The Medal of Honor developer shows how the level design sausage is made

Video game enthusiasts rarely see games in anything other than their finished, shipped state – or something very close. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but video games are not fully rendered and pulled out of the console ready for use. There are many invisible steps in development that players just don’t see.

On Twitter Saturday

Alexa Kim, Senior Game Designer at Respawn Entertainment, pulled the curtain back on some of the development she was involved in for the recently released virtual reality game Medal of Honor: Over and Over. In particular, Kim named the prototyping phase of level design, which is the “function” of a particular level, she said. The tweet has since gone viral, and players are amazed at the differences between the prototype – called block outs – and the finished product.

On the thread, Kim said she was responsible for hiding the prototypes and then adding the gameplay. Adjustments are made from there: “In my case, this was a shooting game so it was about player movement versus AI movement, lines of sight, cover, etc.,” Kim said on Twitter. “This level is playable in this state, but not polished for the eyes.”

Once the level works in terms of gameplay, art will be added. The art on Kim’s level, she said, comes from Virtuos Games development studio, which has been involved in games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Dark Souls: Remastered, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. It takes care of everything from game development to art production. according to his website

. Kim said she “spruced up” the gameplay during a back and forth between the artists and their team.

Kim followed her Twitter thread with a YouTube video posted on Sunday with a comment from the developer Medal of Honor: Furthermore‘s “Back on the Ground” level. (You can see it embedded above.) She walks through the level with the player and describes the process behind decisions made during development. For those looking for more information, Kim’s have another video on youtubein which she talks about someone else Medal of Honor: Over and Over Level called “Welcome to Norway.”