CS: How games can change the world

This CS project has asked us to look at how "Games can Change the World". This is a vast project, but after a few seminars looking at how games can teach us something, I was compelled to look further into this. My question is a simple one, How do games teach the player and how can this be used to teach in other areas. Most of the research I managed to find from the incredibly helpful Penny Arcade internet video series, Extra Credits. Other references were used to back up this as a source and to prove some of the higher concepts I want to explore.
I have found that most games, good ones anyway, intend on "teaching" their players something through play whether they intended to or not. Tetris for example teaches mastery over the space given, the control of the pieces within it and, eventually, control over the mindset that allows you to operate on a level above normal conscious thought. Where as games like World of Warcraft use "Skinner Box" techniques similar to those used in gambling in order to give the players infrequent rewards and encourage them to continue playing long past the time when the novelty of the game itself has worn off. The key to these, I believe, is engagement. Game provide a fun, safe and friendly atmosphere where players can experiment with the concepts in the game to effectively teach themselves while the game guides them. A mistake many educational games used in schools across the country make is putting education first. This is a mistake. People, no matter the age, will find it more difficult to engage with something that throws raw concepts at them. An example could be a maths game that asks you to complete written sums in order to proceed to the next level. This will throw the same information a Maths class handout would and expects you to treat it differently because it is dressed as a game. However, the game Portal, manages to teach physics that do not even exist, ultimately making them intuitive. It does this by carefully introducing something new and interesting to the player, mixed with physics that the player is already familiar with, such as a large button that won't stay pressed unless held, cubes have weight, put a cube on the button, the button stays down, in order to create something the player can learn from while playing and experimenting with something they find engaging.
In the essay, the first thing I will discuss will be how these games bring the player into this state of engagement. I have managed to find several techniques, mostly from game design authorities. However, I also want to explore the idea behind "living consciously". This is an idea from psychology and philosophy that looks at how our actions become more automated as we get older, when nothing is new we begin to function out of habit rather than out of purpose. Although this idea has been somewhat diluted by it's overuse in the self-help medium, I believe there is a lot of truth to this principle. Most people in this field say that we should aim to see every experience as novel and new and engage with it as if we are seeing it for the first time. I think some games, certainly, have managed this, if some more than others.
So far I have all the research to start the essay and will gather more as I write. Although this may leave me with a broken and disjointed first draft, I will have all of the information on paper, which should be more than enough to rewrite into something I can be happy with.

Project StarShip

For this most recent project we were asked to focus on a specialism and produce something that required the use of said specialism. So, I chose design. Design has always been my preferred field in games development. Being involved in another project with the soon-to-be Split Path Studio I also decided to ensure that I focused on areas that would benefit that project too. I chose to produce a complete, understandable and detailed design document for a large scale game whilst producing a prototype for at least one of the core concepts of this game in Unity. In my learning agreement, I made a point to note that this prototype would be rough and would only serve as both an illustration and a way to check how well my ideas work and be able to make informed changes to them.

The idea is to create a Space Adventure game where you play as the captain of your own ship. Many Space Sims and Space RPGs have been created, but non that truly focus on the bond between a captain and their ship. This bond is best illustrated by fictional characters like Dr.Who and his TARDIS, Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon and Captain Mal and Serenity.

The Doctor has a unique relationship with the TARDIS. 

 The character's, even when they aren't necessarily piloting the ship, always command the feeling of ownership over it. As if it is an extension of them. This is a fantasy I want people to be able to experience.

Another game with a very similar concept being it is FTL: Faster Than Light. This was an Indie success on the crowdsourcing site KickStarter, receiving largely good reviews from critics. The game runs on the idea of acting as a commander on a ship, giving orders to the crew and managing the ships systems as they adventure through space. Although this is similar to my idea, FTL took on a much more strategic role I intended to, giving the player a top down view of the ship. My idea focuses heavily of staying in the first person perspective the majority of the time. This makes multitasking much harder but keeps the game personal which is something I'm really trying to emphasize.

A screenshot for FTL: Faster than Light

 There are, however, plenty of things to learn from FTL. For a start the entire game is quick and easy to pick up. After about 20 minutes you have learned everything you need to know about the game. This is extraordinarily fulfilling for the player considering the initial feeling of complexity you receive from the HUD.This complexity is important in making the player feel in control, knowledgeable and in space, it basically helps to immerse the player into the fantasy of being a space commander. This HUD is also made simple to understand by having extremely clear graphics which link everything together visually. On top of this, there are only 3 crucial variables that player is managing at the beginning of the game: Fuel, Hull Integrity and Power. Once mastering these the player can begin to slowly pick up the other variables such as missiles, droid parts, scrap and so on.This can all be easily applied to my game, even if it is first person.
Another thing to consider is it's straight forward story which is simple and guides the player to the end of the game. Get from point A to point B without the fleet catching you. Although you have time to look around, you have very little time to linger and certainly no time to go back. This drives you forward while keeping things simple. It also means forcing the player to make important decisions that they will not be able to go back to and ultimately decide the entire fate of your crew. I like this idea but I do want my game to have a lot of freedom so won't be pushing the player so much in one direction. I do however, want a story that is just as simple and drives the player forward constantly. Although the danger will not be as immediate, it will always be imminent.
One of the games greatest achievements is it's ability to make an interesting narrative out of random events. Since the games story is mostly text based, they can add random events and side quests that have rich and descriptive content while still affecting overall gameplay. For instance, after losing my pilot to a group of Mantis space aliens, who I had to kill by opening the airlock doors, I randomly found a shipwrecked mad man called Charlie on a barren planet who had been living in a cave. Charlie became my new pilot and, being stronger than many of my other crew members, became the last crew member alive later in the game in a Ridley Scott's Alien type scenario. Not only is this narrative terrific fun to describe, it also directly affects gameplay. Events like these are splashed throughout the randomized galaxy just waiting for you to discover them. This is very similar to the feeling I want to put across in my game. These sorts of adventures are perfect for a lone space captain. The biggest problem is, it is unlikely that I will be able to express these events in full 3D. Especially if I want so many. I will have to find a way to make them satisfying, varied, multitudinous and directly affecting play.

Having fully analyzed my competitor, I decided to piece together the idea I had in my head onto paper before refining it into something useable. I want to give the player a fair choice as to how they want to play the game. The current choices stand as Engineer, Pilot, Fighter and Adventurer. Each one, as opposed to being determined by a skill tree or stats, will be determined by skill and how much time a player has poured into practicing that discipline, much like a fighting game such as Street Fighter. The player can also mix and match these "skills" focusing only on one or on all of them as they choose. As such, if there is a leveling system it will be through "examination" type exercises which show that the player possesses a certain amount of skill.
The basic form of play would involve the player wandering around their ship in first person. They will have built the ship themselves, to help emphasize that it is theirs, and they are able to make small level modifications on the fly as they like even customizing the dashboard. Each ship should feel different to fly than any other.

I decided the first thing I should refine is the engineering side of things. This way I know how the ship "works" as it were and can translate that to piloting. So far I have managed to work on a single kind of generator, the Collider generator. I want at least three, each working differently. I am not entirely sure how different as of yet. I am considering creating similar systems for each but requiring different goals. The engineering in the ship works like a puzzle based mini-game. The puzzle has many different "correct" solutions, but some solutions produce more power more efficiently. Players are more than welcome to completely ignore this side of the game, keeping the power at it's default.

The collider system was inspired by a game called SpaceChem in which you must produce molecules by manipulating atoms as they move along a line. Despite these similarities my game is different in 

 all other ways.

A screenshot from SpaceChem

The collider system I created works with "packets"of fuel released by two pumps on either side of a grid. Close to the center of the grid is the collider where two packets of fuel, one from each pump, are collided. The total "mass" and "speed" of these packets equals the power output which can be spread across the ship to power any number of units. The problem is the packets lose mass when the travel 4+ squares and lose speed every time they turn a corner. The player can control the mass and speed by shaping the line leading to the collider, adding special units on the line and using different types of fuel. There will also be obstacles placed around the grid so the designer can control how many variations and what variations are allowed.

An example setup for the Collider Generator.

  This is also the area I have chosen to prototype in Unity. I feel this area is complex and big enough to produce a decent sized prototype, while simple enough to program for a beginner. In order to teach myself Unity, I have been following along with the book Unity 3.X Game Development Essentials. The book teaches the player to create an island where the player must perform specific tasks. I am over halfway through the book, but have already been able to lay down the basics for my Collider Generator. I have used only cubes but can easily replace these with meshes or parent them with textured planes in order to make them look nicer. So far, I have produced a pump, which produces a packet every few seconds and a track which the packet can follow.

Current progress on the Collider Generator prototype.

Project Dream Weaver

For our main project in BA5, we were asked to simple "create something playable". We could work on our game design we created for our previous unit, or on a new game design. We also had the choice to work alone or in a group.

Wanting to develop a very specific set of skills I chose to work alone. I wanted to use a game idea I had been thinking about for a while now and use this project to explore that idea a little further. The idea was for a lone character, played through a first person perspective, to be chased through a dream-like world, made up of no more than a beach and a ruined town, by a Nightmare that grows increasingly faster and more powerful. The player would have to gain abilities to prevent being caught by the Nightmare. The town would be designed to be fairly small, but the player could unlock access to more of it by gaining afore mentioned abilities. One example is the ability to use the many set of stairs to switch the player's relative gravity to walk on walls and ceilings. This ability alone, inspired by MC Escher's "stairs" drawings, creates some very interesting level design opportunity I thought were perfect for this project.
For this project, I wanted to focus specifically on my level and gameplay design skills. So, I decided I was going to created a very roughly textured block out level in CryEngine. My hope was, by actually producing a block out of the level, I would be forced to think critically about how the gameplay works and how the level should fit together. I feel it is important to note that I have contributed much less artwork to this project than all previous because of the focus on the design.

first thing I wanted to sort out was the game mechanics themselves. If I could get, at least the barebones, on paper I could start designing the level. I took my usual initial approach to this which is to sit down with a notebook and the raw idea in my head and begin trying to figure out what mechanics I could use to create something as close to the image in my head as possible. This stage I often approach without too much research and try to just jot down as many ideas as possible, linking them where possible trying to create fun and functional gameplay systems. This didn't take more than a day or two to get an idea I thought was worth taking further. It was at this point I had the idea of having spirits you guide and help to get to shrines in order to get abilities. It was also at this point I worked out the Sand and Physical abilities in the game. I also knew I wanted the player to be able to get different types of ability by performing different tasks. With the very barebones worked out, I decided to work the rest out on a very large flowchart in order to make sure all my ideas worked. It was also important that many of the systems worked independently, as well as when linked to other systems. (Unfortunatly, the flowchart needs to be too high a resolution is be readable to post)

I felt satisfied with the results having worked out exactly how the Nightmare reacts in many situations, the system for gaining abilities and how to escape the Nightmare in most situations. With this, I decided to work out the architectural design as I knew this would have a major effect on how the game played due to the largely spatial and platforming design of the game. I struggled with this for quite some time, spending far longer than I should have on it. Eventually, I chose a middle eastern-esque style.

Not wanting to spend too much time on concept art and focus on design I drew some silhouette, mostly using random shapes mixed with those found in reference photos to create some interesting shapes. I then picked the shapes I like and combined them into more silhouettes. The silhouette I eventually chose doesn't look much like the final block out at all, but it helped me find peace of mind enough on this matter to move onto the map.

I chose the middle silhouette as my final design

 I decided, for the map, I would work out paths for the player to travel through using all of the abilities and then stitch the paths together into a map so that most of the map served a purpose of some sort. After very briefly sketching these paths and working out a very rough key for the map, I drew a rough map out in Photoshop.

Rough Map

The rough map served as a guide to creating a final map on graph paper. I wanted to use graph paper so I could easily and quickly make changes when needed and still make the map precise enough to use as a scale model when taking it into CryEngine. Whilst working on this final map, I worked out the final map key and added the ability to use sprinting and Sandman as ways to boosting jump distance and increase the pace of the game. I also decided here to only allow sand abilities to be used whilst standing on sand, the idea inspired by the boost pads in the racing game WipeOut.

Final Graph paper map

Final map key

 Once this was finished I created a cleaner digital version of the map.

Clean version of the final map

Once the map was complete I felt comfortable taking it into CryEngine. The first thing I did was create the height map. Not thinking to check the scale, I had to play around with the size of the height map a fair bit before I felt comfortable building the structures. It also took me a little while of fiddling with the height of the map and the slope of the beach. I did this by switching back and forth between CryEngine and Photoshop to repaint the map or edit the levels until I was satisfied. I used the Solids tool to make the structures, paying careful attention to the grid, wanting to be as faithful to the graph map as possible so that the distances for jumps and the sizes of obstacles would be right. Once I had all the basic structures in, I created rough shape templates for the fabric hooks and stairs that could be copied across the map to keep up consistency. The only problem with this step is that time it takes to do. This task was long and tedious and for the most part could be done with relative ease.
Once all the structures were built I started applying the textures. Running low on time I decided to use textures already in CryEngine and played around with the settings. I used two textures. One for terrain and one for the buildings. I just wanted to give an idea of colour but found my choices to be far too extreme. For this I had created a colour test painting.

