Game Worlds - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 97

The Environmental Dimension
The environmental dimension describes the world's appearance and its atmosphere.
You've seen that the physical dimension defines the properties of the game's space;
the environmental dimension is about what's in that space. The environmental
characteristics of the game world form the basis for creating its art and audio. We'll
look at two particular properties: the cultural context of the world and the physical
surroundings.
CULTURAL CONTEXT
The cultural context of a game refers to its culture in the anthropological sense:
the beliefs, attitudes, and values that the people in the game world hold, as well as
their political and religious institutions, social organization, and so on—in short,
the way those people live. These characteristics are reflected in the manufactured
items that appear in the game: clothing, furniture, architecture, landscaping, and
every other man-made object in the world. The culture influences not only what
appears and what doesn't appear (a game set in a realistic ancient Egypt obviously
shouldn't include firearms), but also how everything looks—including the user
interface. Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile is an excellent example of a game's culture
harmonizing with its user interface; see Figure 4.8 . The way objects appear is
affected not only by their function in the world, but also by the aesthetic sensibili-
ties of the people who constructed them; for example, a Maori shield looks entirely
different from a medieval European shield.
FIGURE 4.8
The cultural context of
Cleopatra: Queen of the
Nile influences every-
thing on the screen,
including the icons and
text.