Creator Skill Level Beginner

Required Background Knowledge No required background

Description This guide provides a design framework for building cohesive worlds that achieve your goals. It focuses on reducing or eliminating user pain points and emphasizes the value of problem-solving. By the end of this guide, you will have a clear picture of how a world can go from an idea to a completed project that is continuously improved.

Learning Objectives By reading and reviewing this written guide you will be able to:

In 2020, Meta Horizon Worlds was in early access beta mode and I decided to submit an application to try it out, not knowing what to expect. The platform was in its very early stages and the worlds seemed confusingly simple. But after someone invited me into build mode and showed me the tools, I saw potential in the platform.

Since I was a little kid, I always wanted to become a game designer. I started building board games when I was six years old with cardboard, pen, and paper, and learned to program when I was 12. I had ideas for games, apps, and websites to build, but as the years went on I found that I wasn’t making the progress I hoped for. None of the ideas I had were coming to life and I gave up on the dream of making them. That all changed when I discovered Horizon.

Within a few months of joining Horizon, I released two worlds, Action Island and Retro Zombies, which were Horizon’s biggest hits throughout the beta. Together, they have gained over a million total visitors and still have a player base today. Horizon took note of those worlds and contracted work with me as a designer in December 2021. Since then, I created two worlds with Victor Riddel under the contract, and released two maps for Action Land and a game called Saber under my own account. Saber has been played by over 400,000 people since its release in May 2024 and rose to the #2 slot in Horizon’s Popular Worlds list.

I have been reflecting on which thought patterns and processes have changed that allowed me to find success in Meta Horizon Worlds, and which ones prevented me from succeeding sooner as an aspiring game designer. Although the processes that I will discuss in this guide have helped me, there are unlimited valuable ways to design worlds. This write-up intends to provide insight on what I’ve observed and discovered throughout my journey building worlds. First, I will go over thought patterns that I believe prevented me from creating sooner.

Often, as creators, it’s easy to get sucked into a big idea and lose track of our true motivations. Big ideas are enticing to dream up as we want to make a big splash entering the industry and be recognized for our innovation. Big ideas have always been exciting for me to conjure up, but now I see that focusing on them was a distraction from what I should have focused my energy on.

The big ideas, although fun to imagine, were never practical or realistic to implement. As a designer without access to resources, building ideas that needed teams of people working on them wasn’t a possibility. What I should have done is find what I can do to increase the scope of what I can build and then figure out what I can realistically build with what I learned. At one point I wanted to create an Android app, so I should have started with learning how to set up the Android developer kit, then learn the basics, then build a simple app with the basic tools.

The outcome of my first projects should never have been a priority, but rather increasing my own capabilities as a creator. Now I see each project as a way to push the boundaries of what I can create, rather than trying to manifest some big idea.

Another unproductive thought pattern I had was trying to figure out every detail before I started working on the project. This led to me getting stuck in the brainstorming process and never starting the implementation of it. Now that I have built worlds, I see that a lot of the details change or become more clear as I work on them. A lot of my initial assumptions end up not being true, or the specifics end up different than I imagined. Building a world feels like a big game of ‘Fill In The Blank’. I start with the details that I know and then fill in the missing pieces.

Coming up with an original idea has always been a desire of mine. I used to always search for that new idea no one else has thought of, and felt that if the idea wasn’t original enough then it would be in too much competition with existing products on the market and not be able to fill its own market. What I have learned is that truly original ideas don’t exist, and waiting for one prevents me from making anything at all.

To use as an example, some of the greatest artists of all time who are known for originality took inspiration from artists around them. A pattern that is used is to look for elements in work they enjoy, combine pieces together from different creations, and then modify elements to make it their own.

Beethoven, who some consider the most influential musician of all time, took pieces from Mozart and Hayden and made them his own. Elvis, who is deemed the king of rock ‘n’ rock, denied this title himself as he publicly acknowledged that his work was taken from other lesser known artists. The Beatles too said that since others copy from them, they copy from others too.

Not only was it not effective to focus on finding original ideas, focusing too much on ideas in general hasn’t been beneficial for me. Often an idea feels exciting, and I get wrapped up in the vision and wanting it to come to life. What I find is that ideas often distract me from my true intentions and motivations. When I focus my attention towards what I’m trying to achieve, I often find better ways of working towards those aspirations than the original idea or vision.

When an idea came, I use to focus and finding reasons for why that idea will be successful. By doing so, I was blinded from the reality of implementing the idea and overlooked issues that may come up such as technical limitations or design flaws. If I attempted to make the idea, those overlooked issues became real and felt discouraging as I wasn’t able to realize the vision.

One of my first ideas when I came into Horizon was to create a Frogger game. Another world I visited had a car in it that could run you over, and I thought it would be fun to make a whole world involving dodging cars, similar to Frogger. While building the world, I discovered a limitation that we can’t make infinite scrolling worlds. The vision that I had for the world where you move forwards as far as possible without getting hit wasn’t possible because there was a limited amount of objects available in the scene. Because I was focused on creating the vision, discovering that wasn’t possible discouraged me and I gave up on the project. What I could have done was find some way to take elements that are enjoyable in Frogger and look for ways to make them possible in Horizon. Without an attachment to the vision, some other solution could have come to fruition without scrapping the entire project.

In hindsight, understanding how to set goals has been more beneficial than coming up with new or big ideas.

An idea provides a vision, while a goal defines what you’re working towards. Focusing on what you’re trying to accomplish, rather than focusing on the vision, leaves room adaptability and creates alignment with your true intentions.

Creating Among Us in VR is an example of an idea, while the goal is the intention or motivation behind creating Among Us. Perhaps the motivation is to expand into an unfulfilled market in Horizon, or to experience the interactions enjoyed from your phone in VR. If the only focus is to create Among Us, or realize the vision of building all of the systems from the original game in VR, then you may find through execution that pieces don’t align as expected. Maybe the tools are a limiting factor, or it’s more complicated or requires more work than expected. Or maybe the interactions don’t work as well in VR. These realizations may be discouraging as the vision isn’t able to be implemented as expected. If instead, the focus is on the goal, then finding new ways to work towards that goal becomes a motivating factor, and the vision can be modified freely without attachment to the plan. There are always ways to work towards a goal, and finding issues should never be a barrier stopping you from finding new solutions.

The goals that I have found to be most beneficial are the ones which clarify what is being improved. I find this to be true because I improve upon something every single day. For Action Island, my goal has been to improve playtime of the FPS genre in Horizon. All of the systems within the game, be it the props within the map, the weapon mechanics, or the rating systems, all serve to increase the playtime of the game. By setting that as my goal, I am able to execute on it any day and can continuously make improvements that work towards that goal.

On the contrary, an end goal is the expected outcome of the project when it is finished. An end goal can only be accomplished once it is realized. It is easy to lose motivation when the goal feels too distant or unattainable. If a goal indicates what is being improved, each step of the way feels rewarding as bits and pieces of that goal are accomplished every day. Another issue with end goals is that if it is achieved, it is unclear what next steps should be made. Because there are always ways to improve something, setting improvement as a goal will allow you to work on it indefinitely.

Action Island is a world that I worked on for over three years, and only stopped working on it to build its successor, Action Land. Both games work towards the same goal of improving play time of the FPS genre in Horizon which I’ve been working on for almost four years. If I focused on just realizing my idea of creating a shooter game with multiple weapons, I would have finished that within just a few months, and the game would be far behind where it is now. The games have gone through consistent modifications as I’ve learned more details on how to work towards my goals.

As I work towards goals I find that there are always issues encountered along the way. Working around these issues and solving problems has been, I believe, the most valuable process of building.

Most of the problems solved for my worlds fall into the design or engineering category. Design problems are related to problems with the user experience while engineering problems are tech related.

Examples of each are:

Design:

Engineering:

Both types of problems have been valuable to solve and important to note while choosing features to implement in my worlds. Other creators may need to consider other types of problems, like financial problems, if they are working with a group of professionals.