The colour test

The colour test was created in Photoshop by painting two flat colors, one for the sky, one for the ground. When I found a colour combination that suited the dreamy landscape I was after, I would paint in some tone and variety to see how that work. I used some Salvador Dali landscapes for this, finding that he managed to make even a completely flat landscape look completely alien through colour and tone. I took note of the contrasts of colours in the sky and the ground and the way he often moved from very saturated deep colours in the foreground to the background. Although I drained a lot more colour from mine to give it a lighter feel, I believe I captured a similar surrealism. I then added the two suns and a block of off white rock to see how the light would play on the scene. Liking the result, I used this as reference for the textures. After some playing with the textures in CryEngine and the sun and sky settings, I found that I could not get the feel right. I decided not to play with the lighting and settled for the result. Overall, I am happy with the result in terms of block out and level design, although I do not think I gave myself enough time to work in CryEngine and way too much time to architecture research. I also think that I should have used more illustrations and artwork to demonstrate my designs. I feel like, despite my focus on design, I could have explained myself better with pictures.

Modding: A Brief History

Before this brand new term of uni, in preparation of our new Distribution and Platform module for Contextual Studies, we were asked to make a presentation on something that has changed the games industry in the last 20 years. I chose to look at modding since it's a scene I am particularly interested in. I think the area generally both inspires and requires creativity in an area it is often hard to get started in. Before this project I was vaguely aware of the history of modding and thought it must have affected the industry in some way. Here is what I found in terms of history:

History
The first real mod was for the original Castle Wolfenstein (1981) were a bored (probably) programmer replaced many of the enemies with smurfs. The mod was called Castle Smurfenstein (1983). Although silly it sparked a revolution.

Castle Smurfenstein: The first real mod

In 1990, the developers of Duke Nukem, 3D Realms, noticed that modders were not only making their own levels and content but also making their own level editors to make the process even easier.
Shortly after the release of  Wolfenstein 3D and Ultima Underworld (1992), id Software realised that allowing the audience to modify their game actually extended the game's life. Once the player's had finished the game, they could either play one of the many user made levels, create their own levels or both.

id Software discovered very quickly that the lifespan of Wolfenstein 3D was greatly increased by it's power to be modified by the players.

With this in mind, id Software legally and technically opened Doom (1993) and Doom II (1994) up to modification realizing the full potential it unlocked for players. They did, however, asked that modders specifically used the registered, fully paid for, versions of the game. The community fully supported this request. In-fact, many modders programmed their mods to only work on the registered versions. Many of the mods were so successful that Final Doom (1996) was not only a re-release of the original game, but also included many user-created levels.

Final Doom was an official release that contained user created content beside the official developer's content.

From this point on, id Software was pretty much seen as the head of the mod scene, releasing games almost specifically targeting modders. Quake (1996) was one of the first games released with a 3D level editor made by the developers, as opposed to being downloaded separately and being made by the users. Despite this, many people weren't happy with the official editor and created their own.
Ben Morris created WorldCraft, a level editor designed to work with the Quake engine. He was later approached by the game studio Valve and asked if they could use WorldCraft to make Half-Life (1998) and was later adapted into the Valve Hammer Editor for Valve's Source engine.

WorldCraft, later known as the Valve Hammer Editor.

In the same year, Epic Games released Unreal along with the UnrealEd, a level editor. The Unreal Engine was considered by many to be superior to the Quake Engine, the modders former top choice, in that it was simpler to use, could edit games in real time, had superior graphics and it's own scripting language optimized for game creation. Epic Games also licensed their engine out to other studios on a very regular basis. To this day it is still one of the most used third party engines.
Since then, level editors have become common place in PC shooter and RTS games.
It is because of editors like this that games like Defense of the Ancients (2005) were created, which was created from WarCraft III (2002). DotA was incredibly popular and brought mods to many who were previously unaware of the scene. Many of the people who worked on it were quickly taken up into the games industry.

DotA, a hugely successful game created entirely as a modification of Warcraft III.

More and more now developers are releasing their engines and editors for free so that people can mess with them at will including the Unreal Development Kit, CryEngine 3 and Unity.

How This Effects the Games Industry
 As previously mentioned most of the earliest level editors were built for by modders for modders. It was evident from very early on that these were a much faster way of creating levels. As a result many developers began integrating features from these modder created editors into their own editors. Editors also allowed designers and artists to jump in and actively edit the levels themselves instead of relying on the programmers. Editors also allow "amateurs" to create professional level work without necessarily having professional experience. This also meant that many good modders are hired by big companies such as id, Epic or Valve. 
Developers have started releasing their editors free of charge partially because of this. If people do well at messing around with their free software they can be considered both hireable and ready trained. 
Modding is also well known to increase a game's lifespan. Games that allow modding allow the player to explore player created content as well as the original content, or the player can make their own content for other players to enjoy.
Modding is often a jumping off point for wannabe developers and designers as it allows people to simply rearrange content into something new before experiementing with making their own content. A mentioned before this is greatly helped by the increased number of tools available.
This, in itself, has greatly contributed to the indie market which is beginning to grow big enough to be seen as a real threat to the AAA developers who are now having to adapt to compete with the innovation and creativity that comes from the players themselves.

