Supergraphics are a design approach which some game worlds make great use of as an additional layer that bridges architectural and graphic design in the world, giving a strong visual identity to the world and creating striking visuals.

More than simple decoration, they can be treated as a channel to support wayfinding and navigation, communicate the story of the world, reflect its factions and cultures, express layers of change in the world, and even fundamentally affect the spatial perception of its architecture.

A Supergraphic origin story

Supergraphics as an art style has its origins alongside the genesis of post-modernism with Supermannerism in architecture in the 1960s with early collaboration and experimentation between architects and designers.

Scale is the one common feature people will identify with supergraphics, as well as commonly used bold coloring, use of typography and/or geometric forms. Another defining aspect can be their application across surfaces and challenging the spatial perception of an architectural space. Their function ranged from wayfinding, to visual branding and to purely decorative elements.

Sea Ranch, California, USA, 1968 Designer Barbara Stauffacher Solomon
Barbara Stauffacher Solomon is largely regarded as a pioneer in the Supergraphics movement, especially for her early work on the Sea Ranch development in 1968

Channel 5, WCV-TV Boston branding, 1971 Designer: Lance Wyman
Lance Wyman is a legendary logo and brand designer, I’d recommend visiting his site

https://lancewyman.com/

Left: Boatyard, Port Barcares Right: Aubervilliers, Paris suburbs, 1972

Jean Philippe Lenclos has some beautiful examples of supergraphics design from its peak in the late 1960s to 1970s especially, with use of colorful geometric designs and large-scale applied typography. Source: https://www.jeanphilippelenclos.com/fr/supergraphisme

The Kentish Town Health Centre ( 2009, architect: Allford Hall Monaghan Morris ) had a collaboration in its design with Morag Myerscough, a celebrated designer of supergraphics. Here you can see an example of the surface-crossing application. ( source: Architects Journal )

Challenging spatial perception, or spatial transformation, is an aspect of the style that sets it apart from simple graphic design and signage. Supergraphics are not necessarily bound by the architectural planes they sit on, flowing over multiple surfaces and transforming how a space is read or experienced.

From its peak in the 1970s Supergraphics started to decline in popularity. However it did have a resurgence in the 2010s, appearing in interiors and on the surfaces of some buildings. This time makes me think of the giant typography, floor numbers and interior wall graphics of the time, particularly reminding me of corporate or startup offices for some reason, but examples can be found in public buildings also.

Supergraphics in Videogames

Sci-fi Supergraphics

Supergraphics in videogames are quite frequently seen in scifi settings, with echoes of 1970s sci-fi art in the application of logos and patterning that spans across world entities and environments. The scale and surfacing of scifi seems to particularly suit this treatment.

Chris Foss Guild Tug concept for Jodorowsky’s doomed Dune movie c.1975 (source: chrissfossart.com )

Homeworld ( 1999, Relic Entertainment ) concept art , artist: Rob Cunningham

Of course Homeworld is the most famous and direct reference to Chris Foss’ look that comes to mind, adopting similar large-scale faction branding and graphic banding and block colorization.

Scale and branding are usually a large part of the properties of supergraphics in this context, they span across surfaces and are not contained as functional graphics and signage may be. Here the branding of a location can range from purely aesthetic, to cultural or territorial ownership reinforcing narrative or supporting gameplay zoning. You can see examples of this in game worlds such as Destiny or Arc Raiders.

Marathon, Bungie, 2026
Marathon of course is a more recent example, and perhaps the heaviest use of graphics applied to the surfaces of a world’s architecture I’ve seen. Not only is there a large amount of brand and graphic design elements, but distinct parts of the architecture are heavily colorized, reminding me of the industrial architecture work of Jean-Philippe Lenclos ( below ).

Aciéries Solmer à Fos-sur-Mer, 1975-77, Designer: Jean-Philippe Lenclos. Source: https://www.jeanphilippelenclos.com/fr/atelier-3d-couleur

Interestingly you tend to see this form of graphic design in game worlds applied more than true functional signage used as diegetic navigation for players.

