Lest you think this is going to be some maudlin post, whining about how "my childhood is dead" or some such nonsense, there is a reason I mention Fisher and Adams in particular. While Fisher was best known as an actress, she was also a writer and script doctor on a number of films. Of course, she never quite shook off the iconic status of playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars films, but it is a testament to her talent that she made that character so iconic. It's not enough to just memorize lines. As an actor, one has to breathe life into a character, so that we're not seeing the actor but the person they are supposed to be. As for Adams, it's my opinion that he's probably one of the best authors you've never heard of. People have undoubtedly heard of his most famous novel, Watership Down (and likely have seen the animated feature that was made from it), but that wasn't the only book he wrote. Adams wasn't content to simply write about the adventures of animals. He imbued them with culture, history, and mythos. One of the most iconic scenes in Stephen King's The Waste Lands would never have happened if Adams hadn't written Shardik. When reading Watership Down in sixth grade, while the main story line was good, I enjoyed the interludes where the rabbits told stories of El-ahrirah. I enjoyed them because they were good stories and they helped make the world feel more real.
I bring up these two now-departed artists as examples of what to shoot for in terms of world building. Not every game is going to require world building, obviously. But ones that are going to be telling any kind of story will require it. One can make an argument that even grand strategy games like Civilization require a degree of world building. Sometimes it's small. Sometimes it's absolutely immense. And to be sure, it's something that can get to be pretty intimidating at times. Hearing the words "world building"can stupefy some people as they think of all the tedious lore and boring details about a made-up world which they are only going to be interacting with in the most peripheral of fashions. Others will freeze up in terror, the enormity of crafting an entire world (or even more terrifying, an entire UNIVERSE!) weighing down on them as they begin to dither about geography, anthropology, philology, and other disciplines which they believe they have to bring to bear on the task. And a few, like myself, rub their hands together and laugh maniacally as they begin to form new realities out of the inchoate depths of the mind. In all seriousness, world building should be fun. It should be at least as much fun as the game you're trying to make. If it isn't, that's not a good sign for the health of your project.
Set Your Scope
One of the first fallacies of world building is that you have to have everything all laid out. And that is not entirely true. You have to have the edges of the map in mind before you start drawing it, to be sure, and once you have those edges defined you don't go past them. To borrow a line from Fight Club, let that which does not truly matter slide. Your scope sets where the edges of the map are in terms of the world. And it doesn't even have to be the whole world. For a very good example of building a self-contained world, take a look at The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. The entire game takes place in within a single valley with short little side trips to alternate realities that bring you back quickly. While the side trips definitely show off the Unreal engine's power, they don't distract or detract from the main game. Everything you need to know and understand is contained in the valley. It's that focus that helps make the game so good. Another good example, and an older game, is Myst. The different worlds that you visit are very tightly focused on specific spots. Oddly enough, Myst gets to be something of a meta-commentary on writing and world building, particularly when you read the books that came out later. It works very well as a sort of visual shorthand for how you need to apply focus in world building.Devil In The Details
Possibly the greatest peril in world building is the problem of information overload. How detailed is "too detailed?" Or "not detailed enough?" On the one hand, you want to give enough detail to make the world feel realistic. On the other hand, you don't want to spend so much time on details that you don't actually get anywhere. Probably the best thing to do with regards to details is to add a few things that will make the piece you're working on interesting, then move on to the next piece of creation, then use those details to go back and enhance your earlier work. That sort of back and forth helps to make the world feel grounded, that you don't have characters or nations or legends operating in a vacuum. One example that is by turns laudable and frustrating would be Destiny. There is a lot of world building that has gone into that game and it shows. Looking through the Grimoire, you pick up the stories that are not directly told during the course of the game, but have nonetheless influenced it. The intertwined histories of the hand cannons Last Word and Thorn, as well as the people who carried them, are great. And, if you look at it carefully, you see how a captured Vex unit ultimately led to the creation of the Future War Cult faction. At the same time, however, those stories and details are obscured by the Grimoire itself. The fact you have to use a completely separate companion app or visit Bungie's web site to access this information is utterly ridiculous. Even more frustrating is the way that opportunities to show off world building details are ignored within the context of the game. During one of the missions that came out during "The Taken King" expansion, your Ghost adds the contents of a journal written by the mad Warlock Toland, a background character mentioned in the Grimoire and tied to the weapon Bad Juju. Adding entries in the Grimoire with excerpts from the journal would have been a good way to add more background details and give players more information on Toland and why he was considered such a threat.Be Reasonable
Stephen King described a storytelling game in his novel Misery called "Can You?" The idea was that somebody starts a story, puts the main character into some dangerous situation, then asks the next person, "can you?" The next person has to come up with a way to get the character out of the situation in such a way that makes sense within the context of the story. No deus ex machina, no highly convenient coincidences. If a convincing solution couldn't be presented, the player went out and the next player had to come up with something. In much the same way, you should spend some time working out what is or is not reasonable within the confines of your world. Even in a setting that is essentially "modern times," you have to have some world building that tailors your particular version of the world to the story. A good example of this would be Watch_Dogs. The setting is familiar to people, but there is enough different about it to make it a distinct reality separate from our own. The things that make it different are, of course, plausible in our world. Which only helps make the setting more effective.These are not hard and fast rules, but guidelines, suggestions, tools that have worked others. If you have a different style of world building, and it produces results, don't feel like you have to change things around. Also, don't feel like you have to totally ignore stuff. There should always be room to experiment and see if new ideas lead to new developments.
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