Mark J. P. Wolf is a Full Professor and Department Chair of the Communication Department at Concordia University, Wisconsin. His books include Abstracting Reality, The Medium of the Video Game, Virtual Morality, The Video Game Explosion, Myst and Riven: The World of the D'ni, Before the Crash, Encyclopedia of Video Games, Building Imaginary Worlds, The LEGO Studies Reader, and Video Games Around the World. With Bernard Perron, he is the co-editor of The Video Game Theory Reader 1 and 2, and the Landmark Video Game book series.

Foreword

Rick Carter

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Mark J. P. Wolf

WORLDS ON THE RISE

Why Worlds Now?

Marie-Laure Ryan

Fictional World-Building as Ritual, Drama, and Medium

Lily Alexander

The Past as an Imaginary World: The Case of Medievalism

Dimitra Fimi

STRUCTURE

The Subcreation of J. R. R .Tolkien's Middle-earth and How it Became Transmedial Culture

Lars Konzack

Secondary World Infrastructures and Tabletop Fantasy Games

Neal Baker

Battlestar Galactica and Caprica: Using Religion to Create Imagined Worlds

Erica Hurwitz Andrus

Religious Impulse in Video Games: Implications for World-Building
Edward Castronova

Minecraft: Transitional Objects and Transformational Experiences in an Imaginary World

Lori Landay

PRACTICE

A New Wonderland: The Source of It All

Michael O. Riley

"All Over the Map": Building (and Rebuilding) Oz

Henry Jenkins

Discovering the Planiverse

A. K. Dewdney

A Thousand Stories in a Day: Building Rilao and Reimagining Lagos

Laura Cechanowicz, Brian Cantrell, Geoffrey Long, Alex McDowell, Jeff Watson, and Ann Pendleton-Jullian

RECEPTION

'The First Step into A Smaller World': The Transmedia Economy of Star Wars

William Proctor and Matthew Freeman

The Hyper-enchantment of Visitin