References

•  Wagner, James Au. (2002). Triumph of the Mod. Available: http://www.salon.com/2002/04/16/modding/. Last accessed 09/01/2013.
• Username: CtChocula. (2012). A History of Dota: Part 1. Available: http://www.gosugamers.net/dota/thread.php?id=802775. Last accessed 09/01/2013.
• Thomsen, Mike. (2010). History of the Unreal Engine. Available: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2010/02/23/history-of-the-unreal-engine. Last accessed 09/01/2013.

Finishing the Design Doc Artwork

The Neutrals
 After the group and I came up with the two different types of ghost. One hostile and on neutral, i.e. indifferent to the player, I realised we didn't have artwork of the latter to show the visual differences. I was aware that it would be vital for it to be immediatly obvious to the player what was a threat and what wasn't. It was the neutrals purpose to loop around a set path, acting out scenes from their past at certain intervals of that path. They therefore need to look human enough to communicate actions. Most of the time they would be faint. If the player looked at them for too long or even got too close, they would simply vanish. It was only at the times they were acting out these highly intense scenes that they could be viewed. They would get clearer, brighter even, and their voices would get less muffled and more audible. I therefore felt i should try to show both states of neutral. 
The ghost I designed was based off of a ghost that lived in a pub close to my home in Canterbury called the George. Despite not believing in ghosts I still find these stories interesting. The pub had several fleeting owners on my frequent visits to it as a child (it was a family friendly country pub), some of which were believers and actually had exorcisms performed on the building, some were non-believers. They all, regardless of their beliefs, experienced at least the feeling of a "presence", some even claimed to witness the ghost. She was "The White Lady" a woman in her nighty wander what was once a much bigger building. I based her appearance off of some of the old photos showing ghostly white figures.

The Brown Lady of  Raynham Hall, 1936

 These are often faded, white figures with barely discernible features. When in her, higher emotional state I also wanted her to glow. I thought it a good idea to have her glow a colour that showed the emotion she was feeling. In this case fear is represented by yellow. I also wanted to put a little storytelling into the pictures. I added an oil lamp which she would be carrying as she wandered the halls of where ever. This could be dropped and smashed in her fearful pose. Showing a flow from one to the other.

The neutral ghosts: Normal on the left, Emotional on the right

.

    The Inventory
After some discussion with the group I was assigned the task of designing the inventory. We had already agreed that Anne would keep all of the items she found in a tan leather messenger bag she carried around with her. I decided to create the inventory around these principals. I also knew that there were only 4 types of things Anne could collect: Batteries for the camera, and indication for which had already been designed by Jack, Film, Puzzle items and Combo items, which attach to combination film.
As such I created seperate areas for each. I also wanted it to look as though she was looking into her bag. Based on this principal I thought it suitable to have the items in a line with a circle around the selected item. The items would fade out and get smaller as they moved away from the circle. This gives the impression that they are disappearing into the bag. I have designed the information box at the bottom of the box to look like a piece of torn notebook paper since the other menus are all based in a journal Anne carries around with her.

My design for the inventory. Background provided by Jack

The piece was all drawn with little reference needed. I drew mainly from intuition. The only problems I have with it is the general roughness of it and the cartoony shades of colour. I feel like these could have been desaturated and even given a hint of blue to go with the gloomy cold feeling of the rest of the game.
 
Mansion
I originally intended to have the backing for the Design Doc to look like the scrappy notebook Anne carries throughout the game, the group disagreed, however, and I was instructed to create a scene which could have the opacity lowered.
I thought, since the Mansion is the primary incentive for the player and it had not yet been designed, I should maybe produce a scene with the Mansion in it. Not being great at drawing buildings I needed a fair amount of reference. I thought about how the village was supposed to have survived for centuries. The village was also the scene for a horror game so had probably seen some pretty horrible history. Many of the locations in horror have history beyond their main story. I figured that it was probably a castle at one point belonging to a land baron at some point. I also then found that British castle architecture just isn't that scary. I decided, since we weren't going for an entirely realistic approach to sneak in a little of Reichsburg castle into the central tower.

Reichsburg Castle

I also wanted some of the more traditional spooky house look to it. Unfortunatly, not much Englishness to draw from here. So I decided to look towards some more American influences, taking note of some of the roof designs and the way parts of the building from Disneyland's Haunted Mansion

Disneyland's Haunted Mansion

Noting a definitely unbritish feel to the whole thing I decided to throw in some Tudor, taking particular notice of the beams.

