Why Do Games Still Have Levels?

a.d.venturer writes "Elite, the Metroid series, Dungeon Siege, God of War I and II, Half-Life (but not Half-Life 2), Shadow of the Colossus, the Grand Theft Auto series; some of the best games ever (and Dungeon Siege) have done away with the level mechanic and created uninterrupted game spaces devoid of loading screens and artificial breaks between periods of play. Much like cut scenes, level loads are anathema to enjoyment of game play, and a throwback to the era of the Vic-20 and Commodore 64 - when games were stored on cassette tapes, and memory was measured in kilobytes. So in this era of multi-megabyte and gigabyte memory and fast access storage devices why do we continue to have games that are dominated by the level structure, be they commercial (Portal), independent (Darwinia) and amateur (Angband)? Why do games still have levels?"

HL2 Has Levels?

[Svet-Am (413146)]

Since when? HL2 is set up exactly the same as HL1.

Re:HL2 Has Levels?

[NickCatal (865805)]

You are correct... Both have 'levels' but they are seamless (when you go from level-to-level all you see is a white semi-transparent text saying the title of the 'level' you are on.)

Although there are 'loading' screens, but that is just because the game is programed that way.

Portal is similar, but much more distinct in the way of 'levels.' But that works into the gameplay quite a bit because each 'level' is a new test. Once you get into the behind-the-scenes area there is no real 'level' change. Just loading screens, which you have with all Valve single player games.

Re:HL2 Has Levels?

[CastrTroy (595695)]

The game just has to be smart about what parts to keep in memory. If you won't be getting to a certain point for hours, there's no point in having it in memory. The game knows you can't go from the place you are now to a place 100 rooms away in 10 seconds. Same with flight simulator games. You could technically fly around the whole world, but it only loads stuff in the vicinity of where you are. Games like Metroid although they don't have distinct levels still do little tricks to avoid loading. Between some areas where the entire scenery changes, and they have to load a lot of content, they put an elevator. What you're riding in the elevator it's loading the content. It looks likes it's not loading so the user isn't bothered. Personally I find it much more acceptable to wait 15 seconds in an elevator, than to wait 3 seconds while the game pauses with some big loading message on the screen.

Re:

[Broken scope (973885)]

Not quite, in hl1 you literally walked across black mesa, you experience ever bloody foot.

In HL2 you did have a few, fade to black then a few hours later, moments.

Re:HL2 Has Levels?

[PhireN (916388)]

I just played hl2 recently, There was only one fade to black moment in all of hl2 when you teleport out out of the prison back to the lab, and you find out that it actually took you a week to get there.
If you count halflife, hl2, ep1 and ep2 as one game, there are 6, one at the end of each game, where you get take out of time and space, or knocked unconscious, the teleport in hl2, and the when you get knocked unconscious in halflife and put in the trash compactor.
Even including these, from the time you get on the train at the start the game is a complete presentation of Gordon Freeman's life, with no gaps where he goes off and does something without you.

Re:HL2 Has Levels?

[Andrew Kismet (955764)]

"The adventure of the man who has never used the toilet. Ever."

Re:Toilets are overrated (in games at least)

[dintech (998802)]

Duke Nukem used the toilet. Look what happened to him.

Constipation. He's stuck on it 'forever'.

Re:HL2 Has Levels?

[Wavicle (181176)]

Not quite, in hl1 you literally walked across black mesa, you experience ever bloody foot.

In HL2 you did have a few, fade to black then a few hours later, moments.

Yeah 'cuz in HL1 the military special forces don't ambush you after you fight a bunch of ninja guys, knock you out, carry you away and you wake up in a trash compactor some time later weaponless... Oh, wait...

Re:HL2 Has Levels?

[by Anonymous Coward]

No, the loading mechanisms in HL1 and HL2 are identical. The game consists of a series of levels. In the cross-over point between levels, you have a couple of identical-looking corridors, and you stay in the same relative position.

