GAM 215

World-Building for Games

Rich, highly immersive imagined worlds have a long tradition in fantasy and science fiction from J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth to the dystopian universe of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games. Increasingly, digital games rely on these imagined worlds to create environments for players to interact with and explore. In this course students will learn and apply the principles of world-building and environmental storytelling to craft a series of imagined worlds for digital games. Students will be tasked with developing worlds around a number of common themes in digital games such as fantasy realms, forgotten civilizations, post-apocalyptic futures, and alien worlds, including the historical, geographic, social, and cultural details that make imagined worlds so engaging.

Units: 3.0