Some reflections (Score 1)

In the "good 'ol days" of Quake I was fairly involved in the multiplayer side of leveldesign (Aerowalk) and what strikes me is that there's different kinds of leveldesign these days. You have the "casual"-gaming target audience and you have the "e-sport" audience, and designing for the them is completely different.

For the casual gamer, immersion, not getting stuck, being apropriately difficult etc etc is key. For E-sport (or hardcore gamers) leveldesign needs to be challenging, have a learning curve be really balanced. Immersion and nice architecture isnt always as important since many (atleast in my time) turn off all effects etc to get better performance. I remember spending hours aligning textures only too see players playing it tweaked to show only flat surfaces, aaaargh :)

Another issue is that designing competitive levels is really really hard, it's something of a miracle and blind luck that some of the original quake levels were as good as they were. Hardcore gamers will find new tricks, new possibilitie, shortcuts etc etc. That means that optimally the designer needs to be as good (or in the vicinity ) as the competitive players to be able to understand and design for them, and finding people that are both great designers and great players isnt easy :)

Nowadays realism and graphics in first person shooters seems to be everything, atleast it's what sells. It's a bit unfortunate in my opinion because there is a place for games that are games, and not real world simulations. Sometimes not having totally realistic physics makes for a better and more skillful game, in quake 1 for instance you maneuver while in air. Not realistic but made for some awesome tricks.

Graphics in itself arent a bad thing of course, the bad thing is when graphics influences game design too much. That you put in 20 "cool" weapons just to be able to show off different effects, rather than putting in 5 basic but unique weapons that you can master. And remember in the time of Amiga, C64 etc where you didnt have great graphics and game contrent but really unique game ideas. When one programmer could make a somewhat successful game and a small team definitively could? Nowadays you need a 100+ team and a hollywood budget :)

Anways, I realize that I sound as an old fart bitching about the good 'ol days so I'll stop now :)