Game urbanism is the discipline that tackles, designs, and researches cities in games.

 

Cities in video (and analog) games are everywhere. From simple-yet-evocative backgrounds in arcade offerings and intriguing maps in adventure games, to sprawling open worlds and stealthy RPG levels, urban environments are a major, and indeed varied, ingredient of the majority of games.  

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And yet ancient, fantasy, contemporary, sci-fi, stylized, historical or cyberpunk cities are not always given the attention they need. Even when designers do get them right, they almost never take advantage of the immense storytelling, thematic, and game & level design opportunities a rich and realistic urban environment provides. 

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Then again, creating a city from scratch is admittedly a daunting and difficult task.

 

Where should one start from? How many streets would be enough? What should said streets be made of? How is the street network organized? Are there pavements? What about urban furniture or street art? What sorts of people and/or beings are usually seen roaming those streets during the day? During the night? Should every street have the same width? And how could I hide the short length of my in-game streets? Is there more to a city than streets? 

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What about architecture? Urban character? What do open and public spaces look like? Are there any? And where should one place a palace in relation to the dungeon and the factory district? How many and what sort of inhabitants would a place require to feel right? Are there slums and wealthy districts? Where? How about rivers and hills? Infrastructure? Does the place need a functioning economy? A history? How can we show city life and project a strong and memorable urban image?

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Those are the exact kinds of questions that I, as a game urbanist & designer, can answer (and expand on) according to your project's needs, before going on and creating your city's plans, simulation models, detailed descriptions of everyday life or even the GIS mapping of your interactive regions, settlements, and urban centers. 

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What's more, I can help you avoid all the immersion-breaking urban aspects designers of game cities, and level designers usually get wrong. Spotting and fixing all too common problems is an important part of my urban consulting work; problems such as a town not making sense on any real map, a city lacking spatial coherence, a supposed metropolis with a too obvious population of a mere 100 people, a central avenue feeling too short and empty, glaring omissions, atmosphere-damaging anachronisms, or even drop-in bars located in the middle of the urban wasteland.

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Of course, troubleshooting is not enough to carry your project all the way towards the creation of a living, breathing, unique, memorable, and thus believable game city. A successful city, you see, has to feel real, and in order to feel real its complexities and major characteristics have to be understood. And analysed. And then toyed with. Dark alleys sporting deadly urban fauna must feel plausible, as even high-fantasy worlds need consistency. An urban fantasy environment that feels concrete will make the game it is supporting feel believable itself.

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There are countless details that can make places breathe, and instantly help a city come to life. Realizing, however, that cities are much more than the sum of their roads and buildings is crucial when it comes to crafting them. Cities are also their societies, functions, people, systems, climates, colours, styles, shops, topographies, local beliefs, collective and pesonal histories, sounds, smells, public art, and an amazing variety of other things -- all these, I can help you discover, create, distill, and use. 

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My help on such matters of the city involves everything from the application of urban planning on level design -- along with many sketches -- to districts modeled in 3D (or with Lego bricks), and quite a bit of world building. It's crucial to keep the urban layer as something integral to the rest of the creative process. My work aims to further inspire game, level, and narrative designers (also developers and artists), and provide them with a fertile environment packed with new ideas, mechanics, solutions, and tools. To offer a way towards building the illusion of a real place rather than that of a film-set.

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