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Staircase of Wonders

If FPS designers designed cities.

The Tblisi Ministry of Transport is very constructivist and/or brutalist. Basically, very Soviet. It also bears a striking resemblence to the kind of structures that you’d find in future-set FPS games. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Half-Life 2 is set in an Eastern European styled city.

It makes me wonder if anybody has done (I’m sure somebody has) a study on architectural/civic design as represented in video games. Could be an interesting subject.

Bonus content: Russian Utopia: A Depository.

Comments (2)

Alex writes (November 2nd, 2006 at 17:11):

There’s very little I’ve come across about how videogames represent cities and other environments - too bad as yeah, it’s utterly fascinating.

However, not wanting to bang my own drum too much, I wrote an article for a design mag I used to work for on the design of game spaces a while back, and I interviewed Victor Antonov, HL2’s art director:

http://www.icon-magazine.co.uk/issues/october/gamespace.htm

Dan Hill of Cityofsound wrote a really great post comparing Los Angeles and San Andreas that I can’t recommend enough:

http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2004/12/los_angeles_gra.html

Trawling through my delicious there’s also this from Things Magazine:

http://www.thingsmagazine.net/2004_03_01_oldthings.htm#108054706676693864

And this from the NYT about videogame representations of New York, but I guess it’s more about society than bricks and mortar:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/nyregion/thecity/13vide.html?ex=1162616400&en=9adc193a517739a4&ei=5070

n0wak writes (November 2nd, 2006 at 20:11):

Hey, I think I remember that Icon article! Maybe. Plug all you want, my own del.icio.us tag intersection of “Architecture” and “Gaming” is too deficient of content.

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If FPS designers designed cities. posted on Tuesday, October 31st, 2006 (22:10)
and labeled under: Art and Design, Gaming.

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