Usually players have a UI for that: mini-maps, hud elements and markers that sit on an information layer between the player and the world. It’s understandable though, as applying signage within a world can be a challenging undertaking, both logistically and consuming texture memory. UI is often seen as an easier ROI for navigation needs of players.

Functional Diegetic Navigation

Control, Remedy Entertainment, 2019. Source: https://nerdwithglasses.com/2021/02/09/screenshots-control/

Sometimes you can see the application of true signage within a world: in Control signage was functional, but also had more value than purely navigation as it helped not only the immersion and wayfinding for the player in a semi-open metroidvania environment, but acted as another expression of the bureaucratic culture within it where everything has to have a label.

Layering and Cultural Imprint

I think possibly my favourite videogame example of the application of supergraphics can be seen in Deathloop. Arkane are masters at worldcrafting: Dishonored and Prey are wonderfully crafted worlds with a strong design ethos carrying through buildings and level architecture through to individual props. With Deathloop they tell a more layered story of repurposing and ownership of spaces within the world.

Deathloop concept art, 2021, Arkane Studios

The bright hedonistic vibe from its new culture’s occupation through strong geometric forms and bold use of typography in striking colors contrasts vividly with this older more muted architecture of the world before the game’s events. It expresses faction ownership and expression, while telling the story of change and layering of history. The graphics themselves echo the look of supergraphics of the 1960s and 1970s and contributes toward the unique look for the title and its world design.

Challenging perception

SFMoMA, Strips of Stripes ( installation view ), 2023. Designer: Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Photo: Don Ross

Here is a good example of Supergraphics’ ability to alter and challenge the perception of space. The geometric patterns deconstruct and reform surfaces to the viewer’s eye.

This is an aspect of the real-world Supergraphics that I haven’t experienced much in videogames compared to the more cosmetic patterning and branding at scale. It leans heavily into their ability to flow over differing surfaces, making new spatial connections and rewarding specific viewer positions, movement through space or sightlines.

Interestingly, it is something that reminds me of experimental dazzle camouflage from navy ships during WW1, where large geometric color blocks were used to disassemble and distort the silhouette of a ship at sea. I haven’t found any direct reference to influence in supergraphic design, but the aesthetic similarities are there.

Left: USS West Mahomet c.1918, Right: HMS Argus c.1918 ( source: Wikipedia )

Much like the dazzle camouflage similarity, the ability for larger graphics to alter the perception of space and form is perhaps a problem for videogames, and something that could be very case specific. I think there are two main reasons for this:

One - So much work goes into conveying a sense of readability and realism in game worlds to support immersion that to challenge and contradict that work could be seen as largely counterproductive. Disorientating players can be deceptively easy, and often something you have to iterate on level design specifically to avoid.

Superliminal, PillowCastle, 2019. Still images don’t do the game justice though, you really need to see it moving to communicate the spatial experience it gives.

Two - In videogames we just have much more potentially effective ways of challenging perception. We are creating a virtual space, so the very substance of the world is pliable and can be altered in more fundamental ways. A good example of this would be Superliminal, which challenges the viewer’s perception of space in a more fundamental way.

That said with considered application in the right world design I could see its use in altering spatial experience or visual impact being very effective. It’s something I would be interested in seeing as a visual experiment more, there is untapped potential here, and it could be used to add depth of design to a world’s architecture.

In summary, there is potential for supergraphics as part of the world designer’s toolkit. Given the right setting or world story there is potential gain for considering their use, namely:

• Visual interest, more layered world architecture

• Cultural imprint and world narrative expression.

• Visual change between similar or identical structures or materials.

There are however technical and design challenges to be aware of in their use that constrains its wider use:

• Logistics ( Inflexibility of space ). A need for level design change and iteration often leads to more modular solutions. Large supergraphics applied to a surface can essentially lock it in place and as such it becomes something more for the latter stages of world production.

• Technical ( Texture memory ). Projecting additional layers onto the surface of a game world and at scale the texel density requirements for large graphics can be a concern.

While these limitations remain, they can be overcome: Marathon is perhaps a more extreme example of this, whether you love or hate its vivid colors and bold graphics. The usage of supergraphics still remains largely untapped for videogames and their ability to shape spatial experiences.

