General
What is the Video Game Locations Project?
The Video Game Locations Project is a structured video game locations database documenting real-world places that appear in video games. It combines geographic information, coordinate data, and game metadata to help researchers, developers, GIS professionals, journalists, and enthusiasts explore the relationship between virtual worlds and real-world geography.
What makes this project different?
Unlike traditional game databases, the Video Game Locations Project focuses on geography rather than games themselves. Every record represents a real-world location together with the games, franchises, geographic coordinates, location classifications, and structured metadata associated with it.
Coverage
How many locations are currently included?
The database continues to grow with every release. Current coverage statistics, including the number of verified locations, games, franchises, and countries, are available on the Homepage.
How often are coverage statistics updated?
Coverage statistics are updated whenever a new public dataset release is published.
Which games are included?
The project covers games from a wide range of genres, including action, adventure, RPGs, shooters, racing, simulation, strategy, sports, and historical games. New titles are continuously added as research progresses.
Current coverage includes franchises and titles such as Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto, Hitman, Tomb Raider, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator 2, Watch Dogs, Spider-Man, and many others. New games are continuously added as research progresses.
Which countries are covered?
The database includes locations from every inhabited continent. Coverage ranges from major cities and famous landmarks to historical regions, islands, archaeological sites, national parks, and other geographically identifiable places.
Examples include Japan, the United States, Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, China, Egypt, Australia, Norway, and more than 170 other countries and territories represented throughout the dataset.
Which franchises are included?
The project documents both major franchises and standalone titles. Coverage expands continuously as additional games are researched and verified.
Current coverage includes franchises such as Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto, Hitman, Tomb Raider, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, Need for Speed, Forza Horizon, together with numerous independent and standalone games. Coverage expands continuously as additional titles are researched and verified.
Data Quality
How are locations verified?
Locations are verified using the project’s documented evidence-based methodology. Whenever possible, multiple independent sources are compared, including official game material, direct in-game evidence, reliable community documentation, historical references, and geographic databases.
What do „Exact“, „Representative“, „Centroid“, and „Approximate“ mean?
These classifications describe the geographic precision of the assigned coordinates. They indicate how accurately a location can be positioned based on the available evidence.
A detailed explanation is available on the Methodology & Dataset Structure page.
Why don’t all locations have exact coordinates?
Not every game depicts locations with the same level of geographic precision. Some represent only a region, while others intentionally fictionalize real places. In these cases, the database records the highest coordinate precision that can be supported by the available evidence.
Do you include fictional cities?
The primary focus of the database is real-world geography. However, fictional locations that are clearly based on identifiable real places may be documented using the project’s Fictional with Real Anchor classification.
How are historical locations handled?
Historical cities, monuments, archaeological sites, battlefields, and other culturally significant locations are included whenever they can be reliably identified through historical and geographic evidence.
What happens when sources disagree?
Conflicting evidence is evaluated using the project’s verification workflow. Preference is generally given to official material, direct in-game observations, and multiple independent sources.
Dataset
What is included in the Complete Dataset?
The Complete Dataset contains substantially more records than the public interactive map. It includes structured geographic metadata, coordinate classifications, verification information, location types, geographic identifiers, game metadata, and additional research fields.
More details are available on the Methodology & Dataset Structure page
How often is the dataset updated?
New releases are published regularly as additional games are researched and existing records are reviewed and improved.
How can I use the dataset?
Your permitted use depends on the license you choose. Different licenses are available for personal projects, research, internal business use, commercial applications, and redistribution.
For detailed information about permitted uses and licensing options, please see the Licensing page.
Technical
Which coordinate system is used?
Coordinates are provided using the WGS84 geographic coordinate system (latitude and longitude), making the dataset compatible with virtually all GIS and mapping software.
Which file formats are available?
The datasets are currently provided as CSV (Comma-Separated Values) files, a widely supported, machine-readable format suitable for data analysis, GIS software, databases, spreadsheets, programming languages, and AI workflows.
CSV files can be imported into applications such as Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, QGIS, ArcGIS, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, Python (Pandas), R, and many other data analysis and mapping tools.
Can I import the data into GIS software?
Yes. The dataset is designed for use with GIS platforms such as QGIS, ArcGIS, web mapping libraries, spatial databases, and other geospatial analysis tools.
Are Wikidata IDs included?
Yes. Where available, game records include Wikidata identifiers together with additional structured metadata that supports integration into semantic databases and knowledge graphs.
Is the dataset machine-readable?
Yes. The entire database is designed for integration into databases, GIS software, AI workflows, machine learning pipelines, custom software, and geographic information systems.
Is the schema documented?
Yes. A complete schema reference documents every field, classification, coordinate method, and metadata element used throughout the database.
Games
How are remakes handled?
Remakes are treated as separate game entries whenever they introduce distinct geographic content or substantially revised representations of real-world locations.
How are remasters handled?
Remasters generally inherit the geographic data of the original release unless meaningful geographic changes have been introduced.
How are DLCs handled?
Major downloadable expansions may be documented separately whenever they introduce significant new real-world locations.
How are multiple locations within one game represented?
Each identifiable real-world location is stored as an individual record linked to the corresponding game, allowing precise geographic analysis.
Can the same location appear in multiple games?
Yes. A single real-world location may be associated with multiple games and franchises, making it possible to analyse geographic relationships across the entire database.
Future Development
What features are planned?
Planned improvements include:
- Expanded geographic coverage
- Additional metadata
- New Country Packs
- New Franchise Packs
- API access
- Enhanced search functionality
- Additional visualizations
- Regular dataset releases
- Continued quality improvements
How This Project Compares to Traditional Game Databases
A Different Perspective on Video Games
Many excellent game databases already exist. They provide comprehensive information about games, developers, publishers, platforms, release dates, genres, screenshots, reviews, and community content.
The Video Game Locations Project complements these resources by documenting something they typically do not: the real-world geography represented in video games.
Rather than replacing existing databases, it adds a structured geographic layer that enables location-based research, GIS analysis, geographic visualization, and knowledge graph applications.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Other Game Databases | Video Game Locations Project |
| Game Information | ✅ YES | ✅ YES |
| Release Dates | ✅ YES | ✅ YES |
| Genres | ✅ YES | ✅ YES |
| Real-world Locations | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Geographic Metadata | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Geographic Coordinates | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Coordinate Precision | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Location Classification | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Verification Metadata | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Source Quality | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Geographic Coverage by Franchise | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| GIS-ready Data | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Wikidata Integration | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| GIS-ready Data | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
Questions the Database Can Answer
| Question | Other Game Databases | Video Game Locations Project |
| Which games are set in Japan? | ⚠️ LIMITED | ✅ YES |
| Which franchises feature Paris? | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Which countries are represented most frequently? | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Which games share the same locations? | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Which historical periods are represented geographically? | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Which locations appear across multiple franchises? | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Compare geographic representation across genres | ❌ NO | ✅ YES |
| Build an interactive world map | ⚠️ LIMITED | ✅ YES |
Complementary, Not Competitive
Traditional game databases remain the best source of information about games themselves.
The Video Game Locations Project complements them by providing a structured geographic video game dataset that documents where games take place, how locations relate to the real world, and how geographic patterns can be explored across franchises, genres, countries, and historical periods.
Together, these resources provide a far more complete understanding of the relationship between video games and real-world geography.