Plug-and-Play. Video games as a tool for landscape representation

The representation of landscapes has accompanied the evolution of human civilisation, transitioning from traditional techniques to complex digital systems. In recent decades, video games have emerged as powerful tools within this trajectory, offering new ways to explore, simulate, and engage with virtual environments. Unlike static cartographic representations, game-based landscapes integrate spatial and temporal dynamics, enabling immersive experiences that unfold across multiple scenarios and time scales. This shift expands the role of representation: from visual description to a predictive, design-oriented process. Game environments thus provide new cognitive and operational tools for landscape architects. By modelling change, simulating environmental processes, and incorporating real-time feedback, they allow for critical exploration of evolving landscapes and support the formulation of adaptive strategies in speculative contexts. Within the Urban/Nomadic dichotomy, this paper investigates how video games reframe representation as a non-fixed, process-based experience. These digital landscapes reflect the nomadic nature of contemporary spatial engagement—fluid, iterative, decentralised—and propose new paradigms for the narration and design of landscapes.