Indiana Brown ✧ University Blog

Gameworlds! – Emma Raey

What is Worldbuilding and Why is it Important?: 

• Space of the story. Its quality will influence the overall tone and mood 
• If there is intention and care in worldbuilding, players are more likely to invest their own belief and suspend their disbelief. 
• What kind of systems will they interact with? Will they be able to build emotional bonds with NPC’s? How will it create coherence in the image of the game? How will it make the game look unique?
  • Worldbuilding is: 
    • Designing the audiovisual manifestation of a game’s underlying rules 
    • Creating the driver of story 
    • Setting =/= worldbuilding. It is just a PART of worldbuilding. 
    • Creating an identity marker for the game 
    • Digital playground design 
    • Creating context that makes action meaningful and compelling 
    • A form of communication. You are engaging in a dialogue with the player and the player is choosing how to respond. 
    • It is not just about engineering, it is about discovery 

Worldbuilding is a Business

• Transmedia franchises 
• Fanfiction, fanart, cosplay, 
• The world needs to be able to support coming at it from multiple angles as people interact with worlds differently
• Must sustain films, comics, novels, spinoffs, toys, theme park attraction, conventions, and more

Videogames are spatial storytelling media. It works as a chronotope. 

Chrono = time

Tope = space, which determines pace, sequence and connective associations

You cannot control the time a player spends in your world, so you need your story to work in a range of different paces and non-sequentially. GAMEWRITING IS NOT A NOVEL INDIANA STOP TRYING TO MAKE IT A NOVEL

Dimensions of Gamespaces:

VR, AR, 2D, 2.5D, 3D, Open World, Side Scrolling, Isometric, Top-Down, Text-Based, Desktop Games, Found Phone Games, the arena, court, pitch, stage, pool table, piece of paper, gameboard, escape room, collective imagination, arcade cockpit, chess by post, pervasive games (eg; don’t step on the cracks; salute the magpies)

Gamespace as Mechanic:

Territory control, exploration, environmental puzzle, player vs. environment, win/fail conditions, feedback loop/monitoring the game state (eg; map as progress log), genre defining (eg; metroidvania vs. platformer)

The Magic Circle: 

Conceived by a play theorist called Johan Huizinga in the 1950s, who wrote homo-ludens (man the player) that theorized what made man different was that we play into adulthood, the magic circle is an idea of a gameworld that bleeds into everyday life, because we as humans value play so intrinsically whether we know it or not. 

“All play moves and has its being within a playground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. Just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the “consecrated spot” cannot be formally distinguished from the playground. The arena, the cardtable, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc. are all in form and function playgrounds, i.e., forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart. 

What happens in this “playground” bleeds into the real world.” — Johan Huizinga

Immersion:

• Immersion is oft held up on the holy grail of worldbuilding and videogame design but what do we mean by immersion?? Does it really describe our mental processes?? It’s too vague and unspecific. Players often oscillate between reality and fiction by thinking of it as a game and not real life (by strategizing as though it is a game) which is the opposite of immersion. A better word would be INVEST
• An alternative is the idea of incorporation – this recognises the semi-permeability of the magic circle that bleeds into reality. Think playing Candy Crush for what you think is five minutes, and its been 5 hours.  
• Why is this precise language important when creating worlds?
  • If we become more nuanced and specific with our words we can become better designers. “Precise language means we can select precise tools and techniques” (Bowman 2018).
    • Engagement – how invested a player is in an activity 
    • Involvement – what actions can the player perform during play?
    • Absorption – altered state of consciousness that we enter into during play (sometimes called flow) 
    • Transportation – how the magic circle takes us away from the present moment and context into another 
    • Presence – how agential and situated a player feels in a fictional world 
    • Engrossment – the suspension of disbelief and a sense of emotional veracity and spatial immediacy 
    • Dissociation – the pull of play is so strong it temporarily fades away

The “Placeness” of Gameworlds

Videogames can function as a “third place” (Ray Oldenburg) – coffee shops, libraries, pubs, etc in the USA are disappearing due to transport and funding failures. There should always be a place for humans to socialise away from home and labour where relationships can form. However since these places are shrinking in number, videogame spaces and online play are taking their place. This is particularly prevalent in the USA, but has a place in the rest of the world too. 

Keith Stuart (Game Journalist for the Guardian):

Through a variety of clever design decisions, Epic has constructed a true digital Third Place, a hangout where players are given a huge amount of autonomy to seek out the experiences they want. As a child of the late 70’s and early 80’s, it hit me a few weeks ago that Fortnite feels like a skatepark. Or, if you prefer, a drag strip. Or a surfing beach. Or a roller disco. It has a central function that draws people in, but more important, it provides a safe place to hangout, experiment, and mess around. To be free. 

Steam Review for Stardew Valley

I am a 45 yo father, probably one of the oldest people playing this game. I am a single father to my son, who is 14 now, My son got this game for Christmas, so we installed it on his computer and he started playing. By the end of the week he had 24 hours on this game. This was horrible for me, as it was already hard for me to find ways to spend time with my son, as he is always out with his friends or just watching Youtube. Si U decided to make a Steam account and get this game to see if I could maybe play alongside him. Loaded into the game, made my character and world and started playing but I was stuck on what you were supposed to do. I asked my son for help and he hosted a game for me to join. Loved it as it was the best time I had spent with my son since my wife had died. This game has ever since brought me and my son closer again and now we actually spend time together outside the house together as well. This game reminds me that there/s fun to be had in everything, and it has brought both me and my son many happy memories. 

Where have YOU been most immersed? Class discussion: 

ANIMAL CROSSING NEW LEAF, Minecraft, Roblox, Stardew, The Witcher, Splatoon 

What is a Gameworld?:

(Emma’s definition): A dynamic system of interconnected and interdependent variables. An ecosystem, if you will. These variables include:

• Geography and nature
• Belief systems and ideologies
• Politics and population
• Culture and technology