When Lunch Breaks Became Level Design Tests
Over the years, when bosses assessed my work, it typically involved nervously watching their cursor bounce around a Google Doc—deleting overwrought lines, clarifying ambiguous statements, and occasionally striking intros that failed to get to the point. (Thank goodness I learned that lesson.) It’s a nerve-wracking and humbling experience—especially when you’ve managed to misspell “RTS.”
A Novel Assessment Method at Ensemble Studios
Naturally, every job has its own evaluation criteria—but level designers working on Age of Empires at Ensemble Studios faced an unusually pragmatic one: studio head Tony Goodman’s lunch break.
The Accessibility Imperative
In 1997, during development of the first Age of Empires, Ian Fischer joined Ensemble as a QA and scenario design contributor. As he recounted on Slitherine’s Hot Seat series, a board hung in the studio listing all the reasons someone might not buy the game. These included technical barriers—like insufficient hardware—and, critically, issues of complexity. Even today, Fischer observes: “Strategy games don’t have the best reputation for being ‘sit down and you’re going to have fun right away.’”
Goodman’s “Lunch Test”
To ensure accessibility, Goodman instituted a deceptively simple test for every new scenario: he would launch it—and immediately walk away to lunch. If the AI had defeated the player by the time he returned, the scenario was deemed too difficult and required redesign.
This wasn’t about lowering standards—it was about preserving engagement. As Fischer explains: “If the AI autodefeated the player, Tony worried it would force people out of the game before they’d even learned how to play.” Only when players weren’t under immediate threat of defeat could they comfortably explore, experiment, and internalize the game’s systems.
Balancing Accessibility and Identity
Fischer carried this philosophy forward into projects like Halo Wars, Orcs Must Die!, and now at C Prompt Games. Yet he cautions: accessibility has limits. He notes, “You can get to a point where it becomes dangerous for your design. Some changes made to accommodate everyone will fundamentally alter the core game. You have to be careful—if you’re making everybody happy, there’s a real risk you’re building a vanilla game.”
Ultimately, determining the optimal audience scope is a decision forged over years of development experience—a judgment best left to seasoned designers. In the meantime? I’ll spend the hours until dinner reflecting on which problems I can solve—not with more iterations, but simply by stepping away for lunch.
