What would you call what happens in the virtual world? Few people know that the environment in the game is called the setting. What is so interesting hidden by this concept, we will consider in the article.

Definition

From English “setting” is translated as “furnishings”, “room”, etc. In general, the concept itself describes the environment in which virtual events or artistic actions take place. It all depends on whether a computer or board game is taken into account.

The setting is the time and place of action, as well as the conditions of its process. Sometimes this concept refers to a special set of rules and history of the environment.

This versatility of the definition is due to the fact that the word is borrowed. Therefore, when trying to find out what a setting is, you need to turn to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Here the concept is interpreted in three ways:

1. The location in which the action takes place, as well as the time of the process and its circumstances.
2. Time and place in a work of literature, theater or cinema.
3. Background curtain in a theatrical production.

Literature

Despite its prevalence, the concept is often referred to as computer games. We are talking about a fictional universe here. Such an imaginary world appeared a long time ago. It belongs not only to the world of gamers, but also to a work of art.

For example, many people know the fictional universe of John Tolkien, which was called Middle-earth. Such a virtual world may have its own space, geography, history and culture.

The setting can easily include the world of The Witcher, described by the writer Andrzej Sapkowski. The author managed to recreate not just a geographically intact location, but also add his own language, culture, political component and large-scale history to it. By the way, the Witcher Novigrad later moved into the game setting. It was most clearly displayed in the third part of the gaming series The Witcher 3.

If we talk about a work of art, then a fictional world can be not only fantastic and unreal, but also pre-existing. For example, the setting of Medieval Europe, the Great Patriotic War, etc.

Board games

Today, the variety of board games is so great that they are becoming more popular among adults than among children. For example, the well-known “Monopoly” has already acquired a large number of variations. The rules of some of them will not be easy to explain to a child.

In addition to Monopoly, there are board games that have been adapted into digital form over time. For example, Dungeons and Dragons. This fantasy role-playing game has extensive setting. The translation of this word from English “furnishings” is ideal for this project.

Despite the fact that this is a board game, it opens up many possibilities for customizing your character and introduces you to a special story and world. Since 1974, 10 settings and several subsettings have been released.

Some of them were officially supported only for a few years. Wizards of the Coast is a company that still maintains some of the Dungeons and Dragons settings that were released first.

Eberron is another virtual world that librarian Keith Baker worked on. He competed in the Wizards of the Coast competition. At that time, the company was looking for a successful setting for the game “Dungeons and Dragons.” Baker won the competition with his version of the story.

Computer games

Despite the fact that the translation of the word setting is “setting,” there is a need for a more precise interpretation. This is due to the fact that the concept is directly related to another concept - “genre”.

Having heard about post-apocalypse, art deco, steampunk and other terms, every avid gamer will be able to say exactly what awaits him in the game. For example, post-apocalypse is vividly depicted in every Fallout series, fantasy is explored in Neverwinter Nights, sci-fi is represented in the games Star Trek and Mass Effect. All this answers the question of what a setting is.

But there are projects in which it is not easy to determine the type of virtual world. Since setting is an unregulated term and has many definitions, game developers do not think about creating a specific virtual world.

This is where projects emerge that combine, for example, dieselpunk and steampunk. The first type of setting takes us back to the 19th century with fantastic steam engines. Steampunk is a later movement of the 20th century. It takes us back to scientific progress.

Peculiarities

When trying to understand what a setting is, it is important to remember that it is not just a location in which events take place. This is a set of factors and settings that influence the gameplay. They can change the physics of the virtual world, shape the character and behavior of the character.

Connection

Closely tied to the setting is flow. This concept defines the player's involvement in the process. To achieve flow, you need to do tasks that match your abilities. But the process itself is influenced by several factors. One of them was the setting.

If you've ever played through the game, you know how important not only the moderately difficult gameplay is, but also the atmosphere around it. When everything is balanced, the participant achieves maximum involvement in the game process. Only then can he forget about time and surroundings.

Example

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a multiplayer game that is one of the most popular in the world. Since its release, it immediately became an eSports discipline.

In CS:GO, the setting is not easy to describe, since this is an online multiplayer shooter game. However, since the launch of the first series of the project, its essence has not changed. The main amendments affected graphics. Otherwise, the war is still waged between terrorists and special forces.

The setting includes several dozen maps. Some of them remain permanent, and some are added in honor of events.

The virtual world also has an economic component. It also plays an important role and influences the game process. Gamers must clearly understand how to distribute the team's budget.

Versatility

It just so happens that setting as a concept has not received a specific definition. It can be interpreted as a game world, a prescribed area with its own atmosphere, a genre, an idea, and a certain set of elements. This concept applies not only to the digital world, but is also found in theater, cinema and literature.

Project developers rarely think about purposefully shaping the setting. This is why games with a mixed typology of genres are so often found.

