Worldbuilding for artists

Worldbuilding is designing the setting and history of a fictional world. The Level Design Book calls it "the high level conceptual process of designing the setting and history of the fictional game world" (The Level Design Book: Worldbuilding). For environment artists, worldbuilding is where that history turns into things you can model: the architecture, the materials, the wear, the signs and the junk in the corners.

Consistent worldbuilding makes assets look as if they belong to one place. Too much of it can become a way to avoid making the game.

#Worldbuilding versus environmental storytelling

The Level Design Book separates the two: worldbuilding is the high-level setting and history, while environmental storytelling "focuses on individual rooms in a more granular zoomed-in sense" (The Level Design Book: Storytelling). Worldbuilding decides that a city was built by a merchant guild and later occupied by refugees; environmental storytelling shows one family's barricaded flat.

#Three questions for every place

For most level projects, The Level Design Book recommends a minimal approach: answer three questions, and simple implied answers are enough (The Level Design Book: Worldbuilding):

1. "Who made this place?"
2. "Who lives here now?"
3. "How can the player affect this place?"

Each question corresponds to a layer of environment art.

• Who made it decides the base architecture, materials and construction logic: the kit, the shape language, the materials.
• Who lives here now decides the later layer: repairs, additions, belongings, damage, grime. This is set dressing and art passes and decals territory.
• How the player can affect it decides what must be readable as interactive: breakable doors, climbable routes, destructible cover. See affordance and signifier.

#Minimal and comprehensive worldbuilding

The book offers two scales (The Level Design Book: Worldbuilding):

• Minimal, for most level projects: the three questions above.
• Comprehensive, worth it "if your project is big or if you're working in a team": maps, timelines and notes (character bios, location guides, in-world documents), often kept in a wiki.

For maps, it suggests starting with terrain and climate (continents, winds, mountains, rivers), then adding political maps and deliberately blank areas: "No adventure or exploration is possible without mystery" (The Level Design Book: Worldbuilding). For timelines, it suggests leaving "forgotten holes" for players to discover (The Level Design Book: Worldbuilding).

#Plausibility

The Level Design Book's advice: "The simplest way to engage the player is with plausibility", so start from something Earth-like and exaggerate selectively (The Level Design Book: Worldbuilding). Dishonored's Dunwall, which the book notes was strongly inspired by London, is an example (The Level Design Book: Worldbuilding). Real-world reference provides construction logic: how roofs drain, where pipes run, how a building is extended over a century.

Deliberate oddities can then be added on top. The book quotes a writer known as kuusamaagi: "You can, and actually should have weird and impractical cultural things" (The Level Design Book: Worldbuilding). Odd customs, shrines and decorations make a world more memorable, and they give artists distinctive props to make.

#Story as a solution to game problems

The Level Design Book argues that "story solves game problems": worldbuilding can explain gameplay and technical limits, such as a monster that avoids water because it is "afraid of water" (The Level Design Book: Worldbuilding). Artists often use the same approach:

• Barriers. Rubble, flooded streets and collapsed bridges explain why the player can't go somewhere.
• Wayfinding. The Level Design Book lists worldbuilding and architectural patterns among its wayfinding aids (The Level Design Book: Wayfinding): if every guildhall has a bell tower, players learn to find guildhalls. See landmarks.
• Readability rules. The Last of Us Part II's "a building utterly consumed in ivy means it is closed" is a world rule and a gameplay rule at once (The Level Design Book: Environment Art).
• Kit reuse. Joel Burgess advises not tying kits to particular enemies or lighting: "Seeing a posh castle kit covered up with grimy kobold assets and moody lighting will shake up player expectations" (80 Level: Building Huge Open Worlds: Modularity, Kits &…). A world history of occupation and decay lets one kit serve many stories.

The book also mentions Clint Hocking's term ludonarrative dissonance for clashes between what a game's story says and what its mechanics do (The Level Design Book: Worldbuilding). For artists, the visual version is a world whose look contradicts its rules: a "starving" town full of fresh food props, or a "high-tech" faction with hand-made furniture.

#Turning worldbuilding into art direction

1. Write the brief. One page: the three questions, the main cultures or factions, their materials and building methods, what happened to the place.
2. Give each culture a visual vocabulary. Shape family, material palette, colour accents and signature props. See shape language and colour for environments.
3. Plan the layers. Original construction, later additions, current damage and use, as in the diagram.
4. Build a reference board per layer. See gathering and using reference.
5. Record the rules in the art bibles and style guides so the whole team applies them.
6. Test it. Show screenshots to someone who hasn't read the brief and ask them who lives there. See playtesting spaces.

#Further reading and watching

• N. K. Jemisin, "Worldbuilding 101: Growing Your Iceberg" (2015) — the introduction The Level Design Book recommends; written for novelists but useful for artists. Beginner, free online essay.
• Konstantinos Dimopoulos, Virtual Cities: An Atlas and Exploration of Video Game Cities (2020) — a book on video game cities, listed in The Level Design Book's worldbuilding sources. Beginner, paid book.