History
In early days of video games, a single programmer would create the maps and layouts for a game, and a discipline or profession dedicated solely to level design did not exist.
Early games often featured a level system of ascending difficulty as opposed to progression of story-line.
The first game genre that required significant amounts of time to design areas were text-based games, such as MUDs. Often, promoted users were assigned to create new paths, new rooms, new equipment, and new actions, often using the game interface itself. ZZT is another early game notable for its user-accessible mapping and event triggering/scripting
One of the first games that had an individual whose job was solely to design the levels was 1983's Lode Runner, which was also one of the first titles to ship with a level editor.
Doom (1993) and Doom II (1994) were two of the first games to attract focused game modding activity, and many WAD level files were made for them. One of the reasons was a clear separation between the level files and game engine itself. Half-Life, Quake 3, and many other games have notable mapping tools and communities focusing on user-generated content.
In certain games, such as roguelike games, levels may be procedurally generated. In these cases, the original game programmer controls how the variations of rooms and tunnels are formed, by tweaking the randomly seeded algorithms.
Read more about this topic: Level Design
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—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)