The word closest in meaning to the term “setting” is situation. Having said it, I have already, to a large extent, answered the question of the title of the article.

2. A situation is a set of conditions that prevailed at a certain time in a certain place.

Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language, ed. D. V. Dmitrieva, 2003.

Imagine yourself in the role of a “getter”. You find yourself in the setting of a specific anime (but do not participate in the events of its characters, they have their own lives). Everything around you is the setting. Nature, buildings, people, everything you can see with your own eyes. But not only. People not only look a certain way, they are also connected by certain relationships. This is also a setting. And their relationship also had a history, and this is also a setting. At the same time, you have no right to fantasy. Only that part of the surrounding world, along with its physical and social laws, which was shown in the anime.

But what about the heroes of the title and the events associated with them; sometimes they are a significant part of the world around them? Basically it's not the setting, but the plot. Consider the heroes as typical inhabitants of the setting, with whom typical events occur. To understand the setting, you need to understand how people behave there, what events happen to them. It's the character stories that give you that opportunity.

Until, of course, the title explicitly states that some event is an exception to the rule. Hideki in Chobits (2002) finds Chi in a garbage dump. It cannot be said that this is a completely ordinary event for the world being described, especially since we are clearly told about it. But here is the fundamental possibility of detecting a damaged persocoma in some life situation, this is already a setting where these creatures are quite ordinary. If not a commodity, then at least something whose existence does not surprise anyone. Something like the iPhone of our mortal world.

What if anime characters and the events in which they participate change the world around them? What is the setting in Gurren Lagann (2007)? What was before what happened in progress, or what has become after?

And this, and another, and a third. The very fundamental possibility of such changes is already part of the setting. The very possibility of acting as the characters do is also part of the setting. Think of the heroes of Gurren Lagann as the "typical heroes" of their world. They may be characters with different names and participate in other events. Which, if you are a small person in their world (have you forgotten that I recommended imagining yourself as a victim?), you may not even know about. Certainly not in the details that happy viewers of TV series, films, and, hee hee, specials have access to.

SETTING
Setting is the time (when) and place (where) it happens
story. The setting can influence the events of the story.
Example:
In the story of Little Red Riding Hood there are
two different settings.
Setting 1.
Little Red Riding Hood
ka conducts
part of history
In the woods.
Setting 2.
Little Red Riding Hood
ka conducts
part of history
in the house
her grandmothers.

Uniqueness of the setting

If the events of an anime take place in an environment that is familiar to us, for example, in a modern school, they are still shown as the author(s) of the title decided to portray them. This is not a shortcoming, not an error. This is either the author’s personal opinion about the modern school, or deliberately introduced distortions into the reality in which both you and the author live.

From this point of view, each setting is unique, no matter how ordinary the circumstances depicted may be. You can give another definition of the setting:

The setting is all the ways in which the depiction of the world of an anime title differs from the real, familiar world of an anime viewer.

For example, since the authors of the anime are Japanese, an inseparable part of the setting will always be Japanese realities that are not quite familiar (ordinary) to us. Nature, architecture, social structure and the like. Even if the events of the title take place in a “non-Japanese” setting, some characteristic Japanese features will certainly slip through.

This part of the setting can hardly be called original when comparing different titles with each other, but undoubtedly it gives originality to anime as an industry as a whole. And it is one of the components of its attractiveness for the viewer. Although this part stands out so much in some titles that it is worth mentioning when describing the setting. I’m not even talking about historical events; everyday life is sometimes portrayed as so exaggeratedly “Japanese” that to an unaccustomed eye it is perceived as scenes from another world. In Ping Pong (2014) by Masaaki Yuasa, not only the design of the characters is unusual, but also the relationships between them, the very atmosphere of the Japanese sports school.

However, the most ordinary setting is also a separate type of setting.

Setting elements

Exploring word definitions situation in Dmitriev's dictionary (op. cit.), you can briefly outline the circumstances that the setting deals with:

• The totality of all objects that form the appearance.
• Relationships that arise between people.
• The current state of affairs, situation.
• A set of natural processes and phenomena.

1. Nature and architecture. Sometimes only their visual component is mistakenly called a setting. The futuristic planet of Talisman World (1984) and the nearly deserted urban setting of Monster Tales (2009) are the settings.

2. Creatures of the depicted world. Not the individual traits of each of the characters, but something common that is found in each of the depicted groups. Here it is worth separating the individual visual style of the title creators from the setting. The grotesquely elongated figures of Triplexaholic (2006) and the wide faces of the characters in Magical Girl Madoka (2011) are a style. But the fantastic creatures of Triplexaholic and the witch Madoka, who coexist in the same world along with the heroes, are already a setting, that is, one of the elements of the setting is the very fact of the coexistence of ordinary people and fantastic creatures.

