This edited anthology offers a collection of essays that each look at various types of wayfinding. Together they explore a variety of wayfinding tools and techniques and their applications, as well as ways of keeping track of the construction of worlds too.
With transmedial worlds extending over multiple media, multiple authors, and sometimes even multiple decades of creation, a wealth of different issues can arise; worlds need to direct audience members into how to organize them conceptually. Edited by Mark J. P Wolf and featuring contributions from a distinguished set of authors from interdisciplinary backgrounds, this book enriches the theory, history, and practice of world-building, through the exploration of navigation. The essays have many overlapping concerns and together they provide the reader with a range of discussions regarding wayfinding and the many ways it intersects with world-building - and world-experiencing - activities. Thus, rather than just analyzing worlds themselves, the anthology also asks the reader to consider analyzing the act of world-building itself.
This collection will be of interest to students and scholars in a variety of fields including Subcreation Studies, Transmedia Studies, Popular Culture, Comparative Media Studies, Video Game Studies, Film Studies, and Interdisciplinary Literary Studies.
Edited by:
Mark J.P. Wolf (Concordia University Wisconsin USA)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 740g
ISBN: 9781032819549
ISBN 10: 1032819545
Pages: 298
Publication Date: 15 June 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
About the Contributors Acknowledgments Foreword Kevin Conran Introduction Mark J. P. Wolf FINDING ONE’S WAY AROUND World-Building, Emplotment, and Disorientation in Gangs of New York Henry Jenkins Comic Book Encyclopedias: The What, When, Where, Why and How of DC’s Who’s Who and The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Blair Davis Navigating Ludotopia, Exploring Allotopia: Natural and Unnatural Exploration of Open Worlds in Video Games Krzysztof M. Maj The Importance of Afterstory and Tolkien’s Fourth Age Mark J. P. Wolf WAYFINDING IN INTERACTIVE WORLDS Pinball Playfields: Mapping Heavy Metal Ryan Banfi Toys-to-Guide: Nintendo amiibo as Transmedial Waypoints Matthew Thomas Payne The Warhammer Product and Service Portfolio: Wayfinding as Competitive Advantage Neal Baker Where Be Witches? The Role of Adventure Maps in Building a Game World Stefan Ekman The Soundscape of the Metaverse: Aural Navigation in Meta’s Horizon Worlds Harry Burson Transcendent Travels: Wayfinding in Extended Realities Gundolf S. Freyermuth CONCEPTUAL WAYFINDING Miniature Worlds Mark J. P. Wolf Journey Loops and Vicious Circles: Lessons of Unfortunate Adventures in Romantic Tales Lily Alexander Artificial Intelligence and the Possibility of Sub-Subcreation Mark J. P. Wolf Research as a Navigating Tool Nathali H. S. Pilegaard APPENDIX The Cartographers of Vasterra Mark J. P. Wolf Index
Mark J. P. Wolf is a professor in the Department of Digital Media and Design at Concordia University Wisconsin, USA. His books include The Video Game Theory Reader 1 and 2 (2003; 2008), The Video Game Explosion (2007), Before the Crash (2012), Encyclopedia of Video Games (two-volume 1st edition, 2012; three-volume 2nd edition, 2021), Building Imaginary Worlds (2012), LEGO Studies (2014), The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies (1st edition, 2014; 2nd edition, 2023), Video Games Around the World (2015), Video Games and Gaming Culture (2016), Video Games FAQ (2017), Revisiting Imaginary Worlds (2017), The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds (2017), The Routledge Companion to Media Technology and Obsolescence (2018), 101 Enigmatic Puzzles: Fractal Mazes, Quantum Chess, Anagram Sudoku, and More (2020), World-Builders on World-Building (2020), Exploring Imaginary Worlds (2020), The Seven Stones (2024), Zoophemera (2024), and Calculated Imagery: A History of Computer Graphics in Hollywood Cinema (2025).
