Videogame Atlas: Mapping Interactive Worlds

by Luke Caspar Pearson, Sandra Youkhana

A dazzling look at modern videogame worlds seen through an architectural lens, utilizing maps, diagrams, and graphic illustrations to take readers inside the art of virtual world building.  A dazzling look at modern videogame worlds seen through an architectural lens, utilizing maps, diagrams, and graphic illustrations to offer new perspectives on the art of virtual world building.  Videogame Atlas  presents a journey through twelve well-known videogame worlds via panoramic maps, intricate exploded diagrams, and detailed illustrations. The book offers a playful new way of seeing these beloved virtual worlds using the practices and academic rigor that underpins real-world architectural theory.   Titles such as  Minecraft ,  Assassin's Creed Unity , and  Final Fantasy VII  are explored in exhaustive detail through over 200 detailed illustrations of the micro and macro, each with supporting commentary and architectural theory. Taking influence from high-end architectural monographs, the book is carefully designed to the smallest of details and its production is intricately executed.  This book, printed in five colors, with neon ink throughout, is a culmination of Luke and Sandra’s work, which includes founding the Videogame Urbanism studio at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL that promotes the use of game technologies in architectural education.   250 color illustrations

Genres: Architecture, Nonfiction, Art

288 pages, Hardcover

Published November 22, 2022

Reviews

[Charlie Belch · Rating 5 out of 5]

you might be thinking this is a graphic illustrative book on architecture, and you would be half-right. you think this book is a classic coffee table book, and you would also be right. As someone who is invested into learning about video game design, this book showcases real world examples of games that create interacted digital mapping systems to create mechanic infer-structure within their chosen environments. This isn’t common knowledge, which is why this book is so special. Having an accessible coffee table book on a topic this interesting for me has been nagging at me for the last 6 months, and so I had to treat myself.

This book includes one of my fav games of all time, Stardew valley, a cosy farming sim that takes place in a pixel world, with npcs to talk to, items to collect and mines to fight in and explore. this game has become popular because its game mechanics are so well done. the idea that architecture had anything to do with this was sus to me, but this book shows diagrams of code… yes physical representation of how the watering system on your farm works, how the mines shift and change over time, how the structures on your farm hold a certain impact to output. It’s crazy. and you would never had known that these things had a 3D version of it unless you checked this book out.

so this book, as a architecture book, is one of the clearest and best ive seen. both in a architectural illustration sense but also the knowledge of something society rarely sees. if your interested in video game systems or just wanna look at how Assassin’s Creed created the Notre Dame, highly recommend

5 stars. *****

[Miroslav Pavelek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting view at 12 games through architectural lens. The topic is great, the text is good, it is probably the nicest books in my bookshelf. However the diagrams are so pretty they are actually hard to understand and I believe that in many of them, I missed the message as there was no text saying how I should interpret them.

[MJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book and I liked the writing but a lot of the time the graphs could have been a lot better if they spent more time making them informative rather than pretty.

[Nate Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

The graphics are gorgeous, and the information is interesting. It's a beautiful coffee table book, but the diagrams are often lacking the interactivity that would make them helpful. Like, a node graph of all social connections in Stardew Valley is interesting, but without hover labels it's just a pretty picture. It's an interesting conundrum, especially for a print book covering interactive media.

[Dmitri S · Rating 2 out of 5]

At first glance, this book seems like an intriguing study at the intersection of games and architecture — and it feels like there’s genuinely something worth exploring and discussing here.

However, that impression fades upon reading. Most of the illustrations serve no real function; they don’t aim to efficiently convey a large amount of information, but instead seem designed purely to produce attractive visuals — the kind you don’t study, but hang on a wall as a stylish interior element.

Books rarely make me feel ashamed, but this one managed to. By the third chapter, I was just as uninterested in the visuals as I was aware of how much effort and time had gone into creating them. It honestly felt shameful to flip through page after page of artwork that clearly took dozens of hours to produce — and yet, unfortunately, someone else’s hard work doesn’t guarantee that the final result has any substance.

For all my criticism, the illustrations are still the best part of the book, because the text itself struck me as outright unsuccessful — overly descriptive, repetitive, bloated, and dull. I always take notes from books: facts, details I want to remember or share with others. In this case, out of 300 pages and 12 amazing games, I ended up with just two mediocre notes.

It’s clear that a lot of work and care went into this book — but even so, I genuinely did not enjoy it.

[Jacob]

I have mixed feelings on this book. On the one hand I am glad it exists and I hope more books are made that provide referenced analyses into specific aspects of video games like this does.

On the other hand, I feel that this book doesn't quite go far enough in its analysis of its subject matter. However, the biggest criticism I have is that its many images, the main subject matter of the book, do not have keys. This ultimately makes the majority of the graphics very hard (and sometimes impossible) to interpret.

I would recommend this book to any students studying courses relating to games development as it does a decent enough job into providing an overview of the geography of virtual worlds and the thought that goes into their craft.