Articles
Urban Planning for Lovecraftion Horror: The First Steps
Approaching the creation of an interactive Lovecraft-inspired, cosmic horror urban environment for videogames.
Urban Design and the Creation of Videogame Cities
Brief (relatively) but (quite) thorough guide to creating believable, immersive, and interesting cities for video games. Based on my 2017 Develop: Brighton talk.
Wireframe's CityCraft Column
A regular column in Wireframe magazine tackling all aspects of the design of game cities, and urban virtual environments in general. Wireframe issues are available in print, and as free PDFs.
Designing death in the virtual city
How video game designers incorporate reality into their fantasy dangers, and how the exploration of virtual worlds could feed into the design of real-life environments. An article for the Wellcome Collection.
Imagining Cities Through Play
A peer-reviewed chapter about utopia, video games, and virtual space in Virtual Interiorities - Book One: When Worlds Collide, published by Carnegie Mellon University: ETC Press in 2022..
Exploring the pirate town of Mêlée Island
A look at the creation of the main town-hub of classic point-and-click adventure The Secret of Monkey Island.
Game Cities: Those Handy, Simplified Urban Structures
The basics of urban structure, and the three classic city models; a fine way of getting started with imaginary urban planning for your video game cities.
Game Cities: Implying Size and Complexity
You do not have to model a complete functioning city to have a believable urban environment for your game. All you have to do is cleverly imply the appropriate size, scale, and complexity.
Medieval Urbanism: A Fantasist’s Introduction
A series of articles for RPG and game design book publishers Kobold Press on medieval urbanism and geography, and their application to fantasy settings.
A Beginner’s Guide To Crafting Video Game Cities
A (relatively) brief introduction to the art and science of crafting believable, immersive cities and urban environments for video games.
Eleven Essential Books that will help shape your Game City
Eleven essential books to help you with the design and construction of your very own very imaginary and possibly digital cities. Also work on non-imaginary cities.
Transport Isn’t Technology, It’s Politics
An article for the How We Get To Next website's Going Places month, discussing the politics shaping travel.
Imagining believable game cities and urban simulations with a little help from SpatialOS
Could huge, complex, persistent simulations bring us closer to truly convincing digital cities? An article for the Improbable.io blog.
Game Cities: A Nékromegàn Tale of Two Cities
An approach to urbanism as a storytelling tool, and the story of the urban design of adventure/RPG Nékromegà's opposing cities.
Game Cities: The Urbanism of Thimbleweed Park
A look at Thimbleweed Park (the town), and an approach of open-world city design in 2D adventure games.
The City and the RPG That Never Were
The story of an incredibly ambitious RPG by a team of indie devs, writers and artists that failed to happen. Also, how I spent hundreds of hours for something resulting in less than two prototypes.
Game Cities: The Motionless City
How to come up with some of the oddest cities possible for your audience to play in. Also a few ideas on designing otherworldly urban environments, and some thoughts on the "Motionless City".