About: Video Game Geography   Sponge Permalink

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There are logical and very justifiable reasons for video games to screw with geography. This is a trope with two types: Type 1 has to do with video game World Maps. You might think that the map you're looking at makes pretty good sense until the following Fridge Logic kicks in: "If this were really a normal spherical world, I ought to not be able to move like this." Common map oddities include: Related to World Shapes. Compare Patchwork Map. Contrast You Fail Geography Forever. Has elements in common with Space Compression and Units Not to Scale. Examples of Type 1

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  • Video Game Geography
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  • There are logical and very justifiable reasons for video games to screw with geography. This is a trope with two types: Type 1 has to do with video game World Maps. You might think that the map you're looking at makes pretty good sense until the following Fridge Logic kicks in: "If this were really a normal spherical world, I ought to not be able to move like this." Common map oddities include: Related to World Shapes. Compare Patchwork Map. Contrast You Fail Geography Forever. Has elements in common with Space Compression and Units Not to Scale. Examples of Type 1
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  • There are logical and very justifiable reasons for video games to screw with geography. This is a trope with two types: Type 1 has to do with video game World Maps. You might think that the map you're looking at makes pretty good sense until the following Fridge Logic kicks in: "If this were really a normal spherical world, I ought to not be able to move like this." Common map oddities include: * Toruses ("donut-shapes"): Going off one side of the screen causes the player to appear at the opposite, implying a toroidal (or donut) shape. Thus you scroll off the bottom and end up at the top, instead of going in the opposite direction from a different area at the bottom. It allows, among other things, faster travel around the map, allowing players to not have to cross the equator every time they want to get from the north pole to south pole and vice-versa. * Cylinders: Like toroids, but circumvents the polar issue by making them impassable, either with Invisible Walls or the geological equivalent of Insurmountable Waist High Fences - ice, glaciers and mountains. (This is believable in a game where you start out with primitive tech but gets less plausible when you advance up to airplanes.) * Flat and rectangular: You can't walk off the edge of the map at all thanks to Invisible Walls. In theory there may be more game world out there than the map shows but you'll never know, will you? Frequent in the case of video game Fantasy World Maps and many RPGs. For all of these the technical justification is about the same: a spherical world is somewhat difficult to implement and display properly, especially on the computers and game consoles of yesteryear. Rarely are these ever a real Flat World, Ringworld Planet or other exotic World Shapes - they do exist in games but they're not the reason for this trope. Type 2 is screwing with geography in order to comply with the Rule of Fun. Spending half an hour walking to your next destination, with or without Random Encounters to spice things up, is not very fun, so let's make the world small enough to be traversable. Sailing down what in Real Life is a calm and peaceful river is not all that fun, so let's throw in fast moving water and some rock hazards. Got the idea? Admittedly sometimes this happens because of laziness or tight deadlines: "we've got a forest and we've got a desert you have to go through and we don't have time or space to make a transition area." And sometimes it is genuinely is Did Not Do the Research but those don't belong here. Related to World Shapes. Compare Patchwork Map. Contrast You Fail Geography Forever. Has elements in common with Space Compression and Units Not to Scale. Examples of Type 1
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