Worldbuilding and Implicit Mythology (Copy)
Every community has those terms they love to use, and for people super into video games “worldbuilding” seems to be one of theirs. Worldbuilding describes environmental storytelling. The way the term is typically used implies that the onus of worldbuilding is on developers. Developers definitely do have a lot of work put into the process of worldbuilding – something can’t be physically present in the game if the developers don’t put it in. But, in reality, worldbuilding is a process which is constantly in construction. It’s an interactive element of the game and relies just as much on the player as the developer. In fact, worldbuilding only really exists in the interactions between the game and the player.
How this works, and why it works, can be best understood through the world of mythology. To do this, we need to start with the basis that the video game itself is our mythology. One of the greatest misconceptions of mythology is they are just old stories written in old books. Mythology is always a performance which is played out. And in the case of video games, we can have the myths being quite literally “played” out.
Drawing on this idea of myths as performance and play is a concept in the anthropological study of mythology: implicit mythology. If the script, or written part of the game, we think of as explicit myth, then the implicit myth is our engagement with the myth, the performances we do, and the stories we tell around the myth. Traditionally speaking, this would be the performance of the myth in the form of either a dance or theatrical performance, but also how we relate to the myth in our day-to-day lives.
In the world of video games, we can see how the implicit and explicit myth elements work together. Developers built a world into the environment of the game, but that relies on players to engage, explore, and perform the myth for it to matter. And what’s more, the players have to tell others about it. Let’s take Journey as example. The history of the world of Journey is sketched into every aspect of that game. We get glimpses of what may have happened in the way the architecture is structured, the way the ruins of what once-was is stuck out of dunes of sand. Clearly, these are elements of the game which have been put there by developers. In some way, these may be considered to be “scripted”. The setting is more explicit. But this isn’t really considered to be worldbuilding until the players engage with it and use to build their understanding of the world. Players of Journey explore the world and make connections. They participate with the setting, putting pieces of a puzzle together. They build the understanding of the world through the elements given to them by the developer. But the most important step in this process is when the players then tell their stories of their worldbuilding process.
In order to be successful, worldbuilding needs all three of these steps: (1) the world and setting; (2) player engagement, exploration and/or performance; and (3) players’ stories. Traditional storytelling works in similar forms. You have the base narrative, but you also have the performance in which the story is presented, and you have individual experiences, connections and stories which relate to these narratives. These other two elements are the more implicit parts of the myth storytelling process.
The bits hidden in the game can be elements like Journey’s architecture, or sometimes more importantly the lack of architecture. The ruins in the world of Horizon Zero Dawn, for instance, leaves the player exploring the wreckage and wondering what happened. The explicit bit which inspires implicit engagement can also be in the descriptions of found items, like in Dark Souls. These descriptors inspire players to seek collaborating elements elsewhere, encouraging them to engage with the virtual world.
These engagements and participation elements are implicit, rather than explicit, because there is no guarantee players will actually do it. For every player that actively reads every item description in Dark Souls with intense consideration, there’s another who doesn’t pay any attention to it. Worldbuilding is a consistent verb which relies equally on the participation of the player along with the developer. It connects the two together. Storytellers do not exist without their context and audience, and the audience needs the storyteller to guide them. The two elements work together in order to provide a full experience of the myth – both developer and player work together to provide a full experience of the game.
So the explicit myth is the written, scripted story, while the implicit is the participation, performance, and experience. These two elements always work together, though in differing amounts and in differing emphases depending on the game. In the past, I used a graph to understand where exactly a game’s worldbuilding fell in the intersections of the explicit written and the implicit experienced. On this graph, we have the implicit and explicit as elements of a continuum, with each quadrant being a level of emphasis or de-emphasis of each element.
The first quadrant would have low implicit, but high explicit. In other words, there is much lower requirements for the player to engage and explore, and more requirements on the designers to craft and write a story for the player. A good example of this type of a game is a Telltale style exploration like Wolf Among Us. These games are highly crafted, and while the player does navigate the story, they have little deviation or exploration possible. Each choice is still one that is crafted. The developers are essentially leading the player through the narrative, not letting the player navigate on their own.
The second quadrant would have low implicit and low explicit. Portal fits this well – a puzzle game whose story is really only present to give context to a complicated and interesting puzzle mechanic. Exploration is intended only to actually solve the puzzle.
And then we have high implicit but low explicit. For games like this, we can see Dark Souls fitting well. The primary game’s narrative is esoteric at best, revealed through item descriptors, boss names, and minor details in small corners. The player needs to actively seek it out to find any kind of cohesion. This type of engagement also encourages players to talk to one another, to share the stories of participation in order to try to piece it all together.
Our last sector then is for those who have high implicit and high explicit. These games have scripted narratives which guide the player, but also encourage individual participation and exploration. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has a solid narrative with cutscenes and dialogue which guides the player to where they’re supposed to be. But players are also free to not follow these aspects, and to explore the various corners of the world at whim.
Each of these aspects could be explored in their own right, but it helps to paint a picture of how these various aspects work with each other to different ends. It’s also important to note that none of these aspects leave room for “no” explicit or implicit. In video games as in mythology, it never stands to just be one aspect – these have to work together to form a beautiful, full experience of our contemporary playable mythology.
What makes worldbuilding so beautiful and amazing as a player is the feeling of control and connection you have with the game. Together, we perform our contemporary myths – there is a symbiotic relationship between developers, game and ourselves. To ignore the role the player has in the construction and experience of worldbuilding is to leave an entire half of the relationship on the ground, and it ignores what makes worldbuilding so magical and interesting. It’s a connection formed and fostered between developer and player which brings us closer to the simplest and more traditional form of storytelling.