Brand new styles for the architectures of videogames and virtual worlds

Yesterday, at the Festival for the Intercultural Economy in Biella, I had the occasion to explain once again my vision the architecture in virtual worlds. In my opinion, we need to define an aestethic, with brand new styles: as I said in a chapter of Virtual Geographic (edited by Ivan Fulco, Costa & Nolan 2006), we cannot use terms as Romanic, Baroque or Postmodern to talk about the architectures of videogames and virtual worlds. For this reason, here are some new definitions:

lEsoteric Steampunk (Myst, Riven, Uru, Schizm). Referent in real world: gothic.

lClassic Steampunk: Project Nomads. Referent in real world: neoclassical.

lLudic Surrealism: American McGee’s Alice. Referent in real world: German Expressionist Architecture

lPost-atomic Functionalism: Duke Nukem, Half-Life, Doom, Quake. Referent in real world: Alsop, Gehry, Hadid, MVRDV, Nox, Greg Lynn

lNeodrammatical-Psychoarchitecture: Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Haunting Ground, Forbidden Siren. Referent in real world: victorian style, “edwardhopperian” style

lTechnoromanticism: Bioshock
Digital Macrobaroque: Quake 3, Schizm
Pseudo-Liberty: Death by Degrees, Still Life. Referent in real world: art nouveau

Then we could also think about some particular styles for the MMOGs, like:

lFantasy (Lineage, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, EverQuest). Referent in real world: theme parks, medieval cities

lPost déco: City of Heroes, City of Villains. Referent in real world: Las Vegas

lLudic-virtual Surrealism: Second Life, The Sims Online, Sociolotron

lFuture Glam: Entropia Universe, Anarchy Online. Referent in real world: Novosibibirsk, Buddha Bar style.