View source for Don't design to prove you can do something

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In Avacyn Restored there was a character called Tibalt. To challenge themselves they though about making the first low mana cost planeswalker, with a mana cost of two. The problem with mana costs and power level is that often you have to make concessions to avoid creating an excessively powerful card. Tibalt, by having a mana cost of two, was forced to have low power abilities that were aligned with his mana cost. The card was printed and it didn't break anything, but it sucked. Players didn't find it appealing or good enough to put in their decks.

The lesson here is about ego and the creative process. Often times you want to surpass limits, go over barriers and explore unknown territory. This can come along a feeling of challenge to prove that you can do it. You are in charge of your creation and you have control over its rules after all. Here is the thing, are you doing it to please yourself or to please your audience? The goal of any game is always to please the players. Obviously you can't please everyone, but the priority level is higher for your target audience than it's to yourself. Mark admits that it's the hardest lesson of all. Ego by itself isn't positive or negative. Ego is ego. The thing is, ego shouldn't be the main driving force of a game. If it is, we are probably being selfish and/or self-absorbed. I'd like to comment that one of the most positive traits of Mark Rosewater is that he is very open to criticism despite being stubborn.

Does this apply to level design? Yes. A game may have a level with its own set of characteristics that stands apart from the rest of the game, which disrupts with the game's coherence and cohesion. It's a level that shouldn't be in the game but the ego of someone made it to the game. A small part of a level may suffer from that and disrupt coherence and cohesion within a level. From personal experience I know that sometimes what you want to do is either far fetched or too grandiose and way beyond your own skills. I once tried to pick up many levels from Max Payne and build a very large level in unreal. It never worked out. The unreal engine 1 wasn't meant for levels of that size and it was never an easy task. It appeared to be easy because the levels were already made and to copy and paste appeared to be an easy task. It never was. Ego was the driving force for that attempt to copy Max Payne levels in unreal.

Overall this problem relates more closely to the game's mechanics and plot than level design. It can easily impact level design though. To create beautiful landscapes and gorgeous buildings is challenging. The problem begins when those landscapes and buildings are meant to satisfy your own ego rather than to serve a purpose in the game. In here I want to make an addendum. Many players record videos of challenges such as completing a level without taking any damage or without killing any enemy. Sometimes these kind of self imposed challenges can be a valid tool to discover new things in a level, unknown strategies for example.

Going back to ego. Ego is part of every person. It's not a matter of good or evil. In turn, ego relates to narcissism and narcissism by itself is not what makes someone to be evil, good or a psycho. To care about oneself is just part of the human's consciousness. This lesson is somewhat related to selfishness but that's not the point here. There is a subtle difference between putting your own ego above everything or your own needs above everyone else's needs and challenging yourself. In Wizard's case, to be selfish would be to make cards that completely disregarded the player's feelings and Mark Rosewater advocates against it. I'm not saying that Mark controls everything Wizards does or that Wizards can never act selfishly, mind you.

'''Controversy:''' narcissism, can it be good? There are arguments to support this idea. However, the name itself comes from the greek myth and the myth is about an obsession with oneself. Having pointed out this, I can't support the concept of ''"healthy narcissism"'' because it's contradictory. The myth about Narcissus isn't about a healthy life, is more about a path to end one's life. Another argument against the ''"healthy narcissism"'' is that when you want to describe a person as being healthy, you are probably looking for the terms ''"healthy self-esteem"'', ''"self-secure"'', ''"self-assured"'', ''"self-confident"'' or perhaps ''"healthy ego"''. ''"healthy narcissism"'' ends up supporting the false image or false self that is at the core of narcissistic personality disorder. To conclude: to love oneself is essential. However, no self-love at all or to drown oneself in excessive self-love, those are the extremes that signal some underlying pathology. The Narcissus myth is clearly about the excess of self-love or self-admiration.

= References =
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im4zLxvx1e0| Narcissism vs Narcissistic - Here's The Important Difference] (In the past I supported this idea. But after some years I've came to realize that this concept is faulty. I'm leaving this here because there may be some value in understanding why people would support this concept)
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0OHXUb4vqM| Narcissism is NOT a diagnosis] - Dr. Ramani
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV4XAd-Q5xw| What narcissism IS vs. what it is NOT] - Dr. Ramani
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCxahU9rLKw| "Healthy narcissism" isn't a thing] - Dr. Ramani
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6aUvwdgpjI| Can there be healthy narcissism?] - Les Carter
* [https://youtu.be/Ihu3k_j3KQk?si=OIubF4RjAoZdaqLL| The Range of Narcissism: Healthy to NPD (w/ Clinical Example)] - Frank Yeomans