Architectural projection has introduced motion graphics mapped to architectural surfaces. Could something similar act as a bridge between the UI information layer and the architectural surface of the world, bringing motion and change with it? For example I remember 2010’s Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction using projected typography in-world to inform the player, there is potential to do so much more now.

I travel a little with my work, and find myself sitting in airport terminals quite often. One thing that I found myself noticing was the parallels between in-game player hubs and the design of the terminals. I love designing hubs as they’re a true challenge of balancing experience with efficiency in use to create something that can be navigated intuitively and bear repeated visits throughout the game’s playtime.

Both game hubs and airport terminals are places designed to efficiently address a range of needs while people pass through their spaces. If you think of the flights and gates as quests or equivalents from a game space the comparison becomes clearer when you think of people moving between these. This led me to see what experience design thoughts and research for terminals may be useful to improve approaches to hub design layout and architecture.

I started digging a little deeper and reading further into research papers and findings on terminal design and experience design and discovered something.

A research paper from 2015 entitled ‘A new model for airport passenger segmentation’ ( Harrison, Anna, Popovic, Vesna, & Kraal, Ben J.) discussed a study carried out at Copenhagen Airport that categorized users into four groups.

What surprised me was the startling similarity of this ‘Copenhagen Taxonomy’ to Bartle’s Taxonomy of player types.

Bartle’s Taxonomy is perhaps one of the simpler and well known breakdowns of game player types and their preferences ( there are other models employed by larger publishers and game devs too ).

If you haven’t seen this player segmentation before, it’s worth watching the GDC2017 talk covering the design of Prague city hub in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided by Sylvain Douce as it’s a good example of how this form of player type profiling can be applied to hub design.

I knew I was perhaps onto something here with possible learnings for architecture and experience design for these places. Perhaps there can be some learnings or similar design principles and approaches to be found.

Judging by the sheer variety of designs of terminals there seems to be no perfect solution: however some of the more established architectural techniques of creating user profiles ( aka user stories ), spatial groupings, adjacency matrices and flow graphs can be ( and have been ) utilised in level design too.

Interestingly some of the research on terminal experience design discussed the use of Time, it’s perceived value and each group’s sensitivity to it. This was applied as a metric in guiding the categorization of passengers, which does have some parallels in games: players use time and convert it to the much more subjective ‘fun’, or possibly you could say progression ( for example crafting systems where you can clearly perceive that conversion of your time into in-game value). It’s subjective what is valuable to convert time into of course, but more often than not travel time will not be the most desirable.

For a hub this becomes especially relevant as some players often want to be as efficient as possible in a hub to return to the core game experience, time becomes a valuable measurement. For other players its relative value can vary and may seek to invest time in the hib space for social engagement ( if in a multiplayer game ) or deeper lore or knowledge of the game world.

Pure efficiency might satisfy one player type ( Bartle’s ‘Killer’ ), but in our interests of experience design, sometimes the scenic route and a little inefficiency is more important.

Mapping user stories

The similarities continue when you start to look at the activities and user stories with both spaces. This is a really helpful exercise in building a picture of how your space will be used and what features it will need to contain. For example:

the New Arrival

process the new arrival, introduce them to the world, orientate them

game - the first tutorial mission or entry narrative into the gameworld that guides the player to and visually introduces the hub

airport - the journey from kerbside to flightside ( arrival, check-in desks, handing over your baggage, security )

Socializing

a place to potentially socialize and waste time...

game - player lobby ( shooting/testing range, multiplayer social areas, npc interactions )

airport - passenger lounges, bars or cafes within the terminal space

Consuming

place to trade, craft, consume

game - shops, trading space, crafting locations

airport - shops, restaurants

moving from objective to objective

game - task completion/hand-in, selecting new task and leaving for next one

airport - moving between arrival gate to other terminal gate to depart, using departure board(s)

One technique in testing your hub design is to take these activities and create short user stories ( ‘I have completed a mission I need to hand in and find another’, ‘I need to upgrade my equipment and return to an ongoing mission’,’I want to review collected lore or further the main story’,’I want to hand in these items and upgrade my character’ ) based on what you can do within your game and what services or features your hub contains. Then trace the paths onto your plan of the hub ( once in initial layout or block modelling ), see if the design works as a space for repeated use.

This builds a theoretical ‘heat map’ of routes that you can test your plan with.

Much like a multiplayer map, it should offer a choice of routes, should be highly permeable space and allow efficiency, intuitive navigation, overviews, vistas and easy mental modelling of the space for navigation.

This can help highlight long routes, or backtracking that a player story may result in, Loops and flowing paths are always best, so reducing the amount of dead-end points is important.

What are the symptoms or signs to look out for when the design fails to satisfy these user stories?

Desire paths

Probably the lesser problem is when players find their own routes and efficiencies within the hub architecture. It’s effectively the player speed-running your hub. This might not be much of a problem for the game experience, but it is a sign that the intended design has a failure point that should have been picked up through the player story, flow and route planning process. That said you don’t want to fall foul of the “you’re not playing it right” arrogance of the designer that can happen, if players are engaged and immersed in the design regardless, it’s a win. Maybe its an affordance that could be embraced rather than bandaided.

Fallback to UI

A sign your hub is not working is if the player quickly falls back to navigating the UI and menu system ( if the game allows it ) rather than being physically present and using the hub. Of course it may be impossible to avoid most players setting on this eventually. Warframe is a good example where the player hub can quickly get superseded in usage by the more efficient UI menu flow to get the player back into the mission loop. However the longer they feel engaged with the hub the more immersive and compelling your world will be.
This is a tricky subject. It could be better to aim to be as frictionless in your hub design as possible and avoid offering a pure-UI approach to the hub loop, aiming to preserve immersion in your world at the cost of a little more efficiency. The scope of playtime of a game may affect this decision though: when your game is hundreds or even thousands of hours of playtime even a little friction can get too much.

Spatial blocking similarities

There are some layout type similarities between both airport terminal design and game hubs too. It’s interesting to see how the design efficiency translates between the two.

There are a few main archetypes that terminal design employs: hub-and-spoke, linear, circular , finger and separate satellite island forms.

Hub and spoke has a central terminal with gates arranged radially around. It’s more efficient for increasing the number of airplanes that can park at gates, but more importantly it makes it efficient for passengers to reach the airplanes. It also creates a circular centralized area that can support more free looping flows.

Linear is more of an older original layout, where the numbers of gates are limited. It’s a narrow terminal design, so to move from kerbside ( main entrance ) to flightside is relatively short, however as you increase the needs for more gates you end up with a long linear form, making travel time for passengers longer.

The finger layout is an evolution of this, with the gates stretching out away from the main terminal building to increase the amount of airplanes that have access. It can lead to a terminal breaking into discernable chunks, each with duplicated facilities or space to fow. It fragments the main body of passengers.

A satellite design is the most efficient for the airplane ( which we care less for when thinking as gates as mission points for a game analogue ). Much less efficient for passengers as they have to travel to the gate buildings that are separated. It also leads to duplication of facilities and a break in the visual continuity from kerbside to flightside, so compromises intuitive navigation also. I wouldn’t tend to see a lot of comparison or learning in this design as I mention it makes for a poor analogue in games as the focus is on flightside airplane efficiency rather than quality of passenger experience ( our players in a game hub )

Above you can see ( left to right ):

1- World of Warcraft’s Ironforge and Paris Charles de Gaulle with hub-and spoke layout, moving around the promenade of functionality at its periphery.
2 - Destiny 2’s Tower and La Guardia ( finger design ) with three connected island blocks, which can increase travel time between distinct districts or locations.

3 - Darksouls 3’s Firelink Shrine and LAX Terminal 3 with a central spine and circular hub.

Of course there are a multitude of differing design solutions for both game hubs and airport terminals, but it is easy to find examples where even superficially the layout solutions have been remarkably similar.

For the most part, as player efficiency and a tighter experience is paramount, game hubs will likely copy the hub and spoke or more centralized layouts where functions can be easy to navigate between and support different permutations of user stories.

Design Tools

When it comes to design principles of the actual space, a few emerge from passenger-centric experience design and architecture that many game level designers would find familiar from their own toolkit of ways to influence and encourage player behaviour.

Visual connection

Clear visual connection between areas so player can build a clear mental picture of the space for navigation. Seeing through from arrival and check-in to security and through to the terminal and eventually sightlines to the aircraft and gates

Use of light

People are drawn to light and pushed out of darker areas. This is used to propel users through security areas and areas where flow is critical to brighter gate hubs and retail areas.

Surface patterning

Especially in floor surface patterning, but also on walls and ceilings. Adding directionality and expressing flow is a way to encourage movement in users and provide hints on direction and navigation.

Use of verticality

The movement from kerb-side to flight-side can involve some vertical movement ( planes are entered above ground level by skybridges ). This ascension can be leveraged with the use of dark to light to encourage movement and express direction.

In addition, the use of compression and release of space can be seen as a use of verticality and volume. People don’t want to stay in tighter spaces and as in games the rhythm of compression and release of space can be used to encourage movement.

All these techniques support one key aim: a focus on intuitive navigation over reliance in signage. A lot of information needs to be communicated to users and the more intuitive support a space can provide to navigation and movement the less overburdened graphic design and signage becomes, or in the case of videogames, the use of minimaps, POI markers and golden path markers.

Summary

Overall it’s an interesting observation on the similarities with this comparison, but what can we learn?

I believe the learnings flow both ways. Both games and architectural experience design such as this require careful design to cater for the different user profiles and deliver an optimal experience.
It would be easy to say techniques for efficiency of navigation and movement are our main takeaways, but white both require this, its importance to differing user groups makes this only part of the puzzle. While you have the ‘power user’ of business travellers or ‘killer’ profile gamers, you also have your tourists and explorers. Those user groups require a more stimulating environment to deliver a richer travel experience or in the case of games deepen immersion through immersion in the world and its lore.

Games succeed more in this aspect of experience design offering memorable and engaging moments within a space, not necessarily in a post-modern, theme park fashion, but in the way they can be more playful with space and spectacle than real-world architecture can.

Personally I think the act of seeing and analysing these real-world parallels leads to deeper thinking and improvement on building a critical eye for spatial design and expanding that toolkit of approaches and knowledge needed for world design.

References

Bartle’s Taxonomy of player types:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types

Harrison A, Popovic V, Kraal B (2015)

A new model for airport passenger segmentation

Journal of Vacation Marketing, June 2015

Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276349137_A_new_model_for_airport_passenger_segmentation

Copenhagen Taxonomy source referenced in above paper:

Tarbuck S (2012) Copenhagen Airport: Meeting our passengers’ expectations for the future, today! Passenger Terminal Conference, Vienna, Austria.

Unlocking the Passenger Experience through Integrated Airport Design - Grimshaw

https://grimshaw.global/journal/unlocking-the-passenger-experience-through-integrated-airport-design/

The Secret to Good Airport Design: Aesthetic vs Efficiency | Architectural Digest

https://www.gensler.com/blog/why-airports-must-create-place-of-sense-to-engage-travelers

The Psychology of Airport Design

https://community.infiniteflight.com/t/the-psychology-of-airport-design/994051

Sylvain Douce

GDC2017 - A city of thousand choices:Prague city hub in Deus Ex Mankind Divided

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024502/A-City-of-a-Thousand

Adjacency matrix example:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Adjacency-matrix-of-a-design-studio-from-White-1986-pp-130-144_fig1_307153489

Last time I described what I consider videogame World Design is, and this time I want to cover some of the ways in pre-production you can begin to build that stage for the game to play out on.
So if we are building the stage for the performance then where do we start? Well that largely depends on the scale and scope of the game world and the potential for that space needed.

Following are some of my thoughts and approaches on this subject ( which of course invites the disclaimer of these being my personal notes and not any representation of past or present employers )

I’ve worked on a range of game worlds from large open world to Metroidvania inspired to more linear narrative-focussed experiences. All of these have differing scales of possibility and potential required from their worlds depending on the activities they should hold and how emergent to curated the experience should be.

