Yahtzee Croshaw said:
Although there is one simple question that can easily determine whether a level is good:
Q. Was this level designed by someone who is employed professionally as a games designer or in another relevant creative industry?
If no, fuck it.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there mostly because you're factually provably wrong.
While undoubtedly most of the time professional level designers are better at it than amateur level designers the key expression here is "most of the time".
See, like everything in life, professionals generally are better than other people because, and at the risk of sounding reductionist, they practice more. They have more experience. In the same manner that one bloke that plays football everyday for 10 years will generally be better than one that only plays on weekends. And that's when other variables come in. What is the learning capacity of each bloke? What is each bloke's dedication towards football? What is each bloke's inherent skill at football?
Same thing applies to game and level designers, and everything else really. A "professional" level designer is merely someone who does that for a living. Not some godly messiah that knows every answer to every question regarding level design. Hell, there are very good examples very easy to find: Valve.
No, no, no. Valve is not a bad company, nor are their level designers bad. But Valve banks a lot on user created content. Which pays off when some definite gems surface. TF2 currently runs several "official" maps that are user created, by normal, non-professional level-designing users, and were bought and given the rank of "Honorary official map" due to their high standards. A lot of custom maps on Valve games have equally high, or in some rare cases higher, quality than the official ones. tc_meridian, ctf_haarp, cp_furnace...
Are custom maps always good? Fuck no. But the logic that "if it's not professional it's bad" is negated by the sheer way a lot of people turn professional: by proving they're good.
