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Thanks for sharing this Ivan.

If anyone is interested in this topic and wants to discuss/explore it further, I'd love to chat! I've delved into walking simulators quite extensively in my research into how/whether a sense of place can be experienced in video game environments. While my angle on this topic is largely geographical, there are quite a few other researchers from a range of disciplinary backgrounds who study walking sims now, such as Melissa Kagen and Mona Bozdog. Melissa in particular wrote a very similar article in The Guardian last year, talking about the possibilities for walking in video games. She also ran a fantastic conference a couple of years ago in Bangor called the Wandering Games Conference, which brought together a wide range of researchers and practitioners interested in the relationships between games and different forms/ideas of walking. I know some of the other attendees are on this mailing list. 

My current practice-based research is exploring the potential of this form of gameplay and storytelling in relation to location-based games (i.e. those that are played in physical environments, like Pokémon Go or Geocaching), as a means of engaging with the processes through which places become meaningful to us.

Jack Lowe

PhD in Geography and Media Arts

Royal Holloway, University of London

https://jackalowe.blogspot.com

Twitter: @jackalowe

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