Abstract
Problem: What can theme park design teach RPG and level designers about creating compelling player experiences?
Approach: Tim Cain maps Disney Imagineer Marty Sklar's 10 design rules for Disneyland onto RPG area and quest design, drawing from his own experience at Carbine, Obsidian (The Outer Worlds 2), and decades living near Disneyland.
Findings: Theme park design principles — know your audience, wear your guest's shoes, create visual magnets, avoid overload, maintain identity — translate almost perfectly into rules for building game zones, quests, and stories.
Key insight: Zones should be simple and fun, players should look forward to experiencing them, and they should feel worthwhile to play through and support the story.
1. Background
Tim Cain lived in Southern California for over 33 years and initially found Disneyland expensive, crowded, and frustrating. Two things changed his perspective in the mid-2000s: befriending a group of expert park-goers who knew exactly when to visit and what to do, and dating a theme park architect designing a natural disaster-themed park in South Korea (for which Cain designed a hurricane simulator ride).
This experience introduced him to Disney's Imagineers — the designers who work not only on rides but on the spaces between rides. Their goal of making visitors enjoy the park, return frequently, and feel the experience was worth the money aligns directly with game design goals.
The framework comes from Marty Sklar, head of Walt Disney Imagineering, whose 10 design rules were later published in the book One Little Spark (2015). Cain presented his game design adaptation of these rules as early as 2010.
2. Rule 1: Know Your Audience
Sklar's version: Don't bore people, don't talk down to them, don't lose them by assuming they know what you know.
For RPG designers this means: vary your quests. Nobody wants a string of escort quests, or pure combat quests, or endless NPC dialogues back to back. Avoid lore bombs — long, unskippable cinematics or dialogues that dump information on the player.
A rule Cain held since Fallout: be careful with cultural references and humor. Jokes should work on their surface level so that players who miss the deeper reference still find it funny, rather than feeling excluded.
3. Rule 2: Wear Your Guest's Shoes
Sklar required all Imagineers, staff, and even Disney board members to visit Disneyland as regular visitors — no parking permits, no passes. Drive up, find parking, take the monorail, stand in line for tickets and rides.
For game developers: play your own game constantly before shipping. Play everyone's areas, not just your own. Try different builds, items, zones, and characters. Most critically: don't use cheats, because cheats break the guarantee that the game works the way a real player will experience it.
4. Rule 3: Organize the Flow of People and Ideas
Use good storytelling techniques. Stories aren't lectures.
For RPG design: the main story arc should be extremely clear. Players should always know what's happening in the story and what they need to do to affect it. Side quests can fill in details, but the main thread must never leave the player confused about their objective or its significance.
5. Rule 4: Create a "Weenie" (Visual Magnet)
Sklar called these "come to me" structures — large landmarks visible from many places. Disneyland's castle at the end of Main Street and Epcot's dome serve this purpose. Walt Disney himself called them "weenies" (after luring his dog back with a frankfurter).
In RPGs these are POIs (Points of Interest): a huge tree, a mountain, a castle — anything large and visible from across a zone. Every POI should reward visiting: quest turn-ins, dungeon entrances, fast-travel unlocks, or loot. Cain cites Ghost of Tsushima as an excellent example of visual POI design that draws players naturally through the world.
6. Rule 5: Communicate with Visual Literacy
Tell stories non-verbally through color, shape, form, and texture. It's not just narrative designers who tell stories — area and level designers do too.
Props should tell a story, not merely dress up a zone. If players visit an old battlefield, there should be skeletons, rusty armor, and scattered weapons. Cain praises Fallout 3 as a masterclass: two skeletons holding hands in a bed, or a golf course littered with plungers and notes documenting someone's radiation-induced descent into madness — you walk in and immediately understand what happened.
7. Rule 6: Avoid Overload
Sklar: "Don't force people to swallow more than they can digest."
The KISS rule — Keep It Simple, Stupid. Simple stories, simple quests. Specifically, Cain advises avoiding quest objects (physical items the player must carry). These create edge cases: full inventories, accidental selling or dropping, requiring special code to prevent all of it. Better to use virtual flags — "tell Bob this code phrase" — or virtual items that don't appear in inventory.
For heavy lore, use optional books, notes, or computer terminals rather than forcing players through cinematics or dialogue.
8. Rule 7: Tell One Story at a Time
If you have a lot of information, break it into sub-stories. People only absorb as much as they want at a time.
For quest designers: don't cram five major story advancements into one quest. Break them into connected sub-quests or tasks so players know they're part of something bigger, but can digest it incrementally.
9. Rule 8: Avoid Contradiction (Maintain Identity)
Disneyland has strong institutional identity — visitors instantly know where they are.
Games should have the same: a screenshot should immediately be recognizable as your game, not generic fantasy. Too many games are "so vanilla" that you can't identify them without being told the title.
For sequels: don't contradict the first game's established truths excessively. Subverting expectations is fine in moderation, but too many "it was actually a lie" reveals will alienate players. Zone stories should fit the world's established rules — if your IP has a magic-vs-technology tension (like Arcanum), every zone should reflect that.
10. Rule 9: For Every Ounce of Treatment, Provide a Ton of Fun
Disneyland keeps visitors engaged with variety: rides, live shows, food kiosks, merchandise. There's always something to do.
In games: what one player considers grind, another enjoys. Mix it up — dialogue quests, stealth quests, exploration, crafting, companion customization, combat challenges. Provide varied feedback beyond quest completion: achievements, NPC reactions, loading screen callbacks ("there's a murder spree in this town" — and you know it was you).
11. Rule 10: Keep It Up
Sklar insisted on cleanliness, routine maintenance, and consistent energy. The last show of the evening should be as energetic as the first.
For game developers: ship with as few bugs as possible and good frame rate. Cain notes he improved at this over time and is proud that The Outer Worlds shipped with very few bugs. Post-launch: continue patching bugs and balancing, because players will find unexpected strategies. Maintain good customer service and forum support — even for indie teams, it matters.
12. References
- Tim Cain. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiAEBpXlelk