The greatest appeal of writing genre fiction for me is world creation. I’m part of the generation that grew up playing games. For instance, I’ve been a World of Warcraft player since the open beta, and I still occasionally participate in role-playing because its worldbuilding and culture are so vast. Translating the official World of Warcraft novel Of Blood and Honor was my first formal encounter with writing.
Long-term role-playing in World of Warcraft trained my ability to excavate the history of fictional worlds, create stories on the fly, and give characters meaningful choices. It’s fair to say that my dedication to writing is largely connected to World of Warcraft.
Another game that greatly influenced me is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, as it was the first open-world game to perfect environmental storytelling. Environmental storytelling refers to how scene and character details convey stories that extend beyond the main narrative. Through player exploration alone, story content automatically connects in the player’s mind.
For example, in Skyrim, there’s a flooded prison where players must piece together what happened by reading notes inside. There’s also a destroyed lighthouse where players read surviving diary entries and fight monsters to reconstruct the story.
Beyond this, Skyrim, like many modern games, is filled with difficult moral dilemmas. I believe that playing it was just as enriching as reading a literary masterpiece. The experience prompted me to reflect on the moral implications of my actions. This reaches the level of great literature.
I’m also particularly fond of Batman: Arkham Knight. The second Robin, Jason Todd, is my favorite comic character—he taught me how to write about the cost of heroism. The days I spent writing Red Hood: Ashes to Dust remain among my most cherished. The DC Universe’s worldbuilding is already quite complete, though oddly, DC is Earth-centric.
My love for world creation is also deeply connected to The Lord of the Rings. As everyone knows, Middle-earth is the paradise that nerds most want to visit. Living in Middle-earth wouldn’t make a person free of troubles, but that magical feeling, those inexhaustible stories to explore, and the stories that must be told—it’s captivating. Though after I recognized The Lord of the Rings’ anti-technology core, I leaned toward writing science fiction.
In summary, throughout my youth and beyond, works with strong worldbuilding have had a profound influence on me. I naturally gravitated toward this creative approach and hoped to have my own world. So I created The Computational Universe—a vast computer from which everything unfolds, with various civilizations competing across the galaxy.
This is the setting collection for The Computational Universe, already containing over 100,000 words of content. It provides a solid foundation for my stories, as I plan to spend a lifetime filling The Computational Universe with vast, epic content. Strong worldbuilding, heroic characters, and ornate prose are the signature features of my novels.
I use AI to generate cover art, logos, character design images, and then turn the individual stories within The Computational Universe into films. Throughout the entire worldbuilding design process, AI assistance is abundant. While all the written content is mine, when it comes to visualization, I harness AI’s power.
I would recommend that every creator consider creating fictional worlds. Fictional worlds are a cornerstone of modern serialized storytelling, and many well-known contemporary series feature rigorous worldbuilding. Although this isn’t as prevalent in Chinese novels as in English ones, I believe that this generation, raised on games, is quite common.
Some people think fictional worlds raise the reading barrier, but I’ve always considered this assumption about readers to be speculation. I don’t believe readers who grew up gaming would find world settings particularly difficult to understand. Readers don’t need doctoral degrees to comprehend fictional worlds. On the contrary, the immersion that fictional worlds create is hard for other stories to achieve.
You could say I’m using AI to bring the world in my mind to reality. This world has its unique charm—the technological feel of Stellaris and Star Trek, combined with the elegance of The Lord of the Rings. In this world, you’ll discover the secrets of the stars.
The current plan is to first write novels, and when the time is right, adapt The Computational Universe octology into a film. It presents significant adaptation challenges, but I believe AI in 1-2 years will be capable of this. For now, I’ll create some short stories and films to develop my AI creation skills.
Follow me as we explore AI filmmaking together.
