Video games, like urban planning or architecture, create spaces for us to enter. Like those other disciplines, video game spaces can offer a chance to address relationships, history and identity in open and generative ways. However, also like those other disciplines, they can only exist to funnel and restrict allowed behaviour in the direction of the institution that owns the space.
"Games are an endless landscape to explore, not something that needs to be constricted by prescriptive thinking." - Fede
There are spaces we don't belong to, like the airport or supermarket, they are solely designed to control our traversal and limit our identity. There are spaces that we do belong to, that exist for us to find new ways to relate to other people, the world and our history. Rather than reduce ourselves to a stereotype they create opportunities for us to embrace ourselves as a multiplicity of stories.
This list includes 29 games from the last 17 years, with 2,112 likes. They come from a range of different genres and play-styles and are all good games if you want to . We break them down into the following areas: