Worldbuilding for Writing vs. Worldbuilding for Fun

Hello fellow worldbuilders! I've been wondering something lately. I'm a writer and a world builder. I write fantasy. But I've also met people who build worlds just for the sake of building worlds, without any intention to actually use them in a plot or story. <br><br>I've been inspired by such people (and pop media) to build a fictional world for years now. I didn't make this world to write a book, I made it to satisfy my own creative curiosity. It's a labor of love. I've never intended to use this world for a story. I've been working on it for years. I'm writing a book now (a high fantasy novel for middle grade readers) and I'm using the world I've been building in the story. <br><br>When I first started writing fantasy, I found it incredibly hard to not infodump all of my worldbuilding in the story. I'm still working on this, but having written several other books, I've gotten better at "show, don't tell", and I know how to implement worldbuilding in a story. When I started writing my latest book, having already built the world I was writing in, I found it was much easier to "show, don't tell", to just implement the worldbuilding in a natural way in the story.<br><br>I equally know of writers who build their worlds as they write. They build the world as the story unfolds. It's the plot first, the world second. It's also a labor of love, but it's more focused on the characters and the story than on the worldbuilding. <br><br>Now, I have to ask. If you are a writer who writes fantasy for fun, do you worldbuild first and then write, or do you build the world as you write? If you solely build worlds for the sake of building worlds, why do you do it? Do you like how your mind wanders into the details of your world? Do you imagine it as a real place? Is the world more equally as important as the plot for you as a writer, or do you like to build worlds because it feels like building your own little miniature "dollhouse"?