Now, on a modern PC, the load times in Half Life are so short that you won't notice them - you'll get a really fast blip of text saying "now loading", and that's about it. But when Half Life was new, there was a good 20 seconds of wait time between levels.

Also, Portal's elevators are rarely actual loading screens. The first 18 test chambers take place on something like 6 separate levels, but there's still an elevator ride between each one. You're confusing a pause in the game with a loading screen.

While we're at it, it was rare for a C64 game to have in-game loading. The vast majority of C64 games ran on tapes, so didn't have access to the tape after it had finished loading. The entire game had to fit in that 64Kb of RAM (possibly less, depending on how the game set up the RAM).

Because they are useful

[Midnight Thunder (17205)]

Games that have levels usually have them as way to indicate that the game just got harder. For example, games such as tetris increase speed each time a certain number of blocks are cleared and arkanoid after a screen is cleared. Games that can't be broken down into such simplified logic rarely ever have the notion of levels and instead make it so that you can't get into a certain area, or fail in it, if you haven't got the necessary equipment, XP, etc.

In short the existence, or lack of, all depends on the type of game in play.

Re:Because they are useful

[Libertarian001 (453712)]

For as insightful as that comment was (and I've no gripes with it being modded as such), you do realize that the examples you gave are for 20+ year old games that were memory limited...just like in the original question.

I understand why Doom has levels, since you're literally descending to a new location. So the name basically fits.

But what about the host WWII games? Ooohhh, Normandy was easy, wait 'til you get to Bastogne... Don't think the troops saw it that way.

Re:Because they are useful

[Erioll (229536)]

Well putting aside the fact that the game DESIGN is around the idea of a level (arkanoid especially would be a COMPLETELY different game with some kind of continual level), let's give a modern example: The Halo series. In more than one case you get on/off a ship, a planet, or wherever. Teleported, or any other method of "fast travel" then gets you "between levels" of the game. But as the "quip" in the tag for this article said, why do books have chapters? The answer is the same as for games: to segment the story. Either for something as simple as a new art look, or for story reasons, breaking up the game isn't necessarily a bad thing. Go back to one of the earliest methods of storytelling, theatre, and you see acts in the play that are NOT there just to change the set on-stage, but also help segment the story.

Overall, I wouldn't put "seamless" above story in ANY case, in any medium. Sometimes seamless works (HL2 is nearly-seamless, though there is the "slow teleport" which definitely qualifies as a break in the continuity), and sometimes you need the break-up to move around the story (Halo). And some games just work better with discrete campaigns, such as RTS games. And even the FPS example you gave, any WWII game. Well as veterans can tell you, the fighting DOES stop at some points. You make discrete attacks, push forward, and hold. It's not anything like the games of course, but it's not 24/7/365 from the start to the end of any war.

Levels work as both a story tool, and a gameplay tool. If they're eliminated, you need a reason for that too, which is OK, but they shouldn't be eliminated "just because."

Re:Because they are useful

[vertinox (846076)]

Well as veterans can tell you, the fighting DOES stop at some points. You make discrete attacks, push forward, and hold. It's not anything like the games of course, but it's not 24/7/365 from the start to the end of any war.

You mean 24/7/365 like WWII Online?

There are games that exist. On an individual a soldier doesn't fight 24/7 but there is always something going on like a bombing raid, naval attack, or troop movement on a strategic scale.

Antecedent - Behavior - Consequence

[75th Trombone (581309)]

People keep replying that levels are for some technological reason, or else that a story or some other external element requires them. But neither of those are correct. It's HUMANS that require them.

We need payoff. We need to feel like we've accomplished something bigger than defeating one enemy, but smaller than finishing the game. We need to expunge all the cruft from one section of the game from our minds to make way for new information.

