Weapons or AI? The level design needs a bit of work, sure, but the core mechanics are
Hes cut off. The same weapon designer who wasnt willing to allow other designers to work on his weapons are now calling out problems with level design gameplay.
Must have struck a nerve.
He admits there are some issues, but he stresses that this area has been tested with focus groups and is consistently high scoring. He also brings up that this level has many other issues and that focusing on an area that is high scoring is bad use of the level designers time. There are more pressing issues that need to be resolved first.
Theres a lot of back and fourth. Both of their bosses are also here, interjecting what they think should be done next. Suddenly, its open season on the level design, which he must now defend, but his boss and the weapons designer arent having it.
In the previous game, the level design would have handled this! And I know how easy it is to change this
eeeeeeeeee. More highly charged emotional arguments attempting to assault a perfectly reasonable and logical response. They heard him as saying I dont want to do this, when what he plainly said was Doing this is a poor use of time and inefficient based on my many years of experience doing this very thing.
The other designers smell blood in the water. The emotional echoes carry forward into more discussions, each designer ready to jump in and start punching and kicking with fists and feet of design theory and On the last game I worked on
Hes having none of it. Its no use. He simply listens to everyone and waits for them to cool down. He knows that most of what is being said cant be addressed anyway. He answers with terse responses, as anything more is liable to open up in long winded discussions where other, apparently more experienced designers tell him he hasnt a clue on what hes talking about.
He thinks about the lake he ran past not more than a half hour ago. He thinks about all the games hes made that have sold more than this one, and that were more popular. He wonders why people dont listen as much as they should.