This logic mirrors that of real-world
Business
Improvement Districts (BIDs), where security and property value dictate the use of space, all while cosplaying as
open cityscapes. In-game, this control manifests through hollow, inaccessible buildings, non-player characters looping limited
performative actions, and hidden rules that nudge players toward anticipated behaviors. The digital city is not a playground
for free exploration but a controlled simulation of public space, where player agency is limited to a narrow set of pre-approved
actions and the world is rarely multiperspectival or user-generated.
This controlled experience has historical
roots in colonialist Western landscape design. The boundaries of game maps are not mere fictional borders but carefully crafted
illusions, akin to the "ha-ha" walls in Romantic and Baroque gardens. Just as these gardens were playgrounds for the ruling
class—where peasants were incorporated as decorative elements—the video game landscape is a curated experience. Ruins are
artificially placed, and architecture serves a predetermined "environmental storytelling" function.
This stands
in stark contrast to the ideas of the
Situationist International, who sought to question the hierarchical and
repressive urban realm. They championed détournement—the repurposing of urban elements—and psychogeography, a self-chosen,
drifting exploration of the city. Projects like Constant Nieuwenhuys' "New Babylon" envisioned the city as a true "arena of
play," a free surface designed to generate unpredictable games and erase capitalist domination. It is the utopian version
of what game maps later have become.
Video games, however, remain a "game" with fixed rules, not free "play." While
modding and artistic interventions become something more collective, they remain semi-public simulations. Ultimately, these
digital realms are top-down, corporate, and securitized investment products—which, precisely for this reason, invite us to
misuse, appropriate, and subvert them.
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