LAYMAN BEHAVIORISM FOLLOWS:

On one level, we're getting reinforced all the time when we play games. We see an enemy (antecedent), we shoot the enemy (behavior), the enemy dies and the path is cleared (consequence). A couple of levels up, we have the whole game as one contingency, where playing the game is the behavior and having the game finished is the consequence. (I was having a hard time coming up with the exact antecedent on that one.)

But other than with very short games, we need something in between those two. Eventually most people will get satiated on the enemy-shooting contingency; without a higher contingency than that, but a lower contingency than the far-away end of the game, there's no strong enough, near enough reinforcement to be worth continuing to play. (At least for a while.)

END LAYMAN BEHAVIORISM

Game designers know all of this, so they space out the payoff so that there's always something near enough (end of a level) to be worth fighting toward. Eventually, most people will get satiated even with intermittent big payoff, but it takes a lot longer than if the game was just one big level. And in the end, the main goal of game designers is to keep you playing as long as possible.

Why do games have levels?

[PitaBred (632671)]

Because sometimes, it's nice to do themed, episodic content that's broken apart by firm delineations. If anything, I think that Mario 64 did the best mix of levels and "seamless" play that's been done (haven't tried SM Galaxy yet, it's on my list). Any other silly questions?

Re:

[webmaster404 (1148909)]

Exactly, for some games like adventures and RPGs levels take away from the game, for platformers and some shooters it is pointless not to use a level or mission like system.

Re:Why do games have levels?

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

This is sort of like Metroid- yes there's no loading screens so it's "seamless" but come on, seriously. Would you deny the label "level" to describe the distict areas? My favorite Metroid was Prime- a few areas are revisited constantly like Magmoor, but the Phendrana Research areas, the Phazon Mines, etc.. those are levels. The article is seriously wrong about Metroid.

why do books still have chapters?

[acidrain (35064)]

Same as for levels in games, they represent a discrete section of the narrative. For games with a linear narrative, this makes a lot of sense.

Simple

[Doomstalk (629173)]

The reason is memory. There's only so much you can load into RAM at once, and levels allow you to more easily control what assets get used and when. You can also do this with streaming and clever tricks, a-la Metroid Prime, but that requires a lot of planning at the initial design phase. It can lead to crash issues if the player gets too far before you've finished loading everything. Again Metroid Prime is a good example of this.

Well on computers at least

[Sycraft-fu (314770)]

This just isn't a problem. RAM is plentiful, and you can stream from disk as needed. World of Warcraft is a good example of this. You can fly from one end of a continent to another and there's never a pause for a level switch, the game grabs the data as it is needed (it only does a loading thing if you teleport). In a lot of games this is feasible. You just set up your engine so it loads data as it is needed or may be needed, and discard it as it is not. You move away from the idea of having to have every t

Re:Well on computers at least

[Hamilton Lovecraft (993413)]

As a game programmer who is currently having to deal with the complexity of memory management in a streaming open-world environment, I'd like to say shut up, I hate you. Or to put it a little more politely, once you take away the known-memory state checkpoints that you reach between levels, you start having to worry about fragmentation of memory, so you start instituting fixed-size memory "slots" for assets, which deals with the fragmentation problem, but then you sometimes aren't optimally using memory, and then the designers start wanting things to follow you through the world, or allowing you to carry things back and forth through the world, so you have to manage memory outside of the slot system as well as within it, so you have the fragmentation problem again, and then you have to sneak into the designer's house late at night and stab him to death with an icicle.

Re:Well on computers at least

[by Anonymous Coward]

and then the designers start wanting things to follow you through the world, or allowing you to carry things back and forth through the world, so you have to manage memory outside of the slot system as well as within it, so you have the fragmentation problem again, and then you have to sneak into the designer's house late at night and stab him to death with an icicle.

Did you have to get the icicle from your house, or his?

Re:Well on computers at least

[Chris Mattern (191822)]

Did you have to get the icicle from your house, or his?

Actually, you have to get the icicle from an ice gnome. But the gnome doesn't want to give to you, so you have to get the sleeping herb to put him to sleep to get it. But the apothecary that sells the herb only takes Borgrovians Drikkits for payment. So you have to travel to Borgrovia and..

Chris Mattern

Re:Well on computers at least

[porpnorber (851345)]

...So this all summarises as "we didn't write the engine, so what can we do"?

Re:Simple

[complete loony (663508)]

Because scheduling disk IO in a way that doesn't effect performance is hard. And IIRC because someone patented the idea of playing a mini game while the main game is loading.

Re:

[Pete Brubaker (35550)]

And because not every potential platform has the same specifications. Take the PS3 and the 360 for example. PS3 256mb main / 256mb video -- 360 512mb unified. PS3, constant linear velocity drive reading at something like 5mb/sec -- 360 constant angular velocity drive at like 24x. Throw PC into that mix and you have an infinite number of combinations. It's just very hard to do, not to say that it cant be done, but it's just really hard.

Re:

[dmomo (256005)]

Memory management doesn't have to be aided by the introduction of levels. But it sure helps. There are plenty of opportunities to manage memory. Take newer Zelda games for instance. There are buildings, rooms, caves and dungeons. These, from a programming point of view (and memory managing point of view) are similar to levels, but they are not levels from the player's perspective.

BTW, I was impressed by Katamari Damacy. This game does have levels, but each level is a big world. You start off tiny. Ob

Why?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE (584508)]

Because it's fun to have intermediate progress goals.

Or was this a trick question?

Accomplishment

[jacobcaz (91509)]

Games have "levels" so gamers can feel a sense of accomplishment at moving up a rung? Kinda' like - you know - life? Work hard, get promoted = meatspace leveling. Same with XP in MMORGs?

What I can't figure out is why everyone in my office gets all weird when I start killing co-workers during my XP grind? Sheesh...

Re:Accomplishment

[Beardo the Bearded (321478)]

It's because you get more XP when you convert the co-workers to your side. Didn't you play Syndicate with just the persuadatron? It's a little like that.

That's why they're looking at you funny. You're doing it wrong. It's a classic newbie mistake.

slow news day

[nuzak (959558)]

Wow, Angband, really brand new game there.

Portal had individual puzzles in individual rooms. Duh.

Next questions: Why do books still have chapters? Why do plays still have acts? Why do movies still have scenes?

Re:

[Artifakt (700173)]

While we're at it, why do pen and paper RPGs still have dungeons and similar structures? Why does any game ever put someone in a position where there are only a few directions to go, instead of constantly giving them 32,364+ choices of direction? Why does chess start off with only the pawns and knights capable of moving? Why can't my checkers move backwards until they are kinged?
The summary repeatedly begs the question - "Levels are bad, M'kay? Only a terrorist pedophile would like

The same reason that books still have chapters.

[Sowelu (713889)]

Because the writer thought that a clean break in the action, or in the theme between two distinct areas, was important.

Or because "downtime" occurs between levels that the player doesn't need to see, whether they're following corridors or going back to base.

Levels provide separation

[R15I23D05D14Y (1127061)]

If the basic idea behind a game is a string of essentially separate puzzles, like in portal where each room is a new puzzle, then levels really enhance the gameplay by creating a sense of achievement. I'm thinking of a 2D version, I don't keep up to date on games and I vaguely remember there being several others that might be different.

Levels can be new layers of interest and difficulty. An immersion game is more like a storyline - games with levels play more like a series of puzzles. Some groups of gamers really like puzzles.

See Books, Albums, etc.

[EMeta (860558)]

For the same reason books still have chapters and music albums still have tracks. Humans like pauses between though, time to digest and segregate before doing something different.

Ever read a book without chapters? It's a pain. Likewise, can you imagine playing a Mario game where you were just running form the beginning to the end? that would be nuts. Sure, for some applications, continuous can be really interesting. But that's just not what is most natural to people, whether it's like the real world or not.

