Des villes en pixels aux cités réelles : influence des jeux vidéo sur l’architecture urbaine contemporaine

This research explores how video games, as an immersive, interactive, and fictional medium, influencing representations, imaginations, and conceptions of contemporary cities. Based on a review of literature combining urban planning, architecture, design fiction, and gaming, the study highlights the role of video games in the symbolic and prospective construction of cities. From city builder video games (ex: SimCity, Tropico, City Skyline) to explorable worlds (ex.: Final Fantasy, Assassin’s Creed), all these digital environments offer the freedom to experiment with innovative architectural and urban forms. An online questionnaire survey of 147 players, mostly urban dwellers aged 17 to 47, gathered their perceptions of the ideal city, whether real or virtual. The results reveal that video games give rise to utopian or dystopian urban imaginaries, influenced by gameplay logic, gaming experiences and narratives, and design constraints. Beyond their entertainment function, video games thus appear as digital laboratories for spatial experimentation. However, their contribution to the design of real cities needs to be linked to empirical, social, and participatory approaches. The study therefore contributes to questioning the cross-influences between video games and urban planning from a territorial innovation perspective. JEL Codes: O18, Q55.