Video Game Level Design: An Overview With an English-Chinese Terminographic Repertoire

The present work aims to identify and analyse English–Chinese terminological correspondences in the field of video game level design, understood here as a practice concerned with shaping gameplay experiences through the conception and construction of virtual spaces and environments. To this end, the study collects and organises a selection of domain-specific terms into a bilingual terminographic repertoire. The repertoire is intended as a resource for game designers and other professionals working in multilingual video game production contexts, where terminological clarity can support effective communication and a shared understanding of specialised terms across technical documentation, production workflows and collaborative projects. It may also assist translators and interpreters working with specialised texts, training materials and design meetings. The dissertation consists of three sections. Section I provides a general overview of level design by introducing the discipline and examining the professional role of the level designer. It then explores the ways in which level design shapes the player experience through the theoretical principles of agency, navigation and flow, before addressing more technical aspects, including readability, spatial organisation, the level design workflow and procedural content generation. Section II presents a concept-oriented English–Chinese terminographic repertoire based on specialised academic, professional and technical sources. Section III contains English–Chinese and Chinese–English glossaries with pinyin transcription, which summarise the terminological correspondences documented in the terminographic repertoire. The resulting repertoire does not aim to provide an exhaustive representation of level design terminology, but rather to offer a reference tool that may support professional communication and serve as a basis for further terminological research.