Abstract
Problem: Game designers are often told to play games, read books, and watch movies to improve their craft — but are there other, less obvious sources of design inspiration?
Approach: Tim Cain reflects on his personal journey from reluctant traveler to enthusiastic globetrotter, sharing how visiting other countries reshaped his thinking about game design.
Findings: Travel exposes designers to unfamiliar architecture, city layouts, cultural customs, and human behavior in ways that books and movies cannot replicate. These experiences directly inform level design, game mechanics, NPC behavior, and world-building.
Key insight: To be a truly well-rounded game designer, you should travel — especially outside your home country — because the sensory, spatial, and cultural experiences you gain will influence your design in ways you cannot anticipate from reading or watching alone.
1. From Travel-Hater to Globetrotter
Tim Cain grew up hating travel. His family drove everywhere — 12-hour car trips from Washington DC to Disney World, kids crammed into a station wagon, car sickness included. He once refused to go to Disney World a second time and was taken against his will.
His early travel companions fell into two extremes: those who planned every single second of the trip (wake up at 5 AM, scheduled activities from dawn to bedtime), or those who arrived somewhere with zero plans and no idea what to do. Neither approach made travel appealing.
He didn't fly until age 21 and considered air travel a luxury — not philosophically, but literally. In his early twenties he couldn't afford plane tickets, had to miss a relative's funeral, and was already maxing out a $500 credit card limit on groceries.
2. Learning to Travel Well
Everything changed in his 30s when he started dating someone who loved traveling and knew how to do it well. This partner taught him practical tricks: earning miles from credit cards, upgrading from economy to business class, using airport lounges, investing in good luggage. They would stay in different hotels within the same city to experience different neighborhoods — something they did in Paris to remarkable effect, discovering how each arrondissement felt distinct.
They traveled to the south of France (Lyon, Sarlat), took trains, and visited South Korea together. Tim was eventually convinced to attend a press event abroad when another colleague couldn't go because he lacked a passport. At Obsidian, he traveled to conferences in Australia (twice) and Croatia.
3. What Travel Teaches a Designer
Tim's overarching lesson: other countries are "very different and also the same." People everywhere are just living their lives, trying to be happy — but the way they do it varies enormously.
3.1. Architecture and City Layout
Different countries have radically different architecture and urban planning. Some cities strictly separate business and residential zones; others mix everything together. Modern offices housed in 700-year-old buildings are common in Europe but almost unheard of in the United States. Ancient ruins sit casually in the middle of cities — a 2,000-year-old Coliseum here, a crumbling 1,500-year-old temple there — and people just walk around them. All of this is direct fuel for level design.
3.2. Cultural Customs and Daily Life
The small details of daily life differ in ways that matter for world-building: how restaurants seat people, whether you tip, how long lunch breaks are, where you can buy over-the-counter medicine (in Europe, only at pharmacies — not grocery stores), and even what common drugs are called (paracetamol vs. acetaminophen). These details make game worlds feel lived-in and authentic.
3.3. Food and Sensory Experience
As a self-described foodie, Tim was adventurous: raw crab in South Korea (the vinegar kills the parasites, he was assured), century eggs, natto (which he wouldn't eat again), and Vegemite. The sensory richness of travel — the smell of different plants, cities, and food — is something no book or movie can replicate.
3.4. People and Human Connection
Tim found that people abroad are remarkably friendly, especially if you attempt their language first before switching to English. Walking up and demanding information in English is rude; making an effort earns goodwill. This insight about human behavior directly applies to NPC design and dialogue systems.
4. Beyond Level Design
While level design is the most obvious discipline that benefits from travel, Tim emphasizes that it goes much further. Travel informs game mechanics, NPC roles, and the cultural texture woven through all of those systems. Walking through a real cathedral, standing at the base of the pyramids, or wandering a foreign city is fundamentally different from reading about it or even experiencing it in VR (which Tim used extensively during the pandemic — close, but not the same).
5. Tim's Travel Advice
Find a travel style that works for you — whether highly scheduled, completely open, or Tim's preferred middle ground of scheduled mornings with relaxed afternoons. Even sitting in a coffee house in another country and people-watching will teach you more than you'd expect. The key is to actually go.
Tim adds travel to the standard designer reading list: alongside playing games, reading books, and watching movies, designers should travel to become better at their craft. The experiences will shape your design in ways you cannot predict beforehand.
6. References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMiEXuFzNYU