Conpsumptionscapes: videogame stereotypes and Latin-American cities environments. Case: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception / Uncharted 4: The Thief End

Abstract

The consumption landscape refers to the context in which the daily basic needs of a society are determined. The small store in the neighborhood and the street market are architectural structures or urban spaces which shape the lives of cities as we know them today. Shopping centres are the evolution of these building formats and can characterize contemporary life. The exercise proposed by this article is to review the condition of the contexts of consumption in which the narrative of video games are developed through the study and selection of cases (Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception / Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End). These demonstrate that the urban landscape with which our cities are represented appears as scenarios loaded with stereotypes. The emphasis of this research is on the representation of the historical Latin American city as a spatially modelled and stereotyped territory where the narrative is contextualized. This article does not focus on how the story develops within a commercial space but instead proposes a transversal idea that the consumption contexts are landscapes determined by cultural logics where the plot occurs. Consumption landscapes are the simultaneous spatial, cultural and historical constructions that give meaning to a narrative and represent an augmented reality of our cities: extensive, immersive and suggestive, but also perverse.