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[shrimp]

(Disclaimer: This might turn out as a bit of an incoherent brain-dump, but we'll see...)

I've just discovered that I've been doing psychogeography for a while now without realising it.
(One) Definition: "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."

This piece lead me to Iain Sinclair, who not-coincidentally has connections with Alan Moore, and in fact appears (kind of) in the most recent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

So anyway, then I followed a link to social trails or desire lines, which is a pretty familiar phenomenon, and made me think of generating paths in PG landscapes. This process has been modelled (can't find the link ATM) although I personally don't do anything this clever.

But in general, this seems pretty relevant to world design in games... laying out or analysing the paths between important places, that sort of thing. Maybe it's especially relevant to exploration/open-world games?

Perhaps that's still a bit too specific though. This kind of wandering exploration is just a really nice meditative thought-provoking thing to do in reality. I've got an ongoing project to walk around the circumference of the horizon as seen from my parents' house. The shape it made when plotted in Google Earth was quite strange too.

In a similar vein is the idea in archaeology of a ritual landscape. One can definitely take a psychogeographical wander around the monuments of Avebury (top right pics on that page, except Stonehenge)

So... um... discuss!

(PS: This is pretty closely linked to the excellent "Creating a Memorable Landscape" discussion from a while ago)

[Inanimate]

This is a genius idea! I'd love to see this kind of stuff in your game. Geography is an often forgotten part of gaming, even though it's pretty important! Creating desire paths in your game would make it feel alive, and organic. Definitely do it!

[agj]

Let me get psychogeography straight: it's an artistic practice that concerns itself with reinterpreting (primarily urban) geography for aesthetic effect? That Wikipedia article is not helping much, give me a hand here.

[shrimp]

@Inanimate: I guess I was trying to make it generally applicable to geography in exploration games... but maybe it's too specific to my project.  (Oh, desire paths - I kind of have them already, just using A*... it's near enough to the same effect )

@agj: I couldn't really give an expert answer as I haven't really read or studied much of the people who invented or practice it. This is just my interpretation... but I think you pretty much have it. The most interesting/resonant thing for me is the "derive"... maybe it's a bit like parcour without the jumps? I mean: You have a landscape which is defined by humanity - roads, boundaries, hubs, commuter routes etc - and so rather than follow the same old paths (perhaps dictated by authority, if you look at it that way) you do something else... something a bit more random and free.

I haven't read it, but Will Self and Ralph Steadman wrote a book called "Psychogeography" about walking from London to Dubai. They went via Heathrow (cheating) but still it seemed to be quite eye-opening.

Does that make any more sense?

[agj]

Just a bit. Helps me understand your point with this thread, at least.

Not really the same, but I love walking around the city, discovering little streets I would not normally go through, and just paying attention to all the little details.