"English Tudor Mansion" stock photo from dreamstime.com

I also wanted to put some more medieval english heritage in there. I looked at the castle towers common in this part of the world.

Bodium Castle

The final result was a sort of Frankenstein's monster of stitched together architecture. I also realised that this wasn't necessarily a bad thing in a horror game. I painted most of it in monochrome blue, wanting to give the whole thing a cold, unforgiving look. I did, however, give a slight orange glow from the windows. This is to give incentive to the player to move towards it. I don't think I really pulled it off. Still, did my best. I also think my edges need to be sharper, my perspective more precise and just about everything else. All of which could have been improved with more time and practice with the references.

My interpretation of the mansion for use as a background for the GDD

Logo
The game logo, which is just the game's name put in a arty kind of way, was started by me and grandly finished. I started by literally thinking about our title, Southmere. I thought it could be a good idea to put emphasis on the S and M since each will already be emphasised by the reader. I started sketching out ways it could be written in pen, making the S and M bigger, longer with organic but sharp curves. I hoped this would emphasize the horror element of our game. I then decided to draw these two letter to make them more like a spooky, warped tree. I then used a gothic font for the "outh" and "ere".
Quite rightly Jack decided he wanted to have a play around with what I had done to try and add a bit more of the camera. He softened the Ss curves a bit and added a lense in the background.
I am quite happy with the result.

Creating a Great Fantasy World

As part of the Contextual Studies area of our course we were asked to create a well researched presentation "Creating Coherent Game Worlds". The brief is deliberately vague in order to explore a variety of topics within this area, from the pedantically specific to the frustratingly vague. I decided to take a more literal view of the brief. I chose to look at how great fantasy worlds are created.

First let me define a fantasy world. It is a world that is made up and completely fictional. It is based neither in faith or science, although many would argue that the former is a form of fantasy. This would exclude worlds like that of Star Trek (Roddenberry, 1966) and Blade Runner (Scott, 1982) since they are loose interpretation or even hopes of what lies in store for the human race and is based around technology or research that actually exists. I would also say that a fantasy world can exist within an interpretation or perspective of the real world, the world of Harry Potter (Rowling, 1995) does this. I also want to point out that fantasy is now mistakenly defined as a world in a medieval type era with dragons, elves, dwarves and goblins. These are just reinterpretations of Tolkien's universe. Not to say they do not have their own original elements and are not unique worlds in their own right, but i do not think they are great. They follow a "tried and true" formula based on how Tolkien created his world, Middle Earth, and, although it works, any creator of an original world not based on Tolkiens' is usually using a different skill set and approach.
Now, how am I defining a "great" fantasy world? What right do I have to do that? How dare I! Well for the sake of the presentation I am defining a "Great Fantasy World" as a world that has been brought into the trans-media and has been enjoyed in one form or another by millions of people.
Although the presentation must relate to games in some way, it is more than a little difficult finding out how the creators of the game actually came up with the elaborate fictions behind the game. This is partially because they are rarely created by one person, and partially because games developers are often very secretive about their methods. So despite some serious searching, I found that there is no reference to how the world Tamriel from the Elder Scrolls series (Bethesda, 1994) was made. As such I have looked at how worlds from other media have been created and, I believe, the same essential process applies. I will try to prove this through a practical experiment later on.
I have chosen four worlds, along with their sole creators, to examine. I chose:

• The world of Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
• Middle Earth  by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Pandora by James Cameron*
• The Star Wars Universe by George Lucas

With these artists and worlds in mind I decided to figure out what they all have that could explain their success. A formula of sorts. I found that they all seemed to share a few specific traits. Although a lack of information at some points leads me to make occasional leaps of faith, I do think there could be something to this. I want to go through the traits one by one and give examples from the four selected worlds.

*It could, quite rightly, be argued that Avatar  is at least partly Science Fiction. This is true, but Pandora itself is completely fictional. In fact it is astromically unlikely that life on another planet will be anywhere near as close to our own planet that I feel justified in saying that Pandora is a fantasy world created for the sole purpose of telling the story. Nothing native to the planet itself is based on a scientific prediction of the future. 
Personal Major Purpose (The Drive)
This is the creator's own personal reason for creating the world. This is, perhaps, the most important of all of the traits as it is likely, without this, the other traits wouldn't exist. This is the drive that drives the individual to create the world. Although these are often channeled into the next trait (The Representation), in order to give the idea structure and marketability. When it is a team responsible for the worlds creation, as it usually would be in games, this could easily be translated into a philosophy that all or most of the team is happy to take on. Although, even if a team leader isn't chosen, one person usually naturally assumes this role. This person tends to act as a conductor of the vision. I would imagine they have their own drives for this. Many of the better worlds are driven by a sort of nostalgia. I desire to bring back something they experienced, often as children.
Examples of this principle can be found as follows:

