New York City is one of the most played locations in games, serving as the inspirational backdrop for games like Grand Theft Auto, Prototype, Crysis 2 and many, many, (perhaps too many) more. Will future visions of the Big Apple be... fun?
Newsweek tasked three architecture firms with envisioning and designing how a future NYC might work, resulting in a fascinating interactive piece that's potentially a downer for those of us who love stealing cars and driving wildly through its city streets.
Relatively unchanged are the towering skyscrapers that make playing as Spider-man or Alex Mercer so enjoyable. But instead of the dystopian and alien-invaded visions of near future New York—Newsweek's charge was only to look 20 years into the future, we should note—it's "green," filled with public transportation, shared living and work spaces and so clean you could eat off it.
That's perhaps the biggest threat to New York City as a guest star in video games: it could evolve into something... boring. We're going to need those jet packs and mech suits pronto, science.
While we dream of zombie infestations, carjacking and illegal street races set in the New York of the now—and hope that its parody version of Liberty City remains a fun place to be—see what the future vision of the town looks like at Newsweek.
The Future of Work [Newsweek]