3D Worldbuilding: Contexts, Narratives and Pedagogies

Worldbuilding is a popular emerging area of instruction at the intersection of 3D art, media art and game design. Historically derived from fantasy and science fiction, worldbuilding is defined as the creation of an imaginary world for a work of fiction. Now, worldbuilding colloquially describes the open-ended process of designing interactive 3D environments. From Avatar to Zelda, popular culture is dominated by sprawling alternative universes. The demand for technically skilled artists to work within these pipelines continues to grow. Understood thus, worldbuilding is taught through 3D game engines such as Unity, Unreal and Godot. Free to use for students, there is an unparalleled access and ease of use in these industry standard tools for art and teaching.

This session seeks to inquire into how we teach these tools. What contexts and narratives can we present in our pedagogy of 3D game engines? Can our worldbuilding be more inclusive, drawn from a broader cultural context? How do we teach software that blurs the distinction between consumption and production? Do we design our worlds top down, or bottom up? In an era of climate crisis, what are the ecologies we imagine in these new worlds through game design and architecture?

Teachers, artists and designers working in: games, media art, computation, architecture, UI / UX, are encouraged to apply to share papers and presentations of work. We aim to give each speaker a 10-15 minute long presentation time followed by Q&A.