WEX Set Dressing - New World (Amazon Game Studios)

As a Terrain Artist and World Builder, my responsibilities extended beyond key POIs to include the open-world spaces between them—what we called the “bread and butter” of New World. This work involved everything from modeling new plants for biomes, to collaborating with engineers on tools and systems, to telling environmental stories through set dressing. These interstitial spaces were critical in reinforcing immersion and giving players a sense of life and continuity as they traveled along the roads and paths between quests.
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GAME DESCRIPTION: New World: Aeternum (formerly New World) is a third-person MMORPG with a strong emphasis on melee and ranged combat, set in a rich supernatural world. Drawn by legends of a land that grants eternal life, the player finds themselves shipwrecked on Aeternum. But the player is not the first to wash ashore. Aeternum has been the destination of countless settlers throughout history, and its cultures reflect that: from English colonists to Spanish conquistadors, Roman legions, and Japanese samurai, all leaving their mark on the island’s architectural and cultural tapestry. This creates a uniquely multicultural world where the supernatural and historical collide.
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MY ROLE: At Amazon Games, I initially joined the team as a World Building Environment Artist on New World. When I arrived, the project was still rooted in its original vision as a survival game centered around player-controlled faction conflicts. Following a major shift in direction after an alpha test, the game pivoted to a narrative-driven MMORPG with a structured Main Story Quest (MSQ). My early role focused on recontextualizing areas that were originally designed for survival gameplay by integrating narrative-driven world-building. This included: Set dressing existing POIs to support new story beats, Reworking POI layouts for narrative clarity and flow, and Creating entirely new POIs to support key moments in the MSQ. My contributions to the Main Story Quest span from the starting beaches where the player first washes ashore, all the way to endgame content. Following the successful launch of New World, I was promoted to Terrain Artist, where my focus expanded to shaping the world at a macro level. This included: Terrain sculpting and painting, Foliage modeling and procedural integration, and Set dressing between points of interest to improve spatial cohesion.