Fundamentals of Game Design, Third Edition

Chapter 8. Game Worlds

Games entertain through gameplay, but many also entertain by taking the player away to an imaginary place—a game world. (This book uses the terms world, setting, and game setting interchangeably with game world.) The gameplay in most single-player video games appears to the player as interactions between himself and the game world. This chapter defines a game world and introduces the various dimensions that describe a game world: the physical, temporal, environmental, emotional, and ethical dimensions, as well as a quality called realism.

What Is a Game World?

A game world is an artificial universe, an imaginary place in which the events of the game occur. When the player enters the magic circle and pretends to be somewhere ...