• they/them

I play games and make mods, I sometimes ramble and talk about life stuff.



As a level designer, and an adult person overall, I noticed how expectations can be some of the biggest stressers, even if they may not be in malicious intent. I'll be touching this subject in both a level design and a general real life perspective.

Expectations in level design and art

I think we all had this moment, where we saw, played or listened to something we really enjoyed, and the quality or style of something has formed a feeling of expectation on our side. It makes us happy, when new things released by the creator hit our comfort zone, but whenever they step out of it, we start to feel like something is off, often feeling at least a slight level of disappointment.

This can be highly frustrating for someone, who makes games or just general art for a living, and has created a very successful and beloved product. Expectations are high, and people are afraid of letting their audience down. What if the maker is known for making serious and very deep games, but then they also release something that's more lighthearted or shitposty? That's pretty much a 180 turn, and in some cases it might strike some wild discussions.

This is a huge reason why I'm not a big fan of hyping up my own projects, because in the end, level design is my hobby, and I do the vast majority of it just for fun, and I don't want to feel pressured to do things, or to meet some arbitrary goals. I'm a person who in terms of design, likes to try out new ideas, and usually keeps distance from common level tropes.

I totally get that some people hope that a person's work is gonna be great, I did that too a few times in the past, I'm not perfect in any way. I just think that sometimes it's nice to check out things with a fresh mind, and to not compare it to any other work from the same person, or even different games from other people. In my case, it helped me enjoy some things a lot more, because instead of thinking about stuff unrelated to this specific piece of art, I could pay more attention to the details in this work, which is something that sometimes may take a couple tries to appreciate, especially in level design.

Expectations in real life

Of course this is not limited to only art, but real life overall. There's both good and bad sides to it. I think in some cases it's reasonable to expect things from others, for example them being a good person, but there's definitely situations in which it makes doing certain stuff a lot harder.

People often like to compare individuals to other people, forming a set of standards often based off of it. They are helpful for the baseline, but we often forget that every human functions a bit differently, and sometimes standards have to be altered a bit to fit within their comfort. Not to mention, some people like to throw out stereotypes, by saying what you should do, because X people do so. That's especially prominent with gender stereotypes and I can't count on my hand how many times either me, or someone I know had to hear that we should know something because "that's what guys do", which is just comparing us to other people based off of stereotypes. Gendering tasks is pointless, and I'll leave it at it.

Not to mention - job hunting, ahhh... everyone's "favorite" thing. From my experience, it has always felt like a complete dice roll, and you either get it or not. Imagine being hyped up to start work right after finishing school, but when attempting to apply somewhere, you're constantly being rejected, because people already expect you to know everything, and often they don't really have the time to even properly get you going. One of the reasons why a lot of people say their 30s are much better than their 20s, is that when they hit adult age, they're quickly expected, if not forced by life situations to "grow up". This for many people is a huge amount of stress, and it often takes multiple years to clean up the mess.

Anyway, I'm kinda rambling at this point and I just wanted to let out some frustration, in both the level design and irl perspective. I hope the world will do a much better job at preparing people to adulthood, and making sure that people don't pressure hard working people too much. Also it's okay if your favorite artist or creator makes something you don't quite enjoy as much, not everything is gonna be everyone's cup of tea, as long as you're nice and respectful about it.


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