Textbook in PDF format

This book is a theoretical and practical deep dive into the craft of worldbuilding for video games, with an explicit focus on how different job disciplines contribute to worldbuilding. In addition to providing lenses for recognizing the various components in creating fictional and digital worlds, the author positions worldbuilding as a reciprocal and dynamic process, a process which acknowledges that worldbuilding is both created by and instrumental in the design of narrative, gameplay, art, audio, and more. Collaborative Worldbuilding for Video Games encourages mutual respect and collaboration among teams and provides game writers and narrative designers tools for effectively incorporating other job roles into their own worldbuilding practice and vice versa.
Programmers and engineers (along with designers) determine how everything in the game world actually works, how things feel, what actions are available to players, and how certain technical constraints can create opportunities for signature worldbuilding moments. Programming brings worlds (and everything in worlds) to life, which in turn also has a huge effect on how elements of the game’s world feels. Programming can also provide creative solutions to technical obstacles that in turn have a direct effect on what the world looks like, plays like, or feels like.
A few components of practical worldbuilding that programmers directly contribute to that dictates important elements of how a game’s worldbuilding works are:
- Boundaries
- AI behaviors
- World simulation
- Physics
Features:
Provides in-depth exploration of worldbuilding via respective job disciplines
Deep dives and case studies into a variety of games, both AAA and indie
Includes boxed articles for deeper interrogation and exploration of key ideas
Contains templates and checklists for practical tips on worldbuilding