Trying Your Hand at Level Design?

Utawoutau asks: "As a student nearing graduation with high interest yet no game industry experience I have been taking a serious look at the position of Level Designer. In order to apply for such a position of course, I would need an impressive portfolio. I am aware that a number of games, Neverwinter Nights for example, come packaged with level development tools and that a number of other games have tools (official or not) that are readily available on the Internet. I am interested in hearing opinions from others that have experimented with the level design tools for a number of games as to what they found the easiest, the most fun, the most in depth, and the most impressive to work with. In particular, I am interested in a game whose tools strike a good balance between all four of the above criteria."

Comments

Re:I'm not a game programmer

[The Clockwork Troll]

Why? The companies can't make much money at it. The value just isn't there to the consumer.

This is why increasing numbers of companies are tapping into streams of recurring revenue: Everquest, XBox Live, etc.

The old model was: loss leading console hardware, profit-generating games

The new model is: loss leading hardware and games, profit generating subscriptions.