There are a lot of stories I can tell you to motivate, why I'm interested into a discussion of this topic. Maybe the most accessible is the one from Arthur C. Clarke's novelization of "2001 - A Space Odyssey". Unlike Kubrick's masterpiece of a scifi mystery movie, Clarke's novelization puts a lot of effort into almost over-explaining various aspects of the movie. As interpreted by Clarke, the story ends with the surviving astronaut Dr. Bowman flying into an alien portal and landing in a hotel room. The astronaut realizes upon further inspection immediately, that the hotel room is something created by aliens and in no way of earthly origin. The books in the room have only unrecognizable gibberish being written in them, the phone receiver doesn't give a signal when picked up and drawers in the furniture are immovable. Bowman later finds out that the aliens actually created the room, based upon a set from a transmission of a TV show they intercepted.

There is something very similar to that in video games. Analogously, many games try to recreate aspects of reality, but due to constraints in development, these recreations have their own weird architectural rules, which unveil themselves upon further inspection. In most cases there aren't any better alternatives given anyways), I want instead to take the chance and discuss these design decisions in the context of immersion. Eventually this might help us creating more immersive themes and levels for video games. Be aware: The design tropes I will mention are in no way supposed to be bad design decisions. In a lot of cases they are even necessary and can't be easily circumvented.

At the moment the following design stereotypes come to mind:

Level boundaries:

The common agreement is, that invisible walls should be avoided at all costs. Instead it is better to tell the player that he can't go outside of the level because of an obstacle. The most common obstacle in video games are rocky walls. Even going so far that most levels I remember are actually situated in canyons. Obstacles posed by human infrastructure and architecture are also possible, such as a building or a fence, however they should always give the impression that even translated into a real-life situation they would still be a serious obstacles. Sealing a narrow street with just a car wreck would be for instance a bad design decision, because you'd be asking yourself why you just can't jump over it?. Although I must admit, any professional free climbers might think about rock walls the same. ^^

Non-homotopic level of detail:

Ever noticed in games with open levels, that important areas, where the player is supposed to reside for a longer time, are more detailed than the rest? "Gee, that area I'm driving to looks so lovely. Surely I'm not supposed to fight any enemies there".

Level linearity:

The most basic design decision encountered in most video games. You can't take a path you're not supposed to, actually transforming entire fictive cities into a giant concrete tunnel.

Lack of interactivity:

This effects linear games as much as open world games. In linear games, the lack of interactivity hinders you amongst other things from taking paths, you're not supposed to take. In open world games, this hinders you from getting into areas you are not supposed to go (e.g. entering houses). Lack of interactivity is however a much broader concept, it applies whenever you are supplied with tools, which would allow in a real-life situation to manipulate your surroundings. E.g. "There are trees everywhere in this level and I've seen an axe lying around near the abandoned car park. Whenever I myself reloading a weapon, I see that I actually have hands. So what could possibly hinder me from taking the axe and cutting down the trees?".

Relevant posts: [1], [2]

Performance-oriented level architecture:

Ever noticed that a level is created basically in a way, resembling several large and separated rooms, in which the sight on the other rooms is prohibited? That's done so that the engine can fade out what's happening in the other rooms, effectively boosting the performance of the game.

Within walking distance:

The name of this concept might be not the most suitable, but describes the best how a lot of levels are designed. Basically, whenever you want to go from point A to B, there is always an option available, which allows you to finish your journey within less than 5 minutes. In non-vehicle based games, this necessary leads to the fact, that every interesting point of the level lies within walking distance.

Relevant posts: [1]

One thing I'm questioning myself, is whether or not the significantly higher movement speed of a player also has a subtle, unconscious influence on the level architecture. I can't tell for now, but if you have anything to add, please let me know.

Anyways, I collected these tropes and concepts from my own personal experience, so some of they might not be the best formulated, might overlap with other concepts, might even be better described with more broader terms or even are part of a hierarchy of tropes. But these proto-tropes give us something to discuss about. It would be great if we could further discuss about them and add much more to the list. So if you noticed further level design tropes in video games, or you anything to add, feel free to share it in this thread.

Edit: Some more contributions to the list.

Non-functional infrastructure and architecture (as pointed out by Stainless):

Infrastructure and architecture which doesn't make sense from an engineering point of view. For instance: Buildings without a proper design to account for water supply, lacking of any sanitary installations like bathrooms, etc.