• Tolkien was very keen in creating a mythology for England since most of ours were lost in the Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Norman invasions. He was very fond of Scandinavian folklore and wanted England to have it's own, complete with heroic sagas. His saga was Lord of the Rings (Tolkien, 1954).
• Rowling seems evidently to be trying to redeem her childhood, with all of the things she didn't have as a child. This can be seen partially through the over use of good father figures in the Harry Potter potter novels (Rowling, 1995) due to a lack of a good father figure.
• As opposed to Rowling, Cameron seems to have more of a drive to recreate his childhood, or elements of it, as it was. He was very fond of science fiction and the study of nature from a very young age and wanted to recreate that feeling of curiosity and wonder in his recent CG marvel, Avatar (Cameron, 2009).
• George Lucas was often quoted as saying he was "creating the films he wanted to see". He wanted to see a contemporary Flash Gordon-esque space adventure that he enjoyed watching when he was younger in the Star Wars saga (Lucas, 1977).

Public Minor Purpose (The Representation)
This is the world's primary purpose, before translation into other media. This is both the media it is initially represented in itself and something that they want to translate to the audience. This could be a perspective on morality, a simple message or even just an experience. This is how the artist(s) want the audience to see their world.
Examples could be as follows:

• Tolkien wanted a heroic saga, which he felt was lacking in contemporary culture. He wrote this as Lord of the Rings, which he filled with his own messages and experience that formed his view of good and evil. The book even contains very strong and obvious environmental messages. 
• Rowling wanted to, and succeeded in, creating a world children could get completely and utterly lost in. A world they felt they could and were a part of. Again, there is a definite personal view of good and evil that is apparent in the book. A view that is perhaps a little more contemporary than the Tolkien's.
• Cameron has stated that he wanted to push the limits of special effects technology and artistic achievement to the limits with Avatar. Cameron also has quite obvious messages about environmentalism and the preservation of culture built into the film.
• Lucas, similar to Tolkien, look heavily to mythology and religious stories from all cultures to adopt a Joseph Campbell-like "Hero's Journey" that would appeal to a huge range of audiences. It holds almost Buddhist principles of losing your sense of self for the good of others and purity of the mind.

 The Building Blocks (The Passion)
This is usually the personal passions and pursuits of the artist creating the world. When creating a world of usually large proportions, the parts of the world that will be the greatest in depth will naturally be the parts that the creator has the most interest in. This is, after all, their world, no matter how much hardcore fans may try to adopt it as their own. This could be anything from painting to a love of warm woolen mittens. The creators also often use their own experiences to form the world's moral system, an often under appreciated part of any game world.
Examples of this include:

• Many of the languages of Middle Earth were created long before Middle Earth existed. Tolkien had always loved languages and often made his own. He would often, in fact, create the names first, often from Old English or Flemish origin, and then build a story around it. Tolkien also based Hobbits off of the rustic people of Oxfordshire. This was his interpretation of what is good and pure in the world, somewhat Amish as it may be. Tolkien also put many of his experiences of the war and love of nature from childhood into his world. The fires of industry, run by powerful destructive leaders who are both charismatic and illusive, burning down the forests is not a hard message to translate.
• As opposed to Tolkien, who often created landscapes with more character than the characters, Rowling had an obvious love of people and their personalities despite her introverted nature. All of the figures in her books are all unique and believable. They make you feel exactly as you she would want you to. This is because they were all based off of people she knew or people she would liked to have known.  She also had a love of classic and contemporary literature. Including works like the Illiad (Homer, 1260 - 1240bc), The Wind in the Willows (Grahame, 1908) and the Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis, 1950). 
• Cameron took much of his inspiration from his love of science and nature he had as a child and pursued as an adult. Between the making of the Titanic (Cameron, 1997) and Avatar, Cameron spent time experience the space program in Russia and in submersibles looking at the deep sea floor for new, weird and wonderful forms of life; many of which must have inspired the world of Avatar. Cameron also has a love of special effects and film-making (surprisingly...). This is what ultimately led him to "push the boundaries" to create Avatar.
• Lucas shows a great love of films. One of the most notable influences is from Japanese director Kurosawa. Kurosawa's film "The Hidden Fortress" we find that the plot is remarkably similar to Star Wars and two mischievous characters that very clearly influenced C3PO and R2D2. We also find the old Flash Gordon films to be a big influence on Lucas. 

