The creation of a new world. Hourences put emphasis on how important it is to have a good beginning and a clear one. One of his ideas is a checklist and a flow chart. In here I'd comment that sometimes people can become stuck in that stage for too long. I can't diagnose anybody but if at that stage the person or boss is over-preoccupied with schedules and charts of any kind, it may be a symptom of some type of fear or excessive perfectionism. If the person is stubborn, kind of unrelenting in his views and does not accept changes or criticism, it may be a personality disorder. On the other side, if the plan is always changed over and over and there is never a clear direction, it could be some form of executive function impairment.

One of the things related to executive functioning is decision making and if the person cannot decide and keeps having second thoughts, we have a problem. Hourences said that the planning stage should be crucial in making it clear where to go and where to begin at. I agree with that, but I can also see that sometimes that "exactness" is a problem because there is never a perfect plan to begin with. What we cannot do is to give excuses to not plan ahead of time, in which case I'm agreeing with Hourences again. He called "Restart Syndrome", when the design is literally restarted over and over. This could be a symptom of Obsessive Compulse Disorder. I really can't tell when it's the case of OCD and when it's not though. The best I can do is to be suspicious that if the person is obsessed with doing it right, seeking for a degree of perfection and never quite reaching it, it can't be healthy and normal. Another issue that may be present is more related to memory and the person not remembering when they started something or if they did even start it, which could result in the same "restart syndrome" as he called it.

Failure to focus on one design. Failure to focus on multiple aspects of one design. Failure to predict how complex or how long a task is going to take. The opposite, hyperfocus and/or obsession with a single thing. All that is related to executive functioning too. If the person feels defeated too often and/or too soon. By too soon I mean somewhere around a third or less of the project being completed. It means that we have a problem with underestimating the project's complexity and/or overestimating our own skills. It can also be that the person is unable to maintain their motivation and/or energy for long enough to finish the project, which can be the symptom of some mental health issue going on. The opposite problem, never quitting or never knowing when to stop, it's a sign of some unhealthy mindset. We have to know that some projects can't and won't last forever.

"Can I do this?". This question is part of Hourence's checklist. From my personal experience, if we fail to deliver it, it must be due to the lack of experience. As we grow older and gain more experience, we tend to make better judgements about time, feasibility and are better able to foresee problems. But that isn't always the case and then we have to discuss cognitive bias. There are lots of research in this area and biased opinions are just about everywhere we go. If the answer to the previous question is always detached from reality and devoid of a deeper insight, then we could have a case of trauma, a personality disorder or something that is hindering the ability to think straight. In one extreme we have people who always answer yes even when they are clearly not capable of doing it. In the other extreme we have people who always answer no, regardless of their strengths or good qualities that they may possess. If the answer is always "not sure" this is probably a sign of some form of insecurity, whichever it may be.

I'll give a personal example. I once was so amazed by Max Payne that I thought I could recreate the levels of it inside one giant level for Unreal Tournament Single Player mod. I thought that it'd be an easy task because the Max Payne levels were already done. All I had to do was to copy them. After many years dragging that project on it became a burden. Until I admitted defeat and quit. The crux of the issue was misjudgement and biased view on how time consuming and hard, how much skills you are required, to start and finish such a gargantuan project. I was really trying to make the largest single player level ever for the game, pushing the engine to its limits without realising that it could have never been done. From a psychological and developmental view, every person is ought to have this experience in one way or another in their lives.

Floorplan. There is one key aspect of all companies that is inter communication between people and different departments. In here Hourences argues that the best floorplan comes from a combination of both aesthetics and gameplay, in which case I agree. So much trouble can be avoided if we are able to foresee problems before they even arise. Conversely, so much problems arise because, for one or more reasons, gameplay and aesthetics didn't talk to each other during this stage. Hourences argues that drawing is the best form of communication to convey your ideas of level design. In here I disagree. Imagine that you draw or take a picture of a lonely mountain on a landscape. Unless there is only one way to interpret that picture, sometimes you have to use words to explain something. Pictures to convey atmosphere, style and gameplay are great indeed in conveying your ideas. But it may happen that the other person sees something different or have a different perspective and this could result in miscommunication.

Success and Efficiency. In here I'd like to comment that when somebody is literally obsessed with success and/or efficiency, that's probably some mental health issue going on. I cannot make any diagnoses here, but when success and/or efficiency become the sole driving force and we have lost the purpose, we have a problem. Efficiency is a pathway to success, not the other way around, success preceding efficiency. To give a practical example of obsession with efficiency: suppose that you have 1 GB of memory to be filled with a level and all its assets. We do not have any obligation to fill exactly 1 GB of memory. Nor any obligation to leave some memory unused. Any bytes left unused are not going to cause any harm to the game. Time is a different story though. If the game takes advantage of pre processing something and this pre processing stage takes 1 hour less due to optimizations, it's a good thing. However, being obsessed by saving 1 minute of pre processing time per day is probably a waste of effort because if the level takes 3 months to be made, saving 1 or 3 days from 3 months is not something that should be seen as critical. On the opposite side, to save 1 day from something that is multiplied by 100, then we aren't talking about saving just 1 day, but 100 days which is a lot of time. Sometimes we have hidden "black holes" in our workflows, but the obsession with finding them can be equally harmful. I don't have clear answers and magical recipes to solve everything.

