AdviceToolbox
Building walls and defining the edges of an urban space can
be a creative process, and full of game design potentialCivic boundaries
and city walls
borders turned walls into political instruments of
control. Not everyone was allowed passage in or
out of a city, and the traffic of goods and people
was controlled at guarded gates. City gates were
in most cases the locations where tolls were
collected, and were the structurally weaker points
during a possible siege.
Several types of city walls have existed, ranging
from the wooden constructions of the bronze
age to the elaborate bulwarks and curtains of
Renaissance city walls – all of these can serve
both the fiction and the mechanics of a video
game world. Walls fulfil the level design demand
for boundaries, can act as believable world
borders, are excellent centrepieces for epic
battles, and can effortlessly provide tense siege
or stealth opportunities, as well as a strong
civic character.
The realistic fortifications of Whiterun in Skyrim
are a prime example of walls designed to stage
a game’s most intriguing battles, while also
providing a narrative functioning. Whiterun’s wallsAUTHOR
KONSTANTINOS DIMOPOULOS
Konstantinos Dimopoulos is a game urbanist and designer, combining a PhD
in urban planning with video games. He is the author of the forthcoming Virtual
Cities atlas, designs game cities, and consults on their creation. game-cities.comThe Walls of
Civilization
One of the staples of Sid
Meier’s constantly evolving
Civilization series is,
unsurprisingly, the concept of
urban walls. It’s a gameplay
element with an almost
exclusively defensive function
which fits in nicely with the
abstracted geographies
of the series, while also
adding a sense of historical
authenticity. Aptly, in most
versions of Civilization, walls
lose their defensive bonuses
sometime after gunpowder is
invented; with the exception
of Civilization 6, where the
option to upgrade walls to the
more abstract ‘city defences’
is given after a tech level
is achieved.
ven the most outlandish fictional
cities need boundaries. Limits,
geographical or societal, have forever
separated urban spaces from their
hinterlands, and their surrounding
‘natural’ or rural spaces. Such borders, whether
fuzzy and porous or concrete and precise, have
delineated all human settlements throughout
history, and have served to distinguish life in
the city from life in the countryside. In Europe,
during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, in
particular, walls were considered such an integral
element of what constituted a city that they
formed an essential part of its formal definition.
Of course, boundaries don’t necessarily
have to be as emblematic and impenetrable
as the fortified walls of Carcassonne in France,
and neither do they have to be the marvels of
engineering that protected Constantinople.
Urban space can easily be defined by fences,
administrative lines, rivers, moats, steep cliffs,
ceremonial borders, signs, a greenbelt, or even
the last row of its houses.THE COMMON WALL
The wall, in its myriad historical guises, is the
combined result of defensive requirements,
engineering might, available materials,
architecture, ideology, planning, and geographical
location. Obvious defensive functions aside,
walls commonly provided shelter from strong
winds and the (perceived or real) dangers of
wild animal attacks. They also firmly established
dominance, served as metaphysical or
ceremonial boundaries, and were a physical
expression of the city’s borders. Embodying civic30 / wfmag.cc
E
Entering Union City in the
forthcoming adventure
sequel Beyond A Steel Sky is
made more dramatic by this
imposing, futuristic gate.