Video games allow us to construct and visit believable imaginary cities, provide us with glimpses of ancient urbanism, and let us immerse ourselves in the wildest utopias and darkest dystopias of our possible futures. They are an unprecedented canvas for experimenting with the urban environment, and an utterly unique medium for experiencing cities both imagined and real in truly immersive ways.

Game urbanist, designer, and writer Konstantinos Dimopoulos, and visual artist Maria Kallikaki have embarked on a virtual journey to explore, catalogue, and map the most spectacular, intriguing, and defining places of this new digital geography.

Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities is an ambitious and richly illustrated atlas that is the first detailed attempt to document the deep and exciting history of game cities via a combination of original maps, ink drawings, and insightful commentary and analysis.

Virtual Cities will be a beautiful book meant for lovers of cartography and imaginary worlds, artists, game designers, world builders, and, above all, everyone who plays and cares for video games.

Virtual Cities covers over 40 game cities across literary and gaming genres. Cities spanning almost 40 years of digital history, including detailed entries on Half-Life 2’s City 17, Yakuza’s Kamurocho, Fallout’s New Vegas, Silent Hill, and less well-known cities such as Antescher and Lizard Breath, plus cyberpunk Hong Kong, and voodoo New Orleans among many, many more.

Every city featured in the atlas will be mapped through a combination of traditional and unorthodox cartographic methods including partial reconstruction, and the filling in of essential details, which allow us to visualize the often fragmented, incomplete, and out of scale cities of gaming in a cohesive way. It will also be accompanied by beautiful, subtly coloured ink drawings, and in-depth texts covering its history, design lessons, atmosphere, landmarks, and geography.

STRETCH GOALS!

At 150% five additional cities added to the book, which means more artwork, more content, more chances your favourite games will be included.

At 175% we'll announce a Limited Edition Slipcase edition. You'll be able to upgrade your hardback to include this slipcase.

At 200%, to say thank you for your incredible support, every backer will receive a digital book of sketches, early artwork, initial ideas and notes.

Above 200% - Keep an eye out for more amazing stretch goals.

About the Book

A full colour, high quality hardback with printed endpapers.

Approximately 200 pages.

210 by 286mm format with head and tail bands.

Over 40 original maps, and more than 100 drawings.

Contains over 50,000 words and amazing pledge levels!

From metropolitan sci-fi open worlds and medieval fantasy towns, to contemporary cities and glimpses of gothic horror urbanism author and artist will research, map, visualize, and document some of the most iconic, complex and intriguing cities in gaming.

*Book designs and cover are for illustrative purpose and may differ to final design.