On a per-project basis the amount a creative direction or game direction that exists at the start of the project can vary greatly. This direction helps to inform the world or at least offer first steps or foundational principals as a starting point. If story-driven there may be significant parts of worldbuilding offered from the narrative, or if more systemic and sandboxy core game design features may offer a seed to grow your world around.

The terror of the blank page ( or theoretical empty sites ) is something I remember facing as an architecture student and later when tutoring others in architectural design even when parts or all of a brief existed. Designing in a void is a challenge so developing a toolkit of processes and approaches to tackle this when approaching initial world design is important.

Using the real world as a start

Research and inspiration are of course the basic response to the need for a starting point. Especially when creating something grounded or relatable it’s the foundation for the work required.

On-site reference trips are something of a luxury reserved usually for AAA budget titles, but incredibly valuable for capturing the feel of a place that is much harder to capture through collected images. Of course not every project’s world has a real-world analogue but inspiration can often still be found by casting the net wide and exposing yourself to a range of references.

Architecture and urban environments especially benefit from extensive research and reference gathering. The details and proportions that lend realism and sense of truthful construction can often be difficult to create, especially for an art team that lacks architectural training. Keen observation of the reference is essential to pick up on those details that sell the groundedness or avoid feeling wrong to the observer, especially in more familiar places such as cities or homes. Players will experience architecture daily and this makes it easy to end up in a kind of architectural ‘uncanny valley’ where the sense of place you’re trying to achieve is missing its mark and feels off because some of the details or proportions show a lack of understanding or critical observation of how the world is built.

The Snowglobe world

Condensing and editing a real place or reference can be a skill also. If you look at something like a GTA map there are many decisions on what are valid landmarks and traits of a place that should be translated into the snowglobe version of that location. It requires a lot of research into what are the visual and cultural elements that should survive through to the virtual version ( and those reference trips if based on a real location help immensely )

Reference use is foundational, and probably doesn’t warrant much more discussion, it should be good practice for most cases.

The corridor trap

There is a counterpoint to this; there is a trap in drawing too directly from reference for layout when it comes to videogames. We have to remember that the function of real architecture is often for a different set of criteria, efficiency and functionality to that of providing entertainment in a videogame.

As an example I’d say the overuse of corridors and connective spaces in level design can lead to a problematic spatial experience for players. Depending on the gameplay it can be a hard balance to give the feeling and groundedness of a real world location while making it an engaging space to play within. It can also lead to a loss of sightlines and corridor twists and turns can lead to disorientation in the player.

An office, hospital or government building may be dominated by corridor spines and separate disconnected room spaces, but as a location for gameplay adhering to reality may be too constrictive. Floorplans don’t always have to fit within a building’s footprint or envelope in a virtual space, whereas in real architecture a corridor may be a way to efficiently connect spaces internally and still allow rooms to utilize the more valuable external walls for light and views.

Corridors themselves are an interesting case when it comes to architecture. They haven’t always been how spaces would connect. In fact in Palladian houses or mansion designs corridors would be absent between main rooms, instead relying on direct connections so the spaces would flow into one another by connected functions. Corridors and connective spaces were used as a way to allow staff to move around the house unseen. We can apply this to level design also, using corridors sparingly to fulfill a function rather than a purely architectural feature of the plan.

One of the projects I was involved with we partially adopted this architectural strategy as a way to decrease the amount of corridors in the world’s layout ( it was entirely set within the interior of an endless building ). Connecting spaces directly also allowed for more corner diagonal approaches ( often a more interesting way to present a space for the player and work with their field of view to survey the entire space upon entry ). Central hub spaces linking outward to other rooms would allow movement through the level with corridors used when needed for difficult connection solutions or for player control. All this helped to create a more pleasing architectural world that helped serve the player’s abilities and gameplay design’s needs for space.

Corridors have their use for player control ( approach and vista alignment ) and spatial pacing ( squeeze-and-release type staging before a larger space ) but their use should be carefully considered and weighed against the player experience.

Other examples would be city grids, which though realistic create quite boring spaces to traverse for a videogame; they’re highly permeable ( great for real life cities, but lacking in potential for control and pacing for level design ) and create very problematic straight vistas ( that can cause performance issues also when rendering the world as it lacks occlusion from structures ).

