Video Game Locations: Real Places in Games

Category	Coverage
Games	388
Franchises	80
Verified real-world locations	2,988
Countries	89

Browse the available video game locations datasets.

What Are Video Game Locations?

For this project, a video game location is an identifiable geographic place connected to a specific game.

That place may be:

• a city such as New York City, London, Tokyo, or Paris
• a famous landmark or building
• a district or neighbourhood
• a country or historical region
• an island or natural feature
• a battlefield or historical site
• a stadium, airport, observatory, or other identifiable venue

The important point is that the place has a documented geographic connection to the game. It is not enough for a fictional location to look vaguely similar to a real city or landscape.

The database therefore distinguishes between several kinds of relationship. A game may represent a real city directly, use a fictional location with a real-world anchor, refer to a wider geographic region, or include a real landmark as part of a mission or level.

This makes it possible to explore video game geography without treating every visual resemblance as evidence of a real-world location.

Explore the Interactive Video Game Locations Map

The map is the easiest way to begin exploring real-world video game locations. Instead of starting with a list of game titles, you can start with the world itself.

Zoom in on a country, search for a city, or follow a franchise across several regions. Individual markers connect geographic places with the games that use them. Depending on the location, you may also find information about the location type, the game setting, geographic coordinates, and the evidence used to document the connection.

The map can help you answer questions such as:

• Which games use real-world locations in the United States?
• Which cities appear in several different games?
• Where are the locations from a particular franchise found?
• Are the locations concentrated in major cities, or do they also include rural and historical areas?
• Which famous landmarks have appeared in games?

The public map shows a selection of currently recorded real-world gaming locations. The underlying research project is larger and continues to change as records are added, refined, or reviewed.

Which Countries Have the Most Video Game Locations?

The public collection covers 89 countries. The available country packs currently focus on 14 countries with particularly strong representation in the published data.

Rank	Country	Location entries	Games	Franchises
1	United States	1,227	199	58
2	United Kingdom	233	108	35
3	France	180	96	37
4	Japan	177	108	33
5	Italy	156	83	32
6	Russia	126	92	33
7	Germany	121	82	30
8	Spain	96	51	17
9	Mexico	72	50	23
10	China	71	58	24
11	Brazil	63	51	23
12	Greece	57	31	17
13	Canada	56	32	18
14	Sweden	50	21	5

The United States has a particularly large lead in the current country-pack data. That reflects several overlapping factors: its size, the number of games set in American cities and landscapes, the prominence of American entertainment and history, and the large number of locations documented in individual games.

The table should not be read as a ranking of cultural importance. It shows where the current public research contains the greatest number of documented game-location entries. Countries with fewer entries may still contain highly significant cities, landmarks, or historical settings.

Cities in Video Games

Cities are the largest location category in the 14 country packs. They account for over 1,300 of the entries in those files.

The most frequently represented cities include:

City	Entries
New York City	37
Los Angeles	31
London	29
Paris	26
Toyko	22
Chicago	20
Berlin	20
San Francisco	18
Moscow	18
Miami	13

These cities appear in different kinds of games and serve different narrative purposes. A city may be the main setting for an open-world game, a mission destination in an action title, a historical environment in an adventure game, or the geographic anchor for a fictionalized version of the real place.

Games rarely reproduce an entire city at full scale. They select recognizable buildings, streets, districts, skylines, or cultural details and combine them into a playable environment. The result may be geographically compressed, historically relocated, or heavily fictionalized while remaining clearly connected to the real city.

The public collection includes many different approaches to this kind of city representation. Assassin’s Creed II uses Florence as part of Ezio’s journey, while Assassin’s Creed Unity recreates Paris during the French Revolution. Other examples include Berlin and Chongqing in Hitman 3.

That is one reason city locations are especially interesting to explore. The map shows not only where a game takes place, but also how different games interpret the same urban environment.

Video Game Locations Beyond Cities

Video game geography extends well beyond urban settings. The country-pack data includes landmarks, countries, districts, regions, natural features, islands, battlefields, historical sites, and several more specific categories.

Location type	Entries
Cities	1,315
Landmarks	471
Countries	326
Districts	205
Regions	173
Natural features	65
Battlefields	55
Islands	40
Historical sites	16
Other location types	19

Landmarks can provide a strong visual or narrative anchor. A building, monument, bridge, stadium, or historic site may appear for only a short part of a game, but it can still be an important real-world reference. In Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, for example, the Louvre Museum is recorded as a real-world landmark connected to the game. The public collection also includes Omaha Beach in Medal of Honor: Frontline and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, showing how a recognizable historic place can function as both a geographic reference and a major gameplay setting.

Regions and natural features work differently. They may represent a broad landscape rather than a single point: a mountain area, desert, island, river basin, or historical territory. Some games use these larger places to establish atmosphere, while others turn them into the setting for exploration, combat, or travel.

Battlefields and historical sites add another layer. They connect games with specific moments in history and show how real geography can influence missions, storylines, and world-building. A map that includes these places makes it easier to see how often games move between present-day cities, historical settings, and natural landscapes.

Which Video Game Franchises Use Real-World Locations?

The public collection currently includes 80 franchises. Some franchises repeatedly use real-world geography, while others include real places only occasionally.

Several broad patterns appear across the collection:

• Historical games use real cities, countries, regions, and battlefields to establish a specific time and place.
• Open-world games recreate or fictionalize modern cities as large navigable environments.
• Action and adventure games use landmarks, districts, and mission locations as memorable stages.
• Racing games connect games with real roads, cities, circuits, and regions.
• Strategy games often use countries, historical regions, and battlefields as geographic anchors.
• Some franchises combine real-world locations with fictional cities, countries, or facilities.

The same franchise may use geography in several different ways. One game might recreate a real city, another might use a historical region, and a third might place a fictional location within a recognizable country. Looking at the locations together can reveal the geographic range of a franchise more clearly than looking at individual game summaries.