My (partial) journey to be a level designer

img2go input: a road made of cobblestone, with curves and mountains, that represents a personal journey with the sunset. Put some sakura trees. Don't want to see: a straight path. The trees should not cover the horizon line

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I was the one to translate Thiago's video to portuguese. I did it because I liked it. It wasn't because of reputation or money at all. I just felt like doing it. Somehow I see his ideas and motivations aligning with those of mine.

I was once in a small community that no longer exists. Certain things there made me feel uneasy and I decided to left. However, that uneasiness wouldn't go away and I was obsessed. Something made me look for narcissism. I wanted "to kill" one or two persons in that community. But the word narcissism lead me to narcissistic personality disorder. I don't know what was triggered, but it happened. There weren't any narcissists there, but many traits of narcissism. Among other things which I could relate to. From that I learned about personality disorders. Upon learning about personality disorders I began to see patterns in my life. Many things could be explained by personality disorders or related stuff. No, I don't have a personality disorder.

I've found some extremely good channels that cover psychology, narcissism, neuroscience, languages, living abroad. As I was learning more about narcissism I realized my beliefs were wrong in multiple ways. A plethora of misconceptions. I was having a distorted way of thinking about many things. The core issue of narcissism is ego and it does apply to me. I was realizing that while I was reading comments about people who suffered from toxic relationships that many things felt familiar. I was like "S**!! I think I have the same traits of these people who have fallen into these traps". I've learned a lesson: people with huge egos (or who lack humility) are more prone to be blind and fall into traps, such as ponzi schemes or poisonous marriages for example. Another lesson: perfectionism can relate to fear of making mistakes, but there is also a mask of arrogance. The arrogance of not accepting failures, specially your own.

One thing that I've learned is how ignorant we are about mental health disorders. There is one key principle which I've learned: a mental disorder is not controlled by free will. A personality disorder is not what defines a person. Your name isn't "depression", "psychopath", "ADHD", whatever disorder. One cannot control what they feel. What can be controlled is what you do with what you feel. This applies to many narcissists who made the conscious choice to not do anything harmful. If you look up for all disorders, to be evil or to be nice is a choice. Depression for instance. Before learning about narcissism I'd think that depression can be healed by having positive thoughts. Not so much. Depression is not a choice, but depressed people can make bad choices and they also can make good ones. The hard part of narcissistic personality is that the person is choosing to be nice here and evil there and this is not entirely conscious. There are unconscious processes taking place. The key behind treating pretty much all mental health disorders is to become self-aware to those processes. Incidentally, Alan Mocellin in one video tells people to not give so much attention to descriptions to each and every little detail of how a narcissist behaves. It's more important to know the processes behind them. I completely agree.

When Thiago talks about understanding patterns and not following his steps to the letter. That's what I've learned with maths and physics. Learn the theory and the rules, not the examples themselves because that's not the proper way to solve problems. The same applies to programming. If you can't get past copy and paste you never learn how to come up with your own solutions. What is math and physics? At their core, it's about understanding patterns, rules that govern how things work or function. Going even further I'd say that psychology has more or less the same goals. It's a science that studies patterns. Patterns in the mind. Patterns in how people act and think. What are diagnoses? All diagnoses of all disorders and other health conditions are a certain set of patterns.

All this is strange because I was trying to get away from level design for a long time. This time includes me participating in the same forums which Thiago was in. I never though that I could go for this career's path. Perhaps I was afraid to admit it. The idea that I had was that a degree in applied sciences would be a foundation to begin a career, with game dev being one of the choices, in the distant future. But going after an applied sciences degree was a failure. The truth is: that's one path. One of many. After I decided to drop out of college I thought to myself "It's a waste of potential to have to learn very hard science stuff which I'm probably not going to use. If I want to learn calculus and physics, going to college is not the only way to learn it".

I spent long years, way longer than the expected 5 years to finish it. Low grades. Pressure. The thing is. Learning about narcissism, personality disorders, made me realize that somehow, some very subtle thread was connecting so many dots in my life. I mean, now I remember persons from the past and think "was this person a psychopath?", "was this other person's suffering related to depression?", "Geez! I hated that person but I had no idea that....", "Oh. Thank God I had that teacher of arts", "Is this person close to me a borderline? Because if that's the case, this explains a lot of things". Now that I think about it, what if I had an unexpected impact on someone's life? Thiago is saying how life can be harsh and throw things at you. I have had one experience of someone who was successful in the same applied sciences path that I was following. He told me that because of me he became a better teacher. I was a challenge for him. Thinking about Thiago's words in reverse: Maybe I was a rock thrown at someone's head? lol.

College does have some impact in everyone's self-stem. How often does the top 1 ~ 10 student at high school go to some top ranked university just to feel that they are below average? Very common thing to happen and I went to a top ranked university, but wasn't a student with the highest grades. I'm not an artist or a designer (yet) but I suppose the same feeling is experienced within game dev companies. I've seen first hand some of my peers feeling intimidated by professors holding their titles, awards or PhDs. I witnessed from very close my peers being scared of their own futures because they were uncertain about their academic success and grades. The drop out rate among degrees related to maths, physics and chemistry is incredibly high you know?

When Thiago talks about being impatient and asking for shortcuts. I remember doing that at college. Not exactly the same thing, but my behavior was very similar to his. I was like "How many credits per semester is too many to take on?", "How do you learn calculus? How do you get higher grades?", "How many hours to study?", "How do I get a research mentorship?", "Can I attend advanced classes meant for last year students?". You see, when dealing with college and how you are lost and lacking directions there are two types of sophomore students. One type are those that really want to help freshman. The other type is those who ignore freshman and do not care. To put up a very raw and shallow description (people aren't that black and white, but I'm just giving an idea). At times I was feeling desperate for answers, answers which would be the right ones and for someone to show me the path to follow. The truth is: you have to know yourself and know your limits. Only you can feel what you feel and this resonates with Thiago telling you to find your own voice and to know what is your goal or mission in life. Some teachers are honest in telling you "Do not overstudy and know your own pace. Do not try to imitate others and follow everything others say, including teachers themselves. Don't try to push yourself to be ahead your classmates and avoid self defeat if you are lagging behind them".

About the positive curve. I didn't pass the entrance exam in one try. I made multiple attempts in multiple years. But that positive curve did happen. Over the span of some years my scores in the exam did increase. My previous university had an entrance exam with two phases. The first being a 5 hours long multiple choice test. You have to score a minimum number of points to pass the first phase and that score depends on the competition in that year. The second being 3 days, each day having all essay questions. 4h per day. For a long time their formula was to weight the 5 hours long test 50% of the final score, which was kinda absurd to compare one multiple choice test with three essay exams. The second phase, with the essay questions, lasted a total of 12 hours (4h + 4h + 4h) and made up for the remaining 50% of the final score. It was a really unfair formula. In the year that I passed, some brilliant mind decided to cut out the multiple choice test from the final score, making it weight 0%. It was also the same year that I came to realize how anxiety was killing my scores. (to avoid confusion, the decision to change the formula was made the year before the exam)

Just one caveat: the positive curve thing doesn't necessarily means that life is going to project you upwards and beyond. It's not that simple. I did mention that I failed multiple times at college and dropped out. Thiago himself spent years at Blizzard and he didn't climb up to be a director or even higher at Blizzard. He left before that and Blizzard did suffer a crisis too.

When Thiago is talking about not taking a closed door as a personal offense this reminds me of some experiences that I've had at college. I had a colleague who finished the same degree program I was enrolled in and continued on his science path towards a masters degree. In the middle of the masters there is a thing called "qualifying exam". He told me that one of the professors was very critic of his work. At one point this colleague of mine told me that he felt insulted, as if the professor was trying to demoralize his hard work. In the end, he understood that the critics weren't direct at him, but at his work. Science is pedantic and it is for a reason. Science is strict, rigid, rigorous and it has to be because it's about setting up foundations which last for a long time. I didn't attend his qualifying exam, but I did attend another college's exam. At one point a professor said "Try to have better foundations on physic models and equations" (I don't remember the phrase exactly). I felt the chills when that professor said that. After the exam was over, she was compulsively crying. By the way, she was approved.

I imagine myself in that situation. Thiago said that his mentor at Ubisoft, Fernando, told him that his work wasn't up to their standards. So, it's easy to take that as a personal offense. Some people can feel pressured by that in a positive or a negative way. It depends on a lot of factors. You see, ego is a thing in all persons, regardless of a disorder. To understand how you feel under pressure and under criticism is a way to evolve, to grow. That's one point where I'd say that Thiago is ahead of me, because that's one thing I've to get better at. All this goes back to the word "humility". To lack humility severely hinders one ability to learn. This is what I've came to learn by studying narcissism.

When I think about game dev, the market can be very rigorous in what works and what doesn't. The gaming community can be brutal and sometimes much more than what Thiago said about feedback on forums. To develop a game may not have the same strict parameters as we have in science, but ultimately, it's about success in life. It's my personal belief that passion, hard work, dedication, applies to anything in life. I have no idea how an interview is, how much pressure there is in this game dev environment. The academic path can be brutal too and I've read multiple articles regarding students who reached the PhD title just to find themselves facing closed doors, no opportunities, much like the path towards game dev. I find it interesting how my path lead to similar discoveries as in Thiago's path, although it was a completely different path. You see, he followed a path unrelated to science and we both reached the same conclusions about life. Interesting no?

In my site I took the time to read and comment on Mark Rosewater's lessons about 20 years of making magic. Many of his lessons relate to ego, narcissism and psychology quite nicely. Mark talks about learning from mistakes and it's strangely familiar to me. Some people do learn from toxic relationships and grow while others keep repeating the same mistakes. As for me, I can't say that trying to get far away from level design or even dropping out of college were mistakes. It depends on how you look at them. Another lesson learned from multiple mistakes at college: I don't have to wait to learn. Or, in different words, I don't have to wait for someone to teach me. Calculus 3 has a pre-requisite of calculus 2, but I have failed calculus 2 multiple times. At one point I thought to myself "Why am I waiting to pass calculus 2? The library is free. Anybody can grab the book, open it and read it." There are professors who specialize in fields which are left for the final year of college and, again, I asked myself "Why do I have to wait to reach the final year, attend to that damn subject's class, to finally meet that professor? Their office is there, open and any student can contact them if they want to. Why do I have to be frozen by this shame of being a freshman?". You don't have to wait for something to happen to do something else if there isn't a preferred order to them.

I think that had I not learned about narcissism, ego, personality disorders, cognitive processes, etc. I could have fallen into a serious trap and experienced post traumatic stress, burnout or depression. Because many things made sense and they all also relate to how I failed to learn programming before. Failed in calculus and physics exams. How I had to admit that I was not ready to a career not only in level design, but almost anything really. To be honest, nobody is ever ready in the sense of knowing it all beforehand. Life exists to be lived and to live means a process of failures, successes and learning. All this stuff related to disorders and narcissism are unrelated to game dev or design. But, ultimately, game design relates to ego and there must be thousands of stories out there of game developers who suffered trauma, stress and whatnot. At least now I'm more aware to all of it. Maybe you are not suffering from depression or something, but some coworker is and to be aware to it makes life better. By recognizing your own shortcomings you can develop better skills in case there is someone asking for your help.

One belief that I had: you first have to learn the language before moving to a country which speaks a different language. Not true. Life is not a straight path and also, often there isn't the right sequence of events. How many people move without knowing the language beforehand? Millions and it can be because your dad or you got a new job, because of war, some political crisis, poverty or even because you took the risk yourself. To have too much expectations, too many false assumptions, to expect everything to go right all the time, to expect everything to always go wrong, to hold onto exaggeratedly high / low standards, can even be a sign of some disorder. This is specially true for all personality disorders in general.

I may have learned to be more humble with all this reading about narcissism. I was thinking "What if I really need more income and level design isn't quite cutting it?". In the past I would reject this right away, but now I can accept "I'd happily accept to work in a kitchen if required". I still want to learn more physics and math even after abandoning my past degree program. Would I be good at private teaching in case life throws me this? Why not? And if there is some fear telling me to not do it, then I'll have to overcome this fear right? All this may have to do with what I saw in college: graduate students having to sell cup cakes, chocolates, offering private class sessions, to survive. I once watched Asian Boss interview a north korean (Chul-eun Lee) who defected the North Korean regime and was talking that some of the things in North Korea aren't wrong by themselves. He was telling that South Korean society is also full of distorted beliefs and that he wanted to work on anything to gain life experience, not caring about reputation or money. I was like "Boy, I wish I could sit down with him somewhere and just talk about anything with him".

Thiago Klafke commented on how his best work was done for passion, not for money. This rings for me. I ended up practicing english and learning better by writing a site of level design and all this research about mental health made me read and listen a lot. Reading novels was one of my biggest pitfalls in school. As strange as it may seem, I happened to get high grades in essays because I would read newspapers or news sites. I feel that I improved in english because of my obsession with researching certain subjects. It also had the effect of making me see everything through a new lens, including relationships and emotions themselves. I really hope that writing skills pays off in the future. I've had more than one professor at university telling the classroom how it was a shame that students of applied sciences in general have poor writing skills. Like, meteorologists who excel at calculus and physics but fail to write proper reports or even fail at geography (names of cities, states, wrongly name provinces, etc).

This all made me learn more about prejudice itself. Like, there are some phrases that we think are good to say to a depressed person, but they aren't. In their minds they see "You don't understand how I feel!" and the truth is: they are right. So a person is restless and hyperactive, we may think "it's ADHD". Wait a minute! There are people with ADHD who can be more focused and more calm than people without ADHD! So this other person is so evil, cruel, it must be a psychopath. Not necessarily. If you look up for the description of antisocial personality, to be evil is not a diagnose criteria. I've read a bit about forensic psychiatry and, regarding evilness and psychopaths, I can't go much deeper. Except for saying that people are much more complicated than blatantly stating that a certain disorder is what causes a person to be a despicable criminal or vice-versa. Does all of this applies to game dev? I think yes. I mean, how often do we judge based on stereotypes? Even if 90% of all girls like a certain type of game, that's not 100%. Statistics themselves can be biased and all statistics textbooks include at least one example of bias. I too found myself making biased judgements of player bases and games. I could even say that when I design a level I can very well be biased and make assumptions which turn out to be wrong. Which is exactly one of the most valuable lessons that I've learned from Mark Rosewater. We can't be narrow or even closed minded. We have to be open to new perspectives.

I was going to insult a certain person, but after watching Thiago's video I decided against it. That person has his or her own journey and I'm not involved in it. I'm not a "life forecaster" and I have no idea how that person's journey is going to be like. They'll have to walk whatever path they are following, not me. This particular person had narcissistic traits which were on a level much higher than the whole community I mentioned in the beginning combined. But narcissism was just one piece because there were multiple other things going on, comorbities. That person happened to cross my path many years after the aforementioned community closed down. This person had some goals in his or her life and, in particular, one of the goals was the same as mine. Coincidence? To understand how a narcissistic mind works is one path to not take every attack, or even a door that closes to stick with Thiago's example, as personal.

This whole research combined with the hatred that I had towards more than one person contains another lesson: when you hate something and this hate is very strong. There is something about yourself in what you hate. Your hatred may have the wrong target. Your hatred may be unfounded. Your hatred may be prejudice. Whichever the case is, hate means something. It conceals a hidden message. You see (copying Mark Rosewater's idiosyncrasy), at one point in life I remember hating level design because it was drawing my attention away from studying to the university's entrance exams! How more ironic can it be? Isn't there a quote which states that love and hate are two sides of the same coin? Somehow life taught me that in the most unexpected way!

In the beginning of the video Thiago is telling this thread of avoiding the negative emotions and the darkness. This is strikingly similar to what Mark Rosewater tells about learning from mistakes. I've had a Calculus teacher tell me that to learn mathematics you have to make mistakes. So this whole journey taught me that I had a belief which was "Mistakes should be avoided at all costs!". Why? Because my other belief was "Because we can predict them". The truth is: the negative emotions associated to mistakes cannot be controlled. What you can do, however, is to take an action about what you are going to do once the mistake happens. It's up to you to decide what to do. You know what is ironic in here? I was enrolled in meteorology and it's a science related to forecasting the weather! There is a whole field dedicated to studying chaos and through highly advanced theorems we can prove that some systems cannot have their future states predicted with perfect accuracy and this explains why meteorologists can never be perfectly accurate about the weather tomorrow.

Mark Rosewater has a lesson which is: evolution is tied to taking risks. To not take any risks is a risk in itself! That's how he explains how magic has changed over the course of decades. How does his lesson relate to my previously mentioned belief? When you try to avoid making mistakes at all costs, that's a mistake in itself! Or, by adopting his words: The biggest mistake one could make is to never make a mistake! In Thiago's video he talks about pushing yourself and knowing your limits. I've read multiple articles about successful athletes and self-awareness is always a key in all of them.

Thiago is telling that people need mentors and I can assure that everything I said in the previous paragraphs has had mentors involved. There were professors, doctors, clinicians, parents, friends, enemies, random people, who all did teach something. Thiago Klafke included in this list. It was and is a cumulative process.

References (english only)

• We Interviewed A Former Elite North Korean Spy - Asian Boss
• Getting my DREAM job in the GAMES INDUSTRY was... HARD! - Thiago Klafke
• Mark Rosewater - Wikipedia
• I'm probably mentioning things from dozens and dozens of sources and I can't remember them all. My other articles contains most of them.

References (portuguese only)

• 10 regras que mudaram a minha vida - Susane Ribeiro (I've certainly used more of her videos, but I don't remember which ones exactly.)
• O motivo de fazer ITA - Susane Ribeiro