What videogame maps can tell us about their worlds

We don t expect much of a typical video game map. As long as it guides us to our destination (and perhaps looks pretty while doing so) most of us won t waste a second thought on it. And yet, maps can be much more than tools that make our way from A to B a little more convenient. Some games reject the notion of maps as a tacked-on extraneous layer, and instead treat them as an integral part of their world. These maps can tell us something about their world and its inhabitants that goes far beyond topographical information. Rather than creating distance between us and a game, they root us more firmly in it.

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