The first reason why problem-solving is valuable is that it creates opportunities for improvement. When I am out exploring worlds or playing games, I look for issues that I have with the experience. I know that if something in an experience creates a problem for me, other people are experiencing the same thing. Solving those problems provides an opportunity for me to create something that avoids those issues and provides a space for those who feel the same way about existing products.

During Horizon’s beta, they released a shooting game called Cosmic Clash. The game felt like a great example of the possibilities of the platform and was more advanced than anything released at the time, but I found that the gun mechanics could be improved. There was only one gun, a laser pistol, and whoever pulled the trigger faster was most likely going to win the battle. It felt like a game of who can pull the trigger the fastest, and I didn’t feel like I could keep that up for very long. If there was a way to have multiple guns in the game, I felt it would create more variation in gameplay and allow me to play longer. Seeing this issue motivated me to make my own shooting game with multiple weapons, and led me to create Action Island. Finding a solution to the replayability of Cosmic Clash allowed me to create a game that adhered to a niche who wanted a replayable shooter in Horizon, creating value for those users.

As I play games, I find that the parts that create a negative experience are always the most memorable parts, and that they overshadow my impression of the experience. People who play my games also appear to focus on any issues with them. If any one piece of the game creates a bad experience for them, it is enough to deter them from playing again. In Action Land, there are times when the guns never spawn or take too long to. I believe this one issue is what has prevented the series from being as popular as I hoped.

I don’t know exactly why negative experiences stick with us so much, but my hypothesis is that we remember them to avoid experiencing them again. There may be an evolutionary aspect where if something negative happens, it may be a threat to our survival and so we remember it deeper. One or two negative interactions can overshadow an otherwise positive experience. Addressing those interactions by solving the problem helps create a more lasting, positive impression.

Do you remember trying to pull a door that you were supposed to push? If you do, chances are you opened several doors that day, but the one time you pulled a push door is the one you remember. When you open a door, chances are you’re not excited for how that door is keeping the building warm, or keeping the room quiet or protecting your privacy. But you do think about it if a door doesn’t open when pushed. Likewise, people may overlook enjoyable aspects of the world if other parts create annoyances.

An observation I’ve made from watching people play my games, is that the less favorable outcomes are always more likely than the optimal outcome. Whenever there is a crack in the system that can go wrong, it is always far more likely than expected. Here are some hypotheses for why I believe this is:

The last point about why problem solving is valuable, is that it reduces the number of possible solutions you may use to work towards a goal. This is valuable because there are an infinite number of ways to work towards a goal. Actively focusing on what can go wrong helps eliminate possible solutions, making it easier to choose them. Identifying problems can filter out impractical solutions, simplifying the decision making process.

Focusing on avoiding issues upfront helps avoid running into them before they arise. All possible issues will be encountered eventually, and being proactive about avoiding them helps prevent having to redo work far into the building process or after the world is released.

For example, my latest game Saber didn’t start as a Star Wars lightsaber battling game. The original idea was based on an in person game I used to play as a kid called Ninja. The premise of the game is that you have a group of friends stand in a circle. Everyone pretends their arms are swords, and you take turns slashing at another person. You get one fluid movement to hit someone else’s arm and if you do, they have to put their arm behind their back. If you lose both arms you’re out, and the last person wins.

I wanted to find a way to take the fun in that game and bring it to VR. At first the idea was for everyone to hold a sword, and you had to hit someone with it when it’s your turn. The first problem was that if everyone is holding a sword, they will intuitively think that they can stab people with them at any moment. I needed a way to turn the sword on and off every turn. The only swords that I’m aware of that turn on and off are lightsabers. The Star Wars theme for Saber came from problem solving, and I proactively avoided the turn issue before starting on the project.

For any questions or further assistance, creators are encouraged to join the discussion on the Discord server or to schedule a mentor session for personalized guidance.

For a hands-on walkthrough, you can follow along with the recorded workshop session here: