I wrote this as a post in reply to the video for the Best World category, but I think it's long enough to justify a blog post:

This category top to bottom should have been "Best World Building." World building is not just environmental story telling. That is one tiny aspect of it. It's also character designs, art direction, model design, weapon design, ambient dialog between characters that you walk by, things that appear in the skybox far away that you'll never be able to actually interact with, vehicle design even in a game that has no driving mechanics. It's the things that make the world seem like a real and believable and cohesive world. A world where you could imagine another author completely independent from the game makers writing a novel or comic book or making a TV show or movie.

Think about StarCraft II. There are so many tiny details in every model for every unit and building. Every part of the unit and building implies an actual mechanical function that might not even be expressed in the gameplay or mechanics of the unit. They tried to make everything seem like a real thing that really existed in their comic book world and served a purpose.

Think about Overwatch. The weapon designs, the character designs, the level designs, the random dialog the characters speak to each other at the start of the match. Even if they had never made a single outside piece of fiction for that game, a lot is implied about the world just through those things. Think about the Numbani map and the Oasis map, and what they imply about Nigeria and Iraq in that future world they've created. That it's a fundamentally optimistic view of the future. Think about Volskaya and Eichenwalde. How they show how the war with the omnics shaped those parts of the world. The game literally doesn't even have a story mode in the game, but there's so much richness to the universe they've created.

Even Galaga has "world building." The hero ship looks white and sleek, like something humans would design to be fast and deadly. The enemies look alien, like insects, and move in weird patterns. There's an enemy ship that literally brain washes your ship and turns it against you. But you can destroy that enemy ship and free your comrade and fight by his side. This tells you something about the world of Galaga through the art direction and gameplay. In the way things animate and move. And at no point does Galaga have a section where you walk around on a submarine reading newspaper clippings and talking to NPCs.

That's world building. That's how a "story" is separate from the "world." Environmental story telling and level design are a tiny tiny piece of world building. When you pick up the Nail Gun or the Lightning Gun, think about what just the name of those items implies. Brutal, deadly, otherworldly. Just the names of those guns informs so much about the "world" of Quake, and that's before you even launch the game or see the levels. You can look at the models for the Shambler and the Vore in a vacuum and get a good sense of what that game is about, what its world involves.

Once you establish that, then you can say "I thought the gameplay or the level design actively took me out of the experience of seeing the world, so I don't think this game wins this category." But to say "this game didn't have a section of the game where I could walk around quietly and look at shit" has nothing to do with whether it has good world building or not, because you can make very good arguments for good world building in fast paced action games that are literally designed such that if you stand still to look at the environment you'll die. That in and of itself can inform part of the world building, if it's done well: "This world is extremely dangerous and never gives you a chance to stop and take a breath." Yes, even game mechanics can inform world building. Geralt having to meditate and drink potions. The powers and abilities your party members get in Mass Effect.

That's what "Best World" should have been about. A showcase of which world seemed the most like a real place. Like somewhere that existed outside of the game's main story. A cohesive place, where every item in it seemed like it belonged in that world. And then the winner would be tempered by which game had the best execution in expressing that world, not JUST via environments but via character interactions, art direction, character and item design, how that world was delivered to the player and whether it was effective (e.g. natural feeling environmental story telling vs. just picking up dozens of audio logs).