Beyond reference though, what other approaches help with those first steps for overall layout?

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For me it is often the relationships between places, their story and how they are structured can be additional initial steps to crafting the world design when needed.

Spatial relationships and abstract structural approach

Spatial flow or bubble diagrams are often a way architects can start to build a picture of the relationships between activities or spaces that can inform their design.

I’ve used them in projects ( and architectural design ) before and in conjunction with level designers to plan the hierarchy of spaces, vistas and connections in the world. Bubbles would be scaled to reflect relative scope or importance, unique versus modular spaces marked and connections made. Vistas can be marked too to note visual as well as physical connections.

These spatial diagrams can be used to plot story or mission routes through the connections, planning efficient use and reuse of the spaces created and provide pacing cues.

Depending on the type of gameworld needed ( for example open world or metroidvania ) this will help create more permeable spaces than some of the more linear intestinal tracts of corridors and rooms that can happen if we rush straight to physically blocking out mission flows.

In fact this can be a good thing as it abstracts the level designer to focus on the flow, pacing and relationships of the space and not be distracted with the visual design of the spaces.

Of course this abstraction can also work against us here, as it is essentially 2d it becomes challenging to represent or think in three dimensions, something I will dive into another time on why working with plans and 2d layouts versus three dimensional blockout work can have pros and cons.

Those connections between the places can be important too though and not just lines drawn to link bubbles. Sometimes the space between is a big part of the experience; the classic ‘it’s the journey not the destination’. For example the distances may be defined by the method of travel in an open world game, the speed of travel and how much space for systemic or emergent experiences you wish the player to have. Think of GTA or The Witcher as good examples of this, just long enough to enjoy the travel, to get distracted or pulled by attractors along the way, but not overly long it feels like a chore. Again it’s balance; leave enough space for your roadside attractions but balance the granularity and frequency of them carefully so it does not become packed with distractions and tasks to the point a player only sees busywork and pointless padding to their experience.

Telling the story of the world

Of course another starting point is through worldbuilding; that is, storytelling made physical.

There’s several ways to approach this. I am usually wary of heavy worldbuilding and world bibles, of building an exhaustive history of the world you seek to build. It’s a functional preproduction document; these things should be built with purpose and be more focussed on what those building the world will need from it ( same can be said somewhat for art bibles too ). Build more of a framework that can be robustly expanded upon where the project’s needs arise, and give the team a chance to do some of the work in taking that foundation and growing it.

When also considering your audience there is so much they can infer from what space you leave around the necessary parts of a world’s story which leads to more engagement and immersion into the world. There is no need to explain everything in granular detail.

If your world is influenced by a particular culture, the core philosophies or principles should be communicated clearly, these pillars are tools you will give the team to work with.

Technological lore

One approach I’ve used is to introduce a transformative device that can become a core influence over the architecture and design of the world.

The term I’ve used for this is ‘technological lore’, something that will underpin the built substance and reasoning of the world and be expressed in differing ways.

Two examples I can think of for this type of device are the automobile and the cotton mill.

The architecture of the drive thru and drive-in cinema are examples of the impact of the car on architecture of the mid 20th century. A technology was embraced and transformative to some parts of architecture and world design ( roads supersede other travel and shrink the spaces between ). The populuxe design of Googie architecture further captured the speed and romanticism of road travel and the automobile, seen in roadside architecture such as diners and motels.

The advent of the industrial revolution dramatically altered the landscape of England forever, creating smoking forests of chimneys and mills, and workers housing organised around those.

These kinds of drivers in the world need to be persuasive and expressed in various ways to be truly effective. More than aesthetic, if it touches the activities of its inhabitants or the player’s gameplay it will help build a sense of cohesion within the world.

A common device seen in games is of course the world altering event that causes a post-apocalyptic state to the world. That too can often be attributed to a form of technological lore, be it a pervasive fantasy of cold-war 1950s atomic power ( Fallout series ) or replacement robot analogues of nature ( Horizon Zero Dawn ). These can be seen to create ranges of cultural responses within the world with their own formal expression.

