S4-1: Worldbuilding

A Flow of Unexpected Situations

Some Unsorted Assumptions

  • Good worldbuilding comes from being deliberate over being detailed.
  • Every element comes from and has implications for something.
  • Fantasy thinks lateral to reality; science fiction thinks vertically. Both create anew + can satirize real life. Any unique world characteristics should be checked to ensure they fundamentally serve the plot/experience's goals. In the extreme you have too much to follow, to introduce (beyond a niche audience), or too little that isn't cliche (Tolkien, Arthurian, Norse).
  • What I Enjoy in a World = Satisfying Mystery of Forensic Visual Storytelling + Satisfying Wanderlust of Diverse Areas.
    • Mystery = Vocaloid/Souls series "poker method" of not explaining everything (see storysense).
    • Diversity = 2+ distinct identities/views/voices to listen to and explore, e.g. element-based level-worlds, LBP's cities, etc.

Creating Atmosphere

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Theme + Tone = Atmosphere

 

  • Guiding Pillar #1: theme. The central idea of the work -- your subject matter.
  • Guiding Pillar #2: tone. The author's point of view or "attitude" toward that theme.

 

The key is to approach each asset in the game with these in mind.

 

How to Maintain Atmosphere

Keep these in mind while working on embedding your theme and tone into assets:

 

  • Tonally cohesive mood: parts shouldn't tug a player's emotions in too many directions.
  • Internally consistent logic: no cinema-sin moments that take you out of the experience.
  • Specific detail: let curious players who ask "why is this here?" find more if they look closer.

 

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"Games with strong atmospheres are games with rich themes, resistant to oversimplification or being played just for the sake of being played. They are clearly about something."
~ Greg Kasavin, Supergiant Games

Geographer's Guide

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A 5-Part Recipe for Worldbuilding

  • A suggestion of familiarity: even Middle Earth had normal mountains.
  • A hint of complex systems: artifacts and clues in the world and its narrative; characters showing up revealing aspects of your world.
  • A dash of cultural evidence: where did what exists here now come from? Beware the high risk of backfilling the world too much/lazily.
    • Don't be lazy, e.g. Buddhist prayer wheels in a game without Buddhism. Add with a purpose!
    • Always question why something looks the way it currently does!
  • A big chunk of logical consistency: breaking this takes players out of the game's magic circle (related: Creating Atmosphere).
  • A pinch of topology: how do attributes, places, and traits interconnect?

3 Steps to Apply the Recipe's Principles

  • Determine context: is your world more Realistic or Fictional?
    • More realistic implies taking more care to not betray expectations of realism--Authenticity. Beware players taking issue with accuracy, augmentation, and  various cultural interpretations.
    • More fictional implies taking more care to get across the new, unfamiliar details--Escapism. Beware borrowing real-world imagery/allegory (e.g. Arabic "desert enemies", or Kali in Smite).
  • Determine complexity: what details are needed to serve experience/plot goals?
    • See next slide for a list of layers, and ask "Does the game really require we nail this down?"
  • Create with intent: should you be PC? Should you design your world so that it will be accepted in areas with world-regulating laws? (e.g. The enemy's blood color.)

Layers of World Complexity in Geography

A game may require all, some, or none of these levels of abstraction:

  • Climatology: seasons, atmosphere, weather, disasters...
  • Geophysical: landmasses, hydrology, tectonics, gravity...
  • Ecological: flora, fauna, nutrient cycles, energy flows...
  • Demographics: species, genders, ages, ethnicities...
  • Cultural Identities: language, history/lore, symbology...
  • Cultural Systems: faiths, politics, economies, transportation.

Most Problematic Layers To Watch Out For

(RW/FW = for Realistic/Fictional Worlds)

  • History:
    • RW: older eras (e.g. medieval) have less volatile history than modern (e.g. war on terrorism).
    • FW: beware closely resembling RW events (e.g. plot points about racial internment camps).
  • Faith:
    • RW: be careful about what you choose to portray and why.
    • FW: beware drawing on RW religions (e.g. Catholic elements in enemy alien priest designs).
  • This general pattern also holds for Identities, Systems, Geopolitics:
    • RW: how you represent a real group of people, system, or government.
    • FW: basing fictional elements on real world cultures, geopolitical events, hand gestures, etc.