Re:

[morari (1080535)]

I think albums would do better without such harshly separated tracks. I much prefer long, seamlessly integrated concepts as opposed to a collection of tunes vying to become the one or two radio singles.

Changes in pace?

[Ynot_82 (1023749)]

games have levels for the same reason books have chapters
any substantial storyline has natural breaks and scenery changes contained within it

what's the problem?

Angband? Get T-O-M-E instead

[Lord Satri (609291)]

amateur (Angband)?

Instead of Angband [wikipedia.org], try Tales/Troubles of Middle Earth [t-o-m-e.net] instead (on wikipedia [wikipedia.org]). Angband has been mostly frozen for years, while TOME, amongst the numerous Moria/Angband spinoffs, is the most advanced and active.

Because content size scales with storage capacity.

[ZombieRoboNinja (905329)]

Yeah, a modern computer could load up every single level of Doom or Super Mario Brothers at once and string them together... but strangely enough, game designers have actually scaled up the detail of their games as computing power has improved.

It's a pretty tough tradeoff, I imagine. Take Half-Life 2. They probably could have more-or-less eliminated load times by scaling down level detail a bit and loading on-the-fly like Oblivion... but would that make it a better game? Apparently Valve thinks we'd rather wait 20 seconds every 15 minutes that have a "seamless" but lower-detail gaming experience.

If we're talking about non-technical reasons for levels (like the different "chapters" in HL2, which didn't change every time a "loading" screen came up), well, games are (ideally) 20+ hours long. You don't expect people to actually play them straight through, so it makes sense to have breaks and intermissions in the narrative, the exact same way almost every novel is broken into chapters.

Why do movies still have cuts?

[Have Blue (616)]

Why isn't everything filmed in one continuous take, like Children of Men or that X-Files episode? There are even some movies that let time pass during cuts. 24 obviously perfected pacing and editing, why isn't everyone doing that?

Re:

[Danny Rathjens (8471)]

heh, I was just telling a co-worker about Russian Ark, a movie shot in one continuous shot. :) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318034/ [imdb.com]

Some of the best games also have levels...

[7Prime (871679)]

No matter what you do, you have to have some kind of organizational system to a game. Be it "levels" or "zones" or "areas". All of the "non-level" games you mentioned simply use litterary and organizational devices that superficially hide the level structure. Metroid, for instance, has enclosed locals, which usually are accessed via elevators or (herectical) drop points. Shadow of the Colossus has different Colossi which are defeated in order. These are levels, they provide the same super-structure, they are just better hidden. But some games thrive off of much more obvious hierarchical organization. The Mario series, for instance, has always done wonderfully with levels, and (in the 3D era), missions within these levels.

You are basically complaining about superficial differences in game progression. Traditional, levels-based gameplay can be made to be completed in a non-linear fashion, with minimal loading time, and freedom of movement (see Super Mario Galaxy for a recent, and rediculously good example). Where-as less defined organization (like some of the games you mentioned) can be very strictly linear, and have terrible load times. This is more a result of the programming and overall design, not whether a game has levels or not.

There are great usages of level-based design, and terrible ones. It's about as helpful as saying, "why, after all these years, are there still FPSs?" as if one genre of game is inherently inferior.

Why do Books Have Chapters?

[InfinityWpi (175421)]

I mean, seriously, I can understand that books had chapters back when they had to hand-set every letter in a printing press and had to have some way of designating where to stop printing and bind the pages into a book, but we have things called 'printers' nowadays that can handle collation, printing, etc, much faster and more reliably. Why the heck do books need chapters? Personally, I enjoy books that go n and on and on and don't give me any indication that I've moved on to the next significant chunk of the storyline; it makes saving my progress with a bookmark so much more fun when I don't know if I'm past the good stuff or not yet...

Simple reason

[rossz (67331)]

Levels give those of us who can't play 24x7 some short term goals. Reaching the next level is a basic goal you can use as a time marker when you have other things to do, but need a little down time.

GTA

[DragonWriter (970822)]

...the Grand Theft Auto series...

Has some "open" play, but also set scenarios which must be completed in order (and reset if/when you fail). Which, to me, is a clear variant of classic level-based play.

Such level-based content is easier to design and implement than completely emergent, open gameplay that is as interesting (the first time through, at least) and detailed.

Because they're GAMES

[Sciros (986030)]

Sheesh what a douchebag. Games do not have to reflect the structure of the real world to be enjoyable. That's why there's board games, puzzles, sports, etc. If a design is fun then it's fun. It works. End of story. Games might have levels in order to provide the player with a series of challenges that aren't intertwined. If there isn't a reason for seamless transition from one "chunk" of gameplay to another then why expect one? A boatload of games have "levels" and they make perfect sense even if the game mirrors real life. Do you want to go on James Bond missions one after another or do you want to also play through his day-to-day dilly-dallying in Britain when he's off duty in the meantime? For sure the latter is more 'realistic' and may be more 'seamless' but there's no sense in saying it will for sure be more fun.

Basically this guy decided to criticize a gameplay setup without giving any thought to why it's there in the first place. Some games don't need it, sure -- take Oblivion for instance. But to say that games "shouldn't have levels" is to say every game should be like this other game (or games) and to hell with all other designs regardless of how they affect the actual play.

That bit where he claims cutscenes are anathema to gameplay is also rich. They work wonderfully in some games and not in others. To say that in every game ever released from here on out the interaction should be constant with no exposition or story progression told through non-interactive segments is assinine and privileges any pressing of buttons over simply enjoying visual media, which is nonsense. In other words, sometimes it's a better idea to tell something through film than it is through "gameplay." It simply takes a good game designer to know when that time is.

Seriously, all of this cutscene and "levels" criticism is ridiculous. Is Metroid Prime hands-down the best fucking game ever made or something? Is it the design we all want for every game? Hell no! We want it for *some* games.

It would be just as retarded, BUT NO MORE SO, to say that EVERY game should have cutscenes or should have its gameplay divided into "levels."

Half-Life has levels

[Nimey (114278)]

They're not as cleanly split as in Doom, but there are definite levels, and they even have names and different map names.

Hard to make continuous worlds

[graveyhead (210996)]

Take a look at this neat paper The Continuous World of Dungeon Siege [drizzle.com].

It explains a great detail of the issues surrounding a system like this. The more interesting issues are as others have mentioned are memory and disk i/o management, but also there's another lovely curiosity in there... floating point numbers begin to quantize more and more the further you get away from the origin. It means it's impossible to have a global coordinate system.

Enjoy.

Several reasons

[LordZardoz (155141)]

And yeah, I am a game developer.

1) Development purposes.
When you design a game with a set of discreet levels or areas, it is easier to cut out a level than it is to do something like cut out 30% of a contiguous game world.

2) Narrative expedience
If you have a game where the narrative jumps from London to Tokyo to Moscow, do you really want the developers to try to tack on a bunch of filler for parts of the world that have no importance to the story? In Knights of the Old Republic, you only ever visit 5 or 6 worlds. Is that game better served by providing you with a hundreds or thousands of habitable worlds when only those 5 or 6 are relevant to the game?

3) Not all games are about exploration.
Wario ware would not be a reasonable type of game to set in a contiguous world. Trauma center is also not a game that really needs that kind of structure.

In any event, not all of your examples are good ones of continuous worlds. Metroid in particular has two types of loading screens. One shows up when your on a long elevator ride, say between an ice level and between a fire level. You may notice the cut scene that does a close up on Samus during that time. The other loading screen is when you shoot a door to open it, and then get to wait 20 to 30 seconds for the next chamber to load.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:WTF

[croddy (659025)]

Portal has levels because the Enrichment Center's testing environment has levels. If anything, Portal is a satire of this phenomenon, presenting the absurdity of slicing up an adventure into neat chunks by putting the player in the position of a real person progressing through such a system.