This approach also has a large impact on the resources found within the world and their visual design. Depending on the game this is something that will be interwoven to the game direction and economy of the game design itself and should be a heavily collaborative effort to allow the flexibility the design team may need from what can be found or is valuable to the player and other characters and their factions.

There are more complex theories on how change impacts the world but what we are looking for is something that drives a functional and visual change that can be leveraged by both art direction, narrative and game design.

Conclusion

Often there will be a combination of some or all of these things I’ve covered will comprise those first steps into building the early rough shape of the world design. Making games is a complex process and balancing the needs of all the disciplines in a project for a world can be challenging.
Getting the world off to a solid start, identifying its guiding principals and structures will help ensure a successful initial foundation to the world and hopefully an effective pre-production for the project. If the pre-production gives the team the tools and world layout to work with in production then it should hopefully minimise bigger changes or additions needed later or at least be able to accommodate them without too much catastrophic changes.

This is somewhat of an experiment in documenting my thoughts on the processes, problems and explorations of world design in videogames. I have been considering attempting this for a while now and procrastinated long enough, so this year it is time to tell the story ( or stories ) of world design from my personal viewpoint ( which of course then goes hand in hand with the usual disclaimer of these being my opinions and not that of any current or past employer ).

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But first things first I should tackle my definition of world design.

World Design is not Worldbuilding

I’ll start with what it is not. World design is not worldbuilding in a purely narrative sense.

Worldbuilding is usually a term used in relation to narrative, and for media where words are the building blocks of a world it is indeed worldbuilding, but for videogames we are more similar to production design or architecture, where we have the structure and creation processes to design as much as the contents of the world.

One way to envision world design is as located between the overlapping areas with other disciplines such as narrative, level design and visual design ( environment art and lighting chief among them )

To more explicitly list some of the components that could form a world design I would say it is the back story of the world, the lore of its components, culture or how it functions, the large scale physical structure ( akin to urban design ) or processes in guiding its formation, the approaches to supporting the player experience ( navigation principles such as landmarking or spatial sequencing ), integration of architectural design principles, lighting approaches, design of extensibility or robustness to encompass game design change or emergent activities, formal or visual guidance for art direction which can include color rulesets or material and formal guides and of course can inform the character design of those that inhabit the world also.

It can be a lot, but what comprises the package and reach of world design depends largely on each project’s needs and what is needed from the surrounding disciplines.

Creating Potential Space

It is also important to think of it as a supportive thing and not an ego-fuelled exercise in creation. A term I would use for world design is ‘it is the creation of a potential space’. This space is a stage for the game to play out on; helping to accommodate and encompass the player’s experience, express and reinforce the narrative, give structures and approaches for level design creation, and fuel the art direction of the project.

World Design lives and dies in pre-production

Videogames are ( usually ) a team effort, and the more you can empower and support the team to succeed in their areas of expertise the better. That’s why I’d say world design is predominantly a pre-production focussed effort, if done well it will reduce ( but not eliminate ) the amount of shepherding and feedback required once in production.

Most of the issues I’ve seen in productions relating to the world can usually be traced back to preproduction and identifying places where the foundation was weak or underdeveloped. It’s not easy to predict what the world may need to support once in production though, and designing in robustness is a challenge.

The Pursuit of Cohesion

So, if I was to summarize the goal of world design to a single thing, I would say it is this: cohesion.

It should help to provide that sense of place, of an underlying logic or truth to the world that is foundational to those that experience the game. It is the sinew and connective tissue between the various components that compromise the game experience, and why it needs to be a cross-discipline effort. It is the feeling when you play a game that everything feels like it belongs and has some intent or purpose, even if it isn’t something explicitly explained or presented to you. Production design and the crafting of mise-en-scène would perhaps be a movie production analogue to this.

I hope some of you find this and following texts somewhat useful or interesting. They are of course subjective, as I said at the start these are an attempt to put down my own thoughts on world design. I’m new to this ( writing these, not world design ) and so it may take time to find the right style or voice ( more anecdotal/conversational or more authoritative, I’m unsure, let’s see where they go ). Next time maybe I tackle starting points.

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