Gateway Forge

The process of "worldbuilding" is most often associated with fictional worlds, however it can be applied to anything, really. At its core, it involves deciding what goes into a world and in what manner they exist. Are you creating a world with intense tectonic activity? How would that effect a global economy? What organizations are involved, and what resources are they each fighting for?

This process can be applied to non-fiction just as easily. Worldbuilding provides a foundation for a story to be told, and storytelling is everywhere. In order to tell a good story, we must answer the questions: what are we talking about? And, why are we talking about it?

The methods involved in worldbuilding can differ greatly from person to person. Everyone has their own sauce, and ultimately that is what allows for so much flavor in experiencing the worlds created by others. Naturally, the open-ended nature of worldbuilding is also the source of its downfall. It can be difficult to organize and keep track of your ideas in a format that is digestible to someone else.

Loose notes, one-dimensional file systems, everyone encounters roadblocks on the perilous journey that is worldbuilding. For me, I had this idea for a grand video game and as such I needed to create the world for the game, and a story to go with it. This was back in 2019, I was fresh out of college and spent 5 months living out of a backpack and stumbling my way across Asia, trying to figure out what to do with my life.

I filled up a few notebooks throughout my adventure with thoughts and ideas for the world that could support the game that I want to make. It was a thrilling experience, and my first attempt at creating a world like this. Safe to say, it was a struggle. I eventually ran out of money and returned to the US.

I tried to find software that could allow me to store and track this world in a more coherent manner. I wanted an easier way to navigate through the world and access related parts or visualize more than just text. After trying a few different options, I failed to find a solution that provided the right balance of storytelling tools and worldbuilding features, or they were another expensive subscription model that I did not have the funds for.

So, in 2023 I began working on building my own platform that solved exactly what I needed:

• Offline, and stored locally. I wanted to work out of project folders on my computer.

• Integrated custom calendar system, so I can get a snapshot of my world at a given point in time.

• Document editor that allows me to write and mention elements of the world in-text. With functionality to import and export common document formats.

• A zoomable timeline with left-to-right flow of time. I wanted to be able to zoom from viewing a days scale to centuries and up to trillions of years if so desired.

• I wanted to build it in a way where I could easily add more workspaces in the future if there is new functionality that I need.

• I wanted to be able to track relations between the elements of my world, and to be able to visualize those relations in 2d and 3d space.

If you take a step back you can see that the process of creating software like this is also a form of worldbuilding. I am deciding what to include and why it should be included. Gateway Forge was officially launched on September 3, 2025. It evolved into more that I could have imagined with big plans for the future. It is available for a one-time purchase and you get a lifetime license. No more of this subscription crap.

I guess the whole point of this story is you don't often know where your path leads. Spend some time blindly following your curiosity and you may be surprised where you end up. And with regards to worldbuilding, it is only one side of the coin. Storytelling is the key driver in bringing worlds to life. The what does not matter without the why.

Happy building,
Mike Brewer