Being a Level Designer at Star Citizen

A level designer on Star Citizen has a lot of unique challenges and difficulties you need to navigate due to the macro scale of Star Citizen's gameplay loop. Our responsibilities are centred around building a vast environment that emphasises the varied sandbox nature of Star Citizen. Anything from systemic AI behaviour to players bringing nukes will have to be taken into account when proposing a new location. We want to give players room to use every tool at their disposal while still maintaining a sense of order. Areas have to be vast, yet up close still maintain a level of polish and attention to the micro scale so that the handcrafted nature of the universe shines through.

 

At CIG, level designers are responsible for making sure they actively communicate progress with other disciplines. During my time here I've worked closely with coworkers from a wide variety of departments, like systems, tech, animation, VFX, art and sound. We are often the department where everything comes together, and we assist other departments in making sure implementation is done properly while still focusing on our level design-specific tasks. Because of this you foster a lot of personal connections in other departments, which makes communication flow smoother in future mandates.

 

At Star Citizen you benefit from having experience with a vast variety of games and genres. The game features elements of MMO design, exploration, military simulation, vehicular gameplay, flight sim and action combat, so a holistic approach to your work which encompasses lessons learnt from a large variety of games is necessary to ensure all the different gameplay styles and systems blend together in a cohesive way.