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Games

The Curious Beauty Of Empty Video Game Environments

They make shockingly good still-lifes and landscape paintings.

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Some of us spend a lot of time immersed in virtual gaming environments—blowing stuff up, shooting holes through space-time, or leaping about defying the laws of physics. But how often do you take a proverbial step back and soak up the scenery, the landscapes, and the buildings that create the game’s atmosphere? Not often, because for most people their attention is focused on the action of playing the game, rather than relishing the beauty of its built environment.

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But for Iain Andrews, it’s all about the environments that surround the player and the quiet artistry that they posses. To show his appreciation, he’s collated his video game photography on a Tumblr called Steam Postcards, which presents various video game worlds stripped of all those distracting elements—characters and sounds—and leaving us with slightly melancholy places that are strangely beguiling and stunning to look at, a true testament to the sublime skill of the games’ designers.

Portal 2

Lost Planet 2

Rage

Battlefield 3

Mafia II

Mirror’s Edge

Red Orchestra 2

The Void

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