Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Playing With Landscape: Social Process And Spatial Form In Video Games, Michael Longan

Michael W Longan

Video games not only incorporate representations of landscapes, they are themselves a form of landscape representation that communicates ideas about how the world is and how it should be. Like traditional forms of landscape representation, video games use tricks of perspective and realistic graphics to represent real world places or to create worlds that appear to be real. Through their interactivity, video games also give their players a sense of power and control over the spatial form of the landscape. However, unlike traditional forms of landscape representation, video games offer opportunities to subjectively enter the space of the game and …