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Just remember, good worldbuilding is not a heavy level of detail, but about serving narrative & experiential goals -- i.e. realizing a world!

3D Interior Design's 3 Key Verbs

For 2D, draw on graphic design & photography composition concepts, like the rule of thirds!

Source

Verb 1: Order

The clarity of knowing your orientation within a space and delineating it from other spaces.

  • Patterning: reuse of a visual element yields a sense of structure. Making this structure predictable yields a sense of order, e.g. PT's looping hallways.
  • Identity: iconic weenies, like in theme parks, but generalized here.
  • Meaning: when we have memories of a space. Random pictures of a tiger's body go unrecognized until we see the feline eye.
  • Enclosure: we like not being out in the open! e.g. Rooms > Halls >> Plains!
  • Implicit spaces: by their light, proximity, or contrast, e.g. sunken-in floors.

Verb 2: Enrich

On a core level, make the space inherently interesting to dwell within!

  • Complexity: similar to Koster's thinking, we enjoy grokking this apart!
    • Initially, more complex means more interesting, but this has a limit (best captured by nature).
    • Beyond this limit, too much complexity has an adverse effect on interest.
  • Approachability: complexity, but also legibility, coherence, and mystery.
    • Legibility: easier to mentally chunk out space, affording more complexity.
    • Mystery: entering any area is always an investigation!
  • Novelty: games presenting new content--but can the player burn out on it!
  • Tension: best paced in curves, e.g. narrow a space then release into the open.

Verb 3: Express

"What people work to remove from a house when they try to sell it!"

  • Communication: conveying the broad strokes of mood and tone.
  • Visual storytelling: about a place's historical era, culture, and residents.
  • Symbolic feelings: of ascent, descent, being welcomed, or forbidden.

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Secretly, all 3 verbs are higher-order mixtures of 2 basic concepts:
Contrast (focal points) + Repetition (through-lines)

Seeing Spaces in Reverse

Source: Totten's Adaptation of the "10 Ways of Seeing"

1. Your Core

What gameplay do you want to occur in the space?

2. Your Verticality

What do you see when you look up? When you look down?

3. Your Senses

Size, shape, light, sound -- and how do these make you feel?

4. Your Pacing

Does the level usher you through itself quickly,
or present [optional/required] chances to explore?

5. Your Playstyles

How does the space focus on 1 playstyle, or provide for more? Does it encourage or discourage certain playstyles? How?

6. Your Narrative

How does the space express game narrative, if at all? Cutscenes? Scripted events? Environmental storytelling?

7. Your Precedents

What spatial experiences exist in games similar to yours?

8. Your Composition

How do the level's environment assets work off one another (proportion, rhythm), as well as to any adjacent spaces?

9. Your Metrics

Is the level geometry easy for avatars to move around, with everything in reach? Does it challenge/expand those abilities?

10. Your Patterns

What environment art elements repeat? Are they interactive? If so, do they correspond to a specific gameplay mechanic?

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Also consider answering "and to what end?" at the end of your reply to each numbered way of seeing!

The Triforce of Intent

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Corners

Focusing on the concepts that connect these corners prevents a game from feeling like its corners are good in isolation, but don't gel holistically. The corners are just a means to these corner-linking ends!

Gameplay × A/V Feedback

  • Weak Intentionality: twitch-reacting, being lost trying to find something to do, or doing something without knowing why -- e.g. because you're always supposed to do it in a game, the UI said to, or it seems like the only thing to do.
  • Intentionality = "I" of Immersive Sims! And for levels/systems! Requires:
    • Choice
    • Motivation = goals in the player's mind, facilitated by being high-leve/long-term objectives.
    • Information = comes via those clear, consistent affordances on the part of the level/system.
    • Time = to process info, e.g. why player-paced toyplay/sandboxes have Intentionality in spades.
  • Intentionality VS Perceived Linearity: when linearity feels bad, it's often the result of weak intentionality, vs. say a Half-Life 2 or Portal kind of linearity. You want the Inception effect: make them have the idea. 