Originality. I have to add my personal experience here. There is map for Unreal called Radikus. It features portals that you can see through and give the illusion of another dimension at the other side. I was so obsessed with that idea at one point that I wished to make a map that would have two worlds in one map. The vague idea that I had was more or less the same that you see in movies that deal with multiple universes or any parallel dimension that exists in the same space as the real world. For a long time I tried, but it failed miserably. For starters the idea was never clear. I never had a clear view of how I'd accomplish it. Much less on how it'd look like.

Originality equates to anything that is unusual and/or unique. Anything relating to the world of super heroes, fantasy realms or even a psychedelic experiences. Sometimes artists are (wrongly) portrayed as drug addicts or mentally abnormal people, which just adds to prejudice I must say. We all want to be original, don't we? If a person is completely devoid of any desire to be original, that can also be a problem and a sign of some metal health issue too. What we must be aware of is that obsession with being original hurts and this can explode in losing relationships, losing jobs or losing ourselves in extreme cases. The lesson that Hourences is trying to give is that originality means nothing if being original is the same as unfeasible, unfaithful, unreasonable or impractical. This again links to executive functions of the brain because when a person ruptures from reality, we have a serious mental health issue going on. There are numerous research studies about creativity and mental health disorders but that's not the point I'm making here.

I should add that being original is also a matter of ego. Everyone has its own identity and this, in terms of level design and game design, is expressed by means of striving for originality. We should be careful with our own egos because if it grows insatiable we risk ourselves into losing people, losing workplaces, losing everything that matters to us and, in extreme cases, losing life itself. It can be quite dangerous. That's why I condemn that idea of great artists who were great because they suffered from some serious mental illness. Artists going "crazy" isn't the right way to explain their art. Because an artist must retain some cognitive functions intact to be able to produce their art, else they can't work.

As a side note I'd like to comment that if there is a person who is putting his or her ego above everything else, demanding everyone around to comply to his or her views in detriment of even discussing them in the first place. Or, if it's the case of somebody who is refusing to comply all together, refusing to accept any opinion other than his or her own. That's some serious sign of a personality disorder, trauma or some other mental health issue and game design or level design would just be another place for this to happen. I'm not talking about people who are having a mental breakdown or a psychotic crisis, but people who are very much aware of reality and the people around but have a personality or behaviours that are very antagonistic and/or challenging in multiple ways. Two words here would be "delusion" and "grandiosity", which describe narcissistic personality. Now be careful here because delusion and grandiosity may be related to something else other than narcissism.

Clichés. In a straightforward definition, cliches are the patterns that people instantly recognize as familiar patterns. For example: jump scary moments when a loud sound or music is played, with anything from a corpse falling from above to a bird flying in front of you. If we are obsessed with originality we may very well fall in the trap of not using cliches because we want to be original, right? A red cross is an universal sign of health; two serpents with a winged-staff is the universal sign of medical care; traffic lights use red to signal stop and green to signal free to pass; snow covering the streets means winter; sand and scorching sun means hot and dry. If we avoid the obvious clichés at all costs we risk making things that convey no meaning at all or are not recognizable by the players at all. Being original isn't always about doing something new, but also in doing something creative with existing ideas or concepts.

Let's say that a level has to be dry and a desert. The most obvious cliché is to build a level that takes place in a desert with sand. But that's only one interpretation of a desert. There is also the icy desert, which is also a land mostly devoid of life forms. Depending on what the game is about we have other types of deserts, some metaphorical, such as ghost towns. How many environments could you relate to the word "emptiness" if you were to think right now? Quite a few. We are sort of blurring the lines between originality and clichés here, because a desert is a desert but how we approach it depends on what we want to achieve. In one extreme there is the danger of losing originality by being too fearful to be bold and also the fear of doing a boring level or game. In the other end there is the danger of striving so hard to be original that the intentions, original purposes (ironically), are lost.

Concept art. In simple terms those are concepts that depict how a scene is going to be like in a movie or how an environment is supposed to be in level design. Hourences says here that concept artists are not level designers because they are more aligned with how it looks and how it feels, not in how it plays. Are there people who excel in both? Certainly yes and probably rare to find. I myself never made any concept art so I can be sure that I don't have the knowledge to criticise concept artists. The point that Hourences is trying to make is that concept arts are not floorplans or blueprints. They are made to convey a concept, as the name implies. As Hourences himself says in the book, there must be a tight alignment between concept and execution because problems in one can be caused by or be a consequence of problems in the other. Without experience I really can't tell how to tackle this.