3. The laws of nature and even physical laws can differ significantly from the laws of the real world. Almost the entire fantasy genre is built on this idea and the wealth of details is limited only by the imagination of the authors. The heroine of Experiments Lane (1998) can control the entire world, Subaru from Re: Life in an alternate world from scratch (2016) gets the ability to go back in time.

There is one significant detail here. When we talk about the setting, we are talking about the whole world, about its general laws and typical phenomena. However, in each of the two listed titles, only one of the heroes has the mentioned abilities. This means that here we are not talking about the setting, but about the “main idea” (high-concept) - the type of plot of a work of art. Usually works with the main idea are built on such scenarios, where a “what if” assumption appears in the beginning, and then it develops in subsequent events. So in Lane's Experiments, the setting is more related to the possibility of the virtual world penetrating into the real one, and in the Alternative World - its fantasy world with magic and fantastic creatures.

In some titles, the setting can be defined as the sheer variety of settings that change from episode to episode, in which there are different natures, creatures, social organizations, and even physical laws. Examples include Space☆Dandy (2014) and co-creator's more recent title Clapperboard (2016).

4. Social organization and structure. In the Union of Greywings (2002), the older inhabitants of the Old House take care of the younger ones, the inhabitants of the town of Gli give the greywings jobs and provide them with clothes. In Soul Eater (2008), the central place is occupied by Shinigami-sama and his Academy, the students carry out quests not according to their own wishes, but according to her instructions. In some franchises there is no clear social organization and the very fact of its absence will be one of the elements of the setting.

5. Background of events. A typical case is sequels, where previous seasons set the setting for the subsequent story. Sometimes backstory is an essential part of the plot, from the point of view of which it is necessary to evaluate what is happening even in a separate title. In the first part of Kaiba (2008), Warp, who has lost his memories, travels the planets without knowing his origin, but it is the basis of the plot and his relationships with other characters. In Furi-kuri (2000), the purpose of Haruko Haruhara's arrival in the city is decisive for all subsequent events, but we learn the answer only closer to the end of the title.

I have listed only the most frequently encountered elements of the setting, there may be others. These may include completely different things that simply cannot be predicted in advance. The main thing is that the setting is a set of general laws of the world of the title and its typical phenomena. And another fundamental point is that the setting includes only that which influences the behavior and actions of the characters and the plot. A “beautiful setting,” if the characters don’t care about it, is nothing more than part of the execution of graphic design.

The environment, shell or platform where the game world unfolds is the setting. It can also be compared to a human skeleton or the foundation of a house. Literally every game that could fall into our hands has a unique setting. If we look at EVE Online as an example, this MMORPG presents a truly exceptional and special setting. This is a new world and a completely new universe that is open to the interested player. Sign up for EVE Online to experience the game and experience the game's features for yourself. You compare it with other examples that you think are successful and draw your own conclusion.

Let's look at what a setting is in games in more detail.

The term “setting” itself comes from the English language, where literally translated it means “setting.” This is the skeleton of the game - its unique world and surroundings, which is built in a separate way by the developer's studio. This is the place and time where the game's plot takes place. It is interesting that the setting can be used not only in relation to video games, but also to ordinary literature, where the author builds a separate world of heroes.

The “setting” creates the boundaries of the game world, beyond which the key characters do not go. It is very rare to find that a separate artificial world has an alternative continuation of the map. As an example, let’s take “Eberron” - an independent world, which is very successfully described by the creators right down to space. The game world can be represented by a small kingdom or a large multiverse. This only emphasizes that the map within the game cannot be limited by certain rules. And if we talk about what a setting in games is, then this is certainly a separate world that is being developed by designers and scriptwriters. Its boundaries depend only on the diligence and talent of the game studio workers.

Offline games with the best setting

To understand what the setting is in the game, it is enough to install the recently released version of “Dead or Alive 5” on your computer. The game world here is represented by the only platform for battle. The game itself was released in the “Fighting” genre theme. Therefore, the plot is based on fighting tournaments that take place not in the ring, but in ordinary cities, the beach or in nature. All this is very colorfully written by the designers. That’s why the created world immerses the player headlong into the tournament scenario.

Another great example of a worthy game with a successful setting is the new remake of the cult Resident Evil. In 2015, the video game developers decided to re-release the original 1996 version with new graphics and a new engine. Now the colorful game world of the legendary plot opens before us. The player will be able to walk through long labyrinths of ancient buildings in search of attacking monsters. Obviously, the new remake will offer not only improved graphics, but also a more spacious gaming map.

What online games with a high-quality setting are already familiar to you?

Most of the presented MMORPG games have a very good setting. The developers are making considerable efforts to expand and enrich the gaming world as much as possible. This is exactly what we see when getting acquainted with EVE Online, because it is here that a unique setting is offered. Likewise, good things can be said about War Thunder and other MMORPG games. And to understand what a setting is in computer games, it’s enough just to get to know them better. The truth is so simple!

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