Designing as if writing: Narrative, space and dwelling in video games

Taking video games as an emerging spatial medium, this paper examines how they reshape contemporary urban planning and design. It traces the shift from two-dimensional interfaces to three-dimensional open worlds and the parallel deepening of their cultural presence, arguing that games have moved from disposable entertainment to a “socio-spatial laboratory” for experimentation and expression. Drawing on game-studies theories, the study takes narrative as its entry point and sorts the generative logic of game worlds into temporal structures (string-of-pearls, branching, theme-park and building-block models) and a spatial paradigm of the open world, focusing on how system design mediates the tension between rules and freedom. Empirically, the discussion centers on the Chinese open-world game Genshin Impact. Situating it within the industry’s trajectory from imitation to profit-driven and then content-oriented development, the analysis examines the construction of the continent of Teyvat—especially the region of Natlan—through terrain, architecture and settlement form, connective spaces and social organization. This reading shows how cultural imagination, narrative structure and player agency are translated into inhabitable and “writable” virtual environments, and how the game map combines a string-of-pearls main storyline with theme-park-style open exploration. Turning back to urban reality, the paper proposes a conceptual move from the “simulated city” to the “narrative city” and the “generative city”. It outlines a design framework that uses generative logic to define an open yet bounded layer of rules and institutions, narrative logic to organize legible terrains, paths, nodes and landmarks, and simulation logic to implement differentiated communities and polycentric public spaces. In this view, the city is understood as an open system continuously co-authored under constraints, turning planning from a finished object into an ongoing process and public participation from formal consultation into everyday co-creation.