Pattern Analysis of Virtual Landscape within Educational Games

Virtual landscape has a prominent role in digital games' virtual environment design. Since the attributes of the virtual landscape directly affect a game's characteristics, it is crucial to be explored as a design domain, apart from just being a tool for other domains' development. This study traces the gradual change of the virtual landscape in educational games and the chronological change of their carrying content, till now a gap in the literature. To examine the effect of the virtual landscape evolution and the invention of the virtual reality (VR) technology on the intended topic of the education transmitted by the games, we classified all Steam games with the education tag based on KIM'S (2016) method-ology. To do so, we transmitted their introductory information, whether they support VR and are simulation games or not, to an Excel database. Then we sorted them from 1992 till 2020. The virtual landscape classification methodology revealed a significant relationship between the content, VR technol-ogy, and the virtual landscape transformation. The study anticipates a future revolution in the landscape architecture domain by jumping into the digital game industry to enhance the virtual landscape for the sake of itself, not other disciplines.