Meet the geographer on a mission to bring urban renewal into virtual spaces.
What makes a great videogame city? It’s a question developers and players obsess over, and one that geographer, urban planner and game designer Konstantinos Dimopoulos has positioned himself to answer as a consultant ‘game urbanist’, an expert in the form and function of cities who wants to help virtual ones feel like real places.
Think of the Shanghai in Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, which despite being the setting for a corridor shooter manages to conjure a sense of a rapidly growing metropolis, taking place in backstreets, building sites and informal markets. “If you think about it, they don’t show you much of it, but they imply tonnes,” says Dimopoulos, who is based in Athens and is currently working remotely on Frogwares’ forthcoming The Sinking City, a game set in a open, Love craft-inspired world. “Obviously, basing it on a real city, things are easier, but having the mastery and understanding to pick what to show, that they did brilliantly.” Or think GTAIV’s Liberty City. “There is something used in cartography called simplification, and it decides how much detail enters the map depending on the map’s scale,” he tells us. “Instead of drawing five buildings, you draw two, and the GTA team did this for New York, simplifying everything in a very cartographic way to a point where they could manage the work it demanded.”
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 2017-Ausgabe von Edge.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 2017-Ausgabe von Edge.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
CHANTS OF SENNAAR
How Babel helped a world of stealth become a world of words
MEGHNA JAYANTH
Around the industry in eight games: one writer's journey through indie to triple-A and back again.
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist
Sam Fisher's final outing is also his most enigmatic
Post Script
How low should a boss go?
TWO POINT STUDIOS
How a new studio rose from the ashes of Lionhead success not simulated
RAIDERS OF THE ARCHIVE
Wolfenstein-style shootouts are just a small part of the picture in MachineGames' maximalist Indy game
SPLITGATE 2
If it ain't broke, don't fix Split
KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE II
A bigger, better - and funnier Bohemian rhapsody
Narrative Engine
Write it like you stole it
The Outer Limits
Journeys fo the farthest reaches of interactive entertainment