Relevant posts: [1], [2]

Level boundaries:

The common agreement is, that invisible walls should be avoided at all costs. Instead it is better to tell the player that he can't go outside of the level because of an obstacle. The most common obstacle in video games are rocky walls. Even going so far that most levels I remember are actually situated in canyons. Obstacles posed by human infrastructure and architecture are also possible, such as a building or a fence, however they should always give the impression that even translated into a real-life situation they would still be a serious obstacles. Sealing a narrow street with just a car wreck would be for instance a bad design decision, because you'd be asking yourself why you just can't jump over it?. Although I must admit, any professional free climbers might think about rock walls the same. ^^

Non-homotopic level of detail:

Ever noticed in games with open levels, that important areas, where the player is supposed to reside for a longer time, are more detailed than the rest? "Gee, that area I'm driving to looks so lovely. Surely I'm not supposed to fight any enemies there".

Level linearity:

The most basic design decision encountered in most video games. You can't take a path you're not supposed to, actually transforming entire fictive cities into a giant concrete tunnel.

Lack of interactivity:

This effects linear games as much as open world games. In linear games, the lack of interactivity hinders you amongst other things from taking paths, you're not supposed to take. In open world games, this hinders you from getting into areas you are not supposed to go (e.g. entering houses). Lack of interactivity is however a much broader concept, it applies whenever you are supplied with tools, which would allow in a real-life situation to manipulate your surroundings. E.g. "There are trees everywhere in this level and I've seen an axe lying around near the abandoned car park. Whenever I myself reloading a weapon, I see that I actually have hands. So what could possibly hinder me from taking the axe and cutting down the trees?".

Performance-oriented level architecture:

Ever noticed that a level is created basically in a way, resembling several large and separated rooms, in which the sight on the other rooms is prohibited? That's done so that the engine can fade out what's happening in the other rooms, effectively boosting the performance of the game.

Within walking distance:

There's one major drawback of your consideration. Are you talking about simulations or games ?

Many people forgot that a game is defined by rules and limitations and level design need to meet these requirements and nothing else. If you talk about interactive movies/novles or simulations, this might change, but as long as you are talking about games, then this are no tropes but valuable tools to implement the rulesset.

Think of soccer or chess, both games with a very simple level design. Yes you can leave the playfield, throw the figures around, but then the game will be aborted and you are no longer playing it.

If you take it to a more realistic scenario like a battlefield , then the playground just needs to meet its rule. Eg BF4, if you leave the battlefield, the rule is, that the game will be over for you in 10 seconds. I never saw it as problematic or immersion breaking to get killed this way, it is a rule and I accepted it.

PS: The real issue with modern games is, that many try to be everything. An open world simulation, including an interactive movie while delivering innovative game mechanism which will make it a killer multiplayer game.

One of the things I really, really despise is artistic design.

Imagine an underground dwarven barracks. In order for it to be fit for purpose it has to have things like toilets, water supply, workshops, dormitories, food hall, armoury, etc etc etc

So as an engineer, designing a level based on one would be fun and simple. You start with a piece of paper and go. This needs to be close to this, but as far away from that as possible. This needs to be near the entrance, this needs to away from the entrance. And you eventually come up with a design that would work in a real world.

Then you give the same job to an artist and you get great vast halls with statues and pillars and water falls and glowing crystals and .......

No place for the dwarves to shit, no place to sleep, half a dozen goblins could wander in and kill everyone in their sleep... aaahhhhhhh

Hate it.

You see it in city design as well.

If I had to climb a spiral staircase around a tower to get to the city walls, then march around the city walls to another tower, then climb down the stairs, go through two guarded doors, go around a house that appears to have been built in the middle of the road, just to get a beer, I would move to a city designed by engineers.

Game things that represent things in real life should be desinged to work in real life as well as the game.

Not doing this breaks the suspension of disbelief you want as a game designer much more than technical limitations.

There's one major drawback of your consideration. Are you talking about simulations or games ?

Many people forgot that a game is defined by rules and limitations and level design need to meet these requirements and nothing else. If you talk about interactive movies/novles or simulations, this might change, but as long as you are talking about games, then this are no tropes but valuable tools to implement the rulesset.

Think of soccer or chess, both games with a very simple level design. Yes you can leave the playfield, throw the figures around, but then the game will be aborted and you are no longer playing it.

If you take it to a more realistic scenario like a battlefield , then the playground just needs to meet its rule. Eg BF4, if you leave the battlefield, the rule is, that the game will be over for you in 10 seconds. I never saw it as problematic or immersion breaking to get killed this way, it is a rule and I accepted it.

PS: The real issue with modern games is, that many try to be everything. An open world simulation, including an interactive movie while delivering innovative game mechanism which will make it a killer multiplayer game.

In no way I'm suggesting that any of those "tropes" I have listed are actually bad design decisions. I might have also incorrectly called them tropes, calling them stereotypes might probably be more appropriate. The example I mentioned for instance about the "performance oriented level architecture" does in no way imply that the engine of the game is bad. However it does imply, that it's easier and more native to create themes for games based upon the engine, which are centered around indoor themes, rather than outdoor areas. You can still design outdoor themes for this engine, however if you want to assure a good performance of the game, the engine will set tight constraints on how you design and structure these themes.