Consistent, Clear Affordances FACILITATING Player Intentionality = making Conscious Choices with specific Goals and Expectations in mind.

A/V Feedback × Story

Make a world that feels Unique, Cohesive, and Meaningful. See Kasavin!

  1. Specific worldbuilding: don't be vague, but compare against the Geographer's Guide.
  2. Always worldbuilding: let nothing be generic -- they're all opportunities to develop the world!
  3. People worldbuilding: worldbuilding is about storytelling, and stories are about characters.

Gameplay × Story

Make narrative interactive and ground gameplay in narrative goals.

  • Half-Life 2's Tin Can Choice
  • Playing with Son in Heavy Rain
  • As opposed to system-only goals, e.g. the
    problem with Little Sisters in Bioshock!
  1. Push beyond "show, don't tell."
  2. Empower the player to act with narrative intentionality using the same ingredients presented for gameplay/systems intentionality above!
  3. Ensure dramatic tension is relevant to the player, not just the avatar.
    "It's not when the actor cries, but when the audience cries," said Frank Capra. That hints at why a dramatic cutscene where Laura Croft / Nathan Drake are tested don't work--they're just cutscenes!

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4 Music Lenses

The Sound of Silence

Let music have specific points at which it becomes relevant!

"When you have a really dramatic scene, when something is really happening on the screen, why would you put music to it? You can turn something dramatic into something melodramatic very easily."

How to Score a Film Too Safely: music says the same things as the picture, always what you expect, never risks challenging expectations. Predictable without message/identity of its own.

Punch

Oh My!

  • Sounds with Priority: design SFX for the core verbs before anything else!
  • Sounds with Status: "hear the UI," e.g. low-HP beeps require zero gazing at your HUD to sink in!
  • Sounds with Clarity: keep lo/mid/hi-frequency sounds distributed--unless you need it muddied!
  • Sounds with Character: if you just rely on tropes, you miss a chance to give a game some identity!
  • Sounds with Brevity: prefer shorter durations, unless a situation really, really needs to feel sluggish.
  • Sounds with Attack: shorten the beginning to make it feel more responsive--punching that button!

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  • Sounds with Influence: make your player feel like their actions actually shape the world through its soundscape, e.g. filtering/ducking to make gunfire warp and distort the world going on around you!

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  • Sounds with Motif: make a small 5-20ms base "punch" "impact" sound file specific to your game, and then insert it into everything with bass/pitch/etc variation. Adding it this way gives you that satisfaction of you having done the action, because the punch acts as an immediate confirmation.
    (e.g. Lever punch-then-pull sound, and then something falls, landing with a punch-then-thud sound effect!)

6 Functions of Game Music

"Also that if all you do is just iterate until what feels good without a context, I feel that's no different from just spamming Generate on AUD.js, but in a DAW it's way less intuitive to do that because of its interface (shy of the ghost channels trick)." ~ w/Andrew G.

  • GAME: Zelda, Halo. Iconic and instilling anticipation.
  • AREA: Mario, LBP. Establish scenes both time and place.
  • CHARACTER: Symphonia, Undertale. Establish a cast member.
  • CHANGE: or "event" themes, going into combat, riding, exploring...
    • STINGER: e.g. dying/victory. 3-12s musical phrases/motifs, the "!" of music.
  • TENSION: e.g. arcade games upping tempo with level #.
  • AUGMENT: enhance emotional high and low points, but cf. Santoalla above!

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Small Dumb Touches

The 2 hours worth of post-end dialog text in Undertale.

Gamasutra: "Small Dumb Touches" in Pyre

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Making It Personal

"What if we made small levels/games as gifts, tokens, and mementos to people and places we know?"

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Proposal

""Revenge""

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(related: "Local Level Design")

SuperEyePatchWolf On Maps Here

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