We will consider the organization of the process for creating match-3 levels, but this can be adapted to any other process for organizing the work of game designers, whether it's general game design or narrative design, with its own specific features, of course.
We need to determine what tasks our team must solve, which tasks are critically important for the business, and what budget we have. The organization of processes will depend on our understanding of the answers to these questions.
Team Tasks
- Releasing new levels at the end of the game — say 25 levels per week.
- Constant monitoring of metrics for existing levels.
- Creation and updating of level design documentation.
- Preparation of levels and hypotheses for conducting A/B tests on levels.
- Creation of test levels with new elements.
I have highlighted only the most important tasks; usually, there are more. For example, you might have special content where the player can play special levels, and you need to constantly add new levels there. Or perhaps you pay more attention to game stability and write automated tests. Or maybe your level designers participate in the process of creating new elements and work in a team with programmers, artists, and animators. Perhaps you actively use AI, and someone needs to support and develop it.
I have worked with a large number of teams, and each time the set of tasks was different. What remained constant was the task of releasing the required number of new levels with the required quality on time.
Roles in the Team
It is critically important for any project to have a person who will be responsible for the quality of levels in the project. I consider this role the most important. What should such a person do? They must establish and monitor the level design style; they are responsible for ensuring that the levels in the game are interesting, diverse, and monetizable, that they comply with accepted rules, and that players will find your game interesting to play. And most importantly, that all new levels will be in the same style.
For example, you hired a new designer, and they like to make levels using 6 colors, making the game very "tight" and difficult for the player to find matches, while your established rule is to use 6 colors on levels very rarely, say "never." Who on your team will find the problem? QA? The project producer? Another designer?
I recommend designating the monitoring of level metrics as a separate role. You must regularly monitor the difficulty of your levels, be sure that no impassable levels without bonuses have appeared in the game, or levels after which players leave the game more often than usual, and that levels planned as paywalls indeed show good monetization metrics. This is the second critically important role in the team.
Do you have many tasks, many directions? For each task, define a person who will be responsible for its execution. This could be a one-person orchestra who does everything, or perhaps the roles will rotate. It is important to define priorities. Critically important tasks for the business are done first, no matter what; the team must understand this and not engage in A/B testing of levels if there is a risk of not releasing new levels.
Team Size
This is the simplest question, which you can answer very easily. Calculate the average time to create one level. Let's say, on average, a designer makes one level to final quality in 1–1.5 hours. Thus, in one working week, they will make at least 25 levels. We remember that there are vacations and illnesses, so your minimum team composition is 2 people.
Do the same for other tasks, assess the risks (illnesses, vacations, employee growth), and you will get the size of your team. It seems simple. But as always, there is some "but"; managers will understand me. Over time, you get more and more roles, you add new, important responsibilities, you develop your project, and now you have 5, 10, 15 thousand levels, and you understand that in addition to 25 new levels per week, you need to rework the initial levels.
The more levels in your game, the larger your team of level designers should be.
Fault Tolerance
The level design department is critically important for a match-3 project. A project can exist without an artist or without a programmer for a month or more, but if you don't have new levels for a month, your project will most likely die; you will lose your most valuable audience, which is at the end of the game and most likely brings you the most money.
You must organize the work process in such a way that the absence of any member of the level design team does not affect the production of critically important content. Key strategies:
Duplication of Roles
It is important to remember one principle — there should be no irreplaceable people on your team. Is there only one team member who knows how to add new levels to the game? You are a hostage. Not of a specific person, but of the situation. Make sure that at least a few other team members can perform the critical duties of another person for the company. Yes, they may do it worse, or they may not have a global vision, but they can do it.
Redundant Team Size
If creating levels is a critical thing for you, then you should always have a surplus of level designers. Work on having an influx of new designers into your team; these could be Juniors, completely without experience, who will be trained. Set up a training process, assign people as mentors, and designate this responsibility as a separate role for them. Or you can hire designers with experience from other companies. Yes, this is painful, because their level design style may differ radically, and not everyone can quickly adapt, but sometimes this can bring new knowledge and great benefits.
Documentation
Everything should be wrapped in documentation, and your team must keep it up to date. Yes, this is not creative work, and someone doesn't like it, but it is a necessity. Level design rules? Working with level difficulty? Examples of good and bad levels? Description of work processes? Having correctly compiled and up-to-date documentation can save you a lot of time in the future.
Outsourcing
Creating new levels is very easy to organize through outsourcing. There are pros and cons here:
- Pros: Speed — you don't need to spend time training new people.
- Pros: Scalability — they can quickly adapt to changes in volume.
- Pros: Diverse experience and expertise — outsourcers work with a large number of different projects and can suggest what can be improved.
- Cons: Dependence on the reliability of the outsource partner — plan your deadlines with an additional buffer and carefully choose a partner.
- Cons: Risks of confidential information leakage — sign NDAs, additionally stipulate what information you do not want to disclose, perhaps the very fact of working with you.
- Cons: Communication difficulties — you need to adapt your processes so that you do not spend extra time on communication or transferring builds and documentation.
Team Management
For a team to work like clockwork, it needs a manager. Ideally, someone from the designers takes on this role and develops in this direction because they know the specifics, know the problems and difficulties that each team member faces. You need to ensure the growth of specialists (by the way, level designers make good game designers), control deadlines, hire people, and improve processes — there are many challenges.
Conclusion
So, we have reviewed the key aspects of organizing the work of a level design team using a match-3 project as an example. It becomes obvious that effective level creation is not just a creative process, but a clearly structured system that affects your game's success. From defining tasks and assigning roles to calculating team size and ensuring fault tolerance — each element contributes to uninterrupted content delivery.
For match-3 projects, halting new level releases risks losing loyal audiences. Strategies like role duplication, maintaining redundant team capacity, documentation, and outsourcing become essential necessities. Building such a team is continuous and requires attention, but establishes the foundation for long-term project success.