It's of course more efficient to restrict the actions of the player and interactivity to reinforce the set of rules by the game. I think in no way it would be a fun experience to play a game of soccer with the enemy team suddenly leaving the soccer field, half of your enemy team making a camping trip to the mountains instead of capturing bases in Battlefield or the enemy player ordering his pawns to grow wheat and do pasture on the chess board fields. So of course we could include distractions and mechanisms which have no effect on the core gameplay. But these would be instantly related with a penalty regarding costs in development and players who don't participate in the actual game. So we need to restrain interactivity to make the games work and to ensure a certain degree of effectiveness in design.

But however what I see is, whenever it comes to games with a society-based setting, meaning that you are supposed to be a certain person, with a certain role and certain powers, I often find myself in the situation thinking "If this wouldn't be a game, I actually could do this". It actually doesn't occur for me with abstract games, I never questioned why I can only move tiles vertically and horizontally in 2048. That's because this game never even suggests that there is more to its world than moving tiles vertically or horizontally. But whenever a game tries to convince you that you are more than just a rifle floating in midair, you'll find yourself from time to time being remembered that you are just in a game world.

So what I'm talking here about affects simulators as well as a certain subset of video games.

One of the things I really, really despise is artistic design.

Imagine an underground dwarven barracks. In order for it to be fit for purpose it has to have things like toilets, water supply, workshops, dormitories, food hall, armoury, etc etc etc

So as an engineer, designing a level based on one would be fun and simple. You start with a piece of paper and go. This needs to be close to this, but as far away from that as possible. This needs to be near the entrance, this needs to away from the entrance. And you eventually come up with a design that would work in a real world.

Then you give the same job to an artist and you get great vast halls with statues and pillars and water falls and glowing crystals and .......

No place for the dwarves to shit, no place to sleep, half a dozen goblins could wander in and kill everyone in their sleep... aaahhhhhhh

Hate it.

You see it in city design as well.

If I had to climb a spiral staircase around a tower to get to the city walls, then march around the city walls to another tower, then climb down the stairs, go through two guarded doors, go around a house that appears to have been built in the middle of the road, just to get a beer, I would move to a city designed by engineers.

Game things that represent things in real life should be desinged to work in real life as well as the game.

Not doing this breaks the suspension of disbelief you want as a game designer much more than technical limitations.

Good point you mentioned! Although I don't agree on video game level architecture having always to emulate real functional architecture, but inconsistencies just shouldn't be too obvious. I actually remember an article or reader's letter from a gaming magazine about 10 years ago, pointing out how in a Star Wars game (I think it was Jedi Knight I), Darth Vader's personal room was situated right above a garbage incineration chamber.

No place for the dwarves to shit, no place to sleep, half a dozen goblins could wander in and kill everyone in their sleep... aaahhhhhhh

A lot of video games do this. However, if you've ever attended a good D&D group game with a decent DM, you'll notice that level design in D&D is heavily geared towards pragmaticism, and that's it's often better off having a bunch of worthless 'everyday rooms' than this gigantic pillar in the middle.

The big reason why that is is because the DM has an ongoing ability to affect the narrative of the game, and make use of 'empty rooms' to meet your needs as you see fit.

Several years back, I've initiated an experiment that attempted to motion a video game with 'lesser DMs', essentially, people whose job it would be to modify the game on-the-fly to keep it in-line with the narrative that the players had undergone. I believe this kind of interactive experience has a lot of potential, but the ultimate reason why it failed was this:

You need a 'lesser DM' for roughly every 4-10 players. In a game played by 1M, you'd need roughly 170 000 DMs (more than probably on the payroll?) which is unsustainable.

That being said, there are a lot of players interested in the role of a DM, so if you provided advanced tools for your game that acted 'on-the-fly', you may be able to convert 5% of your game population into lesser DMs. Heck I'd probably be one of them!

Within walking distance:

The name of this concept might be not the most suitable, but describes the best how a lot of levels are designed. Basically, whenever you want to go from point A to B, there is always an option available, which allows you to finish your journey within less than 5 minutes. In non-vehicle based games, this necessary leads to the fact, that every interesting point of the level lies within walking distance.

The ol' Fallout 3 Paradox. How did this wasteland get so... densely populated?

I'm currently struggling with this problem. There is a fine line between Stuff! Everywhere! and a hiking simulator. I don't want either, and I'm not finding the middleground. The game I'm working on is a horror-themed adventure game and it just seems so jam packed. "Where's the windmill I read about in the journal? Literally right over there. Mystery solved."

