Playing at Colonization

This article coins the term gamescape to offer a way of thinking about the implications of the way in which landscape in video games is actively constructed within a particular ideological framework. The author examines the spatial practices used to construct the gamescape in Tropico and their attendant dangers. The author concludes with a discussion of the theming of this gamescape, and the way in which the trope of tropicalization is used to stabilize Tropico as an “Othered” space.