This workshop aims to teach the fundamentals of urban planning, city geography, and civic design to help game designers, level designers, artists, world builders, and other professionals working in the video games industry. You’ll learn when and how to apply real-world experience and knowledge to the virtual space of games. You’ll discover how to enrich gaming experiences in believable urban spaces, create unique, immersive, and memorable game cities, and construct convincing, layered urban environments that can tell and support narratives.

Moving from science and engineering, to game design, level design, and world building, the workshop will cover the fundamentals of urbanism and geography (such as the crucial concept of urban functions), and apply these to the virtual worlds of video games. You’ll learn how convincing geographies can be constructed, discuss the design of city structures, and approach the creation of memorable urban concepts. We’ll also explore important aspects of designing cities in games, such as effective abstraction methods and ways to create legible, navigable spaces. You’ll design your own city in your tool of choice and discuss your designs with Konstantinos and the rest of the group in the final session of the workshop.

This workshop is best suited for intermediate game designers, level designers, world builders, and artists but is open to people of any skill level or discipline who are interested in video gaming and constructing imaginary cities.