Against Worldbuilding by Alexis Kennedy

[Venusian Broon]

Isn't the article primarily about video game design? Certainly there are similarities, but the ability to control the gaze of the "narrator" in a game is very different than the way text or film controls what is on the page or screen.

The author's focus may be video game design, but he primarily references Tolkien which was, of course, never a video game. Worldbuilding is a 'deeper' activity that is independent of the medium IMHO. It's research for your universe.

The title is provocative but I think he's arguing about how to portray your world. So against big, expansive worlds filled with exposition irrelevant to the narrative like king lists, timelines, essays on city histories etc... and more towards passive small snippets that build a world but make the reader/player/viewer work and come up with their own conclusions.

Such approaches may have differences on how they are experienced by the end user depending on the medium but I don't see too much of difference actually, at least in principle.

(However, it should be pointed out, If done well there is room for both approaches - I am one of those that read through all the books I find in Elder Scrolls games; they enrich the world for me - although I tend to favour the latter approach more.)

 

[Swank]

The author's focus may be video game design, but he primarily references Tolkien which was, of course, never a video game. Worldbuilding is a 'deeper' activity that is independent of the medium IMHO. It's research for your universe.

The title is provocative but I think he's arguing about how to portray your world. So against big, expansive worlds filled with exposition irrelevant to the narrative like king lists, timelines, essays on city histories etc... and more towards passive small snippets that build a world but make the reader/player/viewer work and come up with their own conclusions.

Such approaches may have differences on how they are experienced by the end user depending on the medium but I don't see too much of difference actually, at least in principle.

(However, it should be pointed out, If done well there is room for both approaches - I am one of those that read through all the books I find in Elder Scrolls games; they enrich the world for me - although I tend to favour the latter approach more.)

Sure. I realize LOTR is not a game, but THE numero uno example of worldbuilding in depth for all media. I'm just pointing out that the author seems more to be warning that creating and including a ton of backstory information won't actually help make a better game - even though it can be stuff that doesn't interfere with game play. Like having a scroll to click on when you find it - usually it is clear what you need to read and what is just fluff.

But a novelist or filmmaker really doesn't have that same ability to just nerd out whenever they want to because they are producing a much more linear product - unless it is an e-book full of hyperlinks. Interrupting the text or playback to provide a ton of non-plot driving exposition won't get past the publisher/studio. It could be provided at the end of the book, but only if the publisher sees the value in printing those extra pages. I was just thinking that an author is slightly less likely to fall into the trap of creating massive worldbuilding backstories if no one is going to read any of it because it doesn't slot into the text naturally.

 

[Toby Frost]

I bought a book of essays and articles by Alexis Kennedy, entitled Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations and thought it was pretty interesting. I'm not sure that I agree with all the points he makes, but he makes some interesting points, and it's worth a look for anyone interested in games design.

 

[DLCroix]

Hmm, I would say that here we should not confuse the setting where a story takes place with the seasoning with which that environment is painted. The first thing is just the location, which can be established with more or less a few brushstrokes, salt to taste, you know; the latter already corresponds to a question of style in which that aspect of the description, perhaps with great influence from Chekhov and the naturist realists (which the South Americans entangled even more with that thing called "magical realism", Cortazar, Borges), originated a whole series of variants where other things such as lists, analogies, ellipses, the capacity for fabulation/evocation and proseism itself (que puede ir de simple a barroco) come into play. For tastes, colors, as they say.