I'm currently struggling with this problem. There is a fine line between Stuff! Everywhere! and a hiking simulator. I don't want either, and I'm not finding the middleground. The game I'm working on is a horror-themed adventure game and it just seems so jam packed. "Where's the windmill I read about in the journal? Literally right over there. Mystery solved."

I'll confess that I have a similar design decision in a game of my own; I've experimented with a sort of broad, node-based travel, and I think that it does work rather nicely, but I'm worried about the amount of content that it would seem to call for in my case.

A thought that occurs to me is this: What about a map-screen, or some means of fast travel? You read about the windmill, perhaps solve a small puzzle to place it accurately on the map (the journal might mention various directions and landmarks; by pinpointing the landmarks on the map and indicating the correct directions, you end up with the appropriate placement), and a new marker is added. You can then click on the marker to travel to the locale of the windmill.

A thought that occurs to me is this: What about a map-screen, or some means of fast travel? You read about the windmill, perhaps solve a small puzzle to place it accurately on the map (the journal might mention various directions and landmarks; by pinpointing the landmarks on the map and indicating the correct directions, you end up with the appropriate placement), and a new marker is added. You can then click on the marker to travel to the locale of the windmill.

I do like this idea. There was some old crime investigation game that used time as a game mechanic. You could fast travel anywhere, but it cost you time, and you only had a week or so to solve the whole thing. I think you may have kicked me out of this rut!

Fallout 1 had a similar "overland" map you could traverse since it took weeks to get some places.

Eventually this might help us creating more immersive themes and levels for video games.

Many of the things you list don't really hurt the immersion. Before you started to think whether you could use the empty barrel to jump on that fence and jump that awning so you can walk the rooftops to a building that had the door locked the immersion was already broken.

When you are traversing the environment looking for where they have used a gimmicky wall or wall-like structure to limit visibility and give occlusion culling a chance you are not immersed whether you can find any or not.

Indeed the more you know about game development, design and business the harder it is to relax and sink in to a game world while you are distracted by various things that peak your professional interest.

The immersion is not about "I am me, the player. I am here in this environment that I can freely interact with like I would in real world." At least it's impossible to build a game around this goal.

To me immersion is about assuming the role of the character and getting adapted into the game world rules however arbitrary they might be. "Oh shit, I will die if one more zombie bites me and I know I can't walk past this one because the corridor is so narrow he will always be able to grab me. I don't want to die. I don't have many bullets left but I have to spend some here..." If they weren't immersed they would just try it since they saved the game 9 seconds ago and can always try again.

I often find myself in the situation thinking "If this wouldn't be a game, I actually could do this". It actually doesn't occur for me with abstract games, I never questioned why I can only move tiles vertically and horizontally in 2048. That's because this game never even suggests that there is more to its world than moving tiles vertically or horizontally. But whenever a game tries to convince you that you are more than just a rifle floating in midair, you'll find yourself from time to time being remembered that you are just in a game world.

The addiction to high fidelity becomes a limiting factor of it’s own. All that high quality content is very expensive to make. Development of a AAA title keeps large teams of specialists busy for years. Millions of investments are at stake in a hit-driven business. Smart money looks for franchise potential. An environment like that doesn’t promote taking chances.
Worse, for the sake of quality you rely on content that is very inflexible. Static level geometry, baked lighting, hours of canned animations, hand-animated or performed by human actors, thousands of lines of text has to be voice-acted, too. Don’t forget the lip syncing! In a fierce competition you can’t afford the player to miss out on millions worth of content just ’cause you want to provide some room for meaningful decisions. So the real challenge is to fake the player into believing he’s in control, when in truth every turn of events has been carefully planned and scripted to maximise asset-use. Interaction is predetermined or insignificant.

There’s always a balance to maintain between player and authorial control. If movie-like aesthetics is your goal the current approach makes sense but let’s not forget that photo realism isn’t required to create immersion. Our mind is capable of forming a mental concept of things not actually present. Media is engaging the recipient on a creative and emotional level by guiding his imagination. On the surface books offer only language encoded in little symbols but the story that unfolds is not constrained by that. In comic books the action takes place between the frames. Our mind provides closure to missing elements. We build an internal model of the fictional world based on the input we receive. As long as we can interpret and integrate it effortlessly the degree of abstraction does not matter. But all parts of a piece of fiction have to fall into place or immersion is broken. Of course there’s room for surprises but they have to make sense in hindsight. What happens has to accord to the laws of the imaginary, second world. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken, and you’re back in the primary world.
In modern video games, the contrast of pseudo-realism and the emptiness behind it’s surface makes suspension of disbelief hard to maintain. Welcome to Uncanny Valley!

(This is from a rant that I wrote a while ago but I think it fits this discussion, so excuse me for not trying to reword it)