 The Details
 This is crucial for a world to hold attention for long enough to be great over a long period of time and be able to be translated to other media. All of the worlds I have mentioned have a painstaking amount of detail in them that gives the audience a crystal clear image of what that world is like. Even something as simple as a map (an almost essential inclusion to any fantasy world) can give the audience a much clearer view of the world they are or will soon be losing themselves in. Even when the details aren't shown in their completion in the primary media, it often shows that the creator knows them by the casual mention of an element that just sounds right.
Examples:

• Tolkien's keen eye for detail shows most in his maps and appendices. In the Lord of the Rings appendices, Tolkien goes into family trees, alphabets and general histories and meanwhiles that would have otherwise been completely left out of the story. Tolkien spent much of his remaining life working on The Silmarillion, which is still unfinished. This book detailed what happened before and after the Lord of the Rings. Even in its unfinished form, it provides a rich source of information for fans wanting to know more about this deep, amazing and fantastic world. 
• Rowling has literally volume upon volume of information about the Harry Potter world that was never used in the book. The vast majority of which has not been released. She has, however, released several books with a little of this information, such as The Tales of Beedle the Bard (Rowling, 2007), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Rowling 2001) and Quidditch Throught the Ages (Rowling, 2001). A recent resource for some of this information can also be found at Pottermore.com. Her knowledge of the world she created really does show in her books however, even if it's just through a casual book quote that you know is cut from a much larger piece of text. 
•  Although Cameron had a huge team of writers and artists at his side to help him, this does not make his details of Pandora any less important to the audience. In fact, you know that every cg and concept artist will have come up with their own story for each and every plant and animal they spent tens of hours developing. This is obvious in the beauty of the enviroment of Pandora. There is also the Pandorapedia.com which is apparently a simplified version of a much larger tome.
• Lucas, again, did not necessarily write the entire mythology behind the entire Star Wars universe, but that does not make it any less special. Even if what was previously canon is changed or ignored if the film series requires it. The expanded universe is a major part of the Star Wars franchise and has sold many books based on this (sort of) canon made mostly by "licensed" fans. 

The Ground
 The Ground is something, anything that the audience can relate to. This is what really connects them to the world. This can be done with themes, characters, settings or all of the above. Although this is an obvious point that even the most amateur artist will put into their world without thinking, there is a risk that there is a risk of having a world so alien that the audience simply cannot relate. Despite the fact that most people will put in some ground, it still takes skill to have a good ground that really pulls the player into the world.
Examples of such skill are:

•    Despite including many different races to inhabit Middle Earth, they all represent certain types of people and are all easily related to. Tolkien also uses vividly painted descriptions of the landscapes. These make the fantasy elements such as the living trees, the ents, almost a metaphor for a feeling you might get when in a forest. One of the most relatable elements Tolkien uses is his themes. Overcoming evil and temptation, nature over industry and simplicity and adventure isn't always a bad thing. 
• Rowling, quite ingeniously, has a world hidden within our own. She plants the idea that anyone of use may be a wizard, somehow special and seperate from everyone else. This is a great way to pull children into her world. Her characters are superbly written to match people the audience would really love to know or, maybe, already know in a sense. Again, she uses a battle against evil as another ground, something we can all, in some sense, relate to. The "coming of age" element is also especially relevant to her readers since many who read the original book as children will have been young adults by the time the last book came out. 
• Cameron bases almost all of Pandora on some element of the real world. The jungles are very similar in structure to jungles on earth (minus the bio-luminescence). The Na'Vi, the native race to Pandora are also humanoid and have a culture very similar to those we see in certain tribes on earth. Again, Cameron's world preaches environmentalism and the preservation of culture. Nature over Industry.
• Lucas' main characters are main characters are almost exclusively human, those that are not have very human personalities and traits. Although many of the environments are very different to those we might find on earth, such as the Cloud City or the Death Star they are painted or otherwise represented in a way that makes it obvious what it is like and what it feels like to be there. Yet again Lucas's main groundings are in the themes. The films teach selflessness and courage over hatred and anger. Lucas uses the "Hero's Journey" to pull the audience in with a plot structure that has been used for literally thousands of years by cultures all over the world. 

As explained previously, it is extremely difficult to find out the individual motivations of games designers in creating their fantasy worlds. I believe they are solely to create a worlds that works with the game. More and more now games developers hire writers to create these worlds, however, which means they are becoming more and more unique. I think, however, very few have reached this many people and been translated to other media quite as successfully, although many have tried. I think that these methods are just as easily applied to the process of creating worlds for games as any of these other media.