end it immediately after the goal is completed. There’s always a moment where you re-traverse the space you’ve been through, or go in a brand new direction, but you’re still escaping the scenario.””
“And then, finally, “a very player-signalled departure moment of the player opting into saying, ‘Yes, I’m finished. Yes, I’m leaving.’” Think of the exit doors in Deathloop”
“That’s “the dry skeleton” of how Arkane Lyon designs a map, then, but it’s not the full hourglass philosophy. “That’s just the top half of the hourglass,” Nightingale says. “I still have two more pieces to explain”
"”The pinch of the hourglass is really about the gameplay loop,” she goes on. And the loop is about what players are feeling in every moment while they’re playing the game. Crucial to it is a feeling of understanding”
"”And then at the bottom half of the hourglass - and now we’re getting really theoretical - is the idea of affordance and intentionality,” she adds. “Affordance can mean like a thousand different things. But what I need affordance to do, as a designer, is to be able to design the whole game in a way where the player understands that this is a world that operates under rules, and these rules are going to be consistent. And if they understand a quarter to a third of the rules, the rest of it is going to be comprehensible.””
“there is a recent example of a game that’s at that sublime or phenomenal level. She barely has to even think about it when I ask what it is. “Outer Wilds,” she says. “Some of the best level design I’ve ever… So much we can learn from how that’s all set up and the use of curiosity as the player’s main motivation. The main way you interact with the entire world was just so good.””