Where Games Are Set, and Where They Are Made: Real Places in Video Games from Wikidata and English Wikipedia

Video games often borrow real places, but there is no public list of which places, chosen by whom. I combine two open sources to map them: the narrative locations recorded in Wikidata and the "video games set in" categories of English Wikipedia. Of 189,453 video games in Wikidata, 6,691 can be tied to a real place: 6,198 on Earth and 595 in space. Each Earth setting is geocoded offline and, for 92% of these games, matched to where the developer is based. New York City is the most used setting (529 games), ahead of London (288) and Tokyo (276); the United States is a setting for 43% of Earth-bound games. The games are made mostly in three countries: the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom make 69% of those with a known maker. The busiest route from studio country to setting country runs from Japan to the United States (467 games). American and Japanese studios set most of their games at home (63% and 55%); British studios set more in the United States than in Britain. Settings such as Egypt (295 games with a known maker) and Monaco (118) are made entirely elsewhere. The share of games set in the United States falls from 46% of 1990s releases to 35% of 2020s releases so far. Off Earth, the Moon (119 games) leads Mars (85). The sources favour well-known Western and Japanese games, and one large Wikidata error had to be set aside; I describe both, and publish an interactive map and all derived tables.

Interactive version: https://maps.tristanhotham.com/games-on-the-map/. Data and code: https://github.com/Tristan-Hotham/games-on-the-map. Blog post: https://blog.tristanhotham.com/2026/10/28/games-on-the-map/.