Agential Worldbuilding

February 21, 2025 Fall 2024

One of the first days of class, Viktor Timofeev, the instructor of Agential Worldbuilding, asked the class, “What is an art game?” Many students responded saying things in the nature of games with focus on visuals or games where you don’t just shoot people. I kind of laughed at the question and Viktor implored why I thought the question was funny. My reason was because I think all games are art, even “commercial” games. Viktor gave his definition of art games as simply a game that breaks the norms. Throughout the class, to my surprise, Viktor reinforced his idea of art games in a way that was sincere, technical but easy to pick up, well researched, and thoroughly planned. By the end of it, everyone had a wide literacy in what games could be outside the mainstream. It is easy to see why Viktor’s definition of art games is important.

The term “agential worldbuilding” is the act of creating digital spaces that players can act agency over, otherwise “video games,” or more specifically games made in Unity. Throughout the course, Viktor led workshops in the multimedia tool Unity, primarily for 3D first person games, as well as discussions about weekly essays to read and games to play . Reflecting Viktor’s work as an artist, many of the workshops, speakers, readings, discussions, and exercises were organized in a way to facilitate students to make games that reflected a personal narrative, unique mechanic, or evocative use of the medium.

Each class began by reviewing the optional assigned readings and games. Readings ranged from more contemporary works by Mary Flanagan and some classics by Bernard Suits. These readings helped set a base of understanding some basic philosophical understanding of what the function of games are and what the potential could be. The games assigned paired well with the readings as being good examples of this potential. We played things like LSD Dream Emulator, The Endless Express, and Drawer Simulator to name a few. Many of the games played were to help facilitate more out of the box mechanics and ideas.

A majority of the class time was spent on the technical side of understanding Unity. Viktor’s approach was highly detailed and documented through large Google Documents. All of the basic elements to create a first person game were included, such as movement, camera controls, greyboxing, materials, scripting, path finding, audio, UI and much more. Much of these elements were laid out in a way that a beginner could understand and a more experienced coder could dive deeper into. This was in part to plenty of shared resources and assets.

Guest speakers Ryan Kuo and Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley offered fresh perspectives into their practice. Kuo, former Killscreen writer, offered his experience of making games in Unity for an art gallery setting, and showed how mechanical systems can be expressive even when the player is not directly interacting with them. Brathwaite-Shirley talked about her experience being a Black trans artist and the difficulties around conveying political and social rhetoric in her work while also creating engaging and easily understandable experiences for gallery audiences. Both artists showed that it’s possible to be financially successful outside of the AAA game industry by making personal and alternative video games.

The students made a diverse array of exciting interactive works throughout the class. Some ranged from more meditative games, taking place in lush caves with mysterious figures. Several games critiqued capitalism in the form of what it’s like to deliver food in a dystopian cityscape and shoplifting from Whole Foods. Others took more traditional routes like base jumping off a mountain and surfing on floating platforms and jumping out of a deep well.

Overall, being the assistant teacher for this class was a great opportunity to meet all of the students and to hang out with Viktor. Viktor and I would go to each other’s apartments for most of the Tuesday sessions and trade off cooking dinner before class. I will miss the regular occasion to eat Viktor’s pasta with veggies and salad!