Gaming Futures: Civic Worlds for City North

Gaming Futures: Civic Worlds for City North is a downloadable architectural game world presented as part of Melbourne Design Week 2026.

Launching online at gamingfutures.world, the project invites audiences to enter and explore a speculative virtual environment of RMIT’s City North precinct. Through simple game-based navigation, visitors move through civic worlds shaped by architecture, ecology, data, climate futures, cultural narratives, Indigenous knowledges and community stories. Rather than presenting architecture as something only to be viewed through drawings, images or models, the project offers architecture as a playable experience. Audiences are invited to inhabit experiential environments, encounter future infrastructures and experience speculative urban propositions from within.

The project blends education, research and public play to explore how gaming environments can become new interfaces for architectural imagination, civic storytelling and urban futures.

This virtual environment was produced through the RMIT Master of Architecture Design Studio Continuums Data Being 2: RMIT City North in Semester 2, 2025.The studio was led by RMIT Architecture industry staff member Vei Tan and RMIT Architecture Lecturer Dr Patrick Macasaet, with Cienan Muir of Indiginerd, and developed with RMIT Master of Architecture students Hussain Asghar, Vanessa Batras, Callan Beaton, Ashlin Cam, Patrick Downs, Ruoxuan Jiang, Whitney Lay, Wen Kang Evan Leow, On Tung Leung, Andy Luu, Tevin McSweeney, Mandisa Sarker, Natthanan Surachartkumthornkul, Ryan Tan, and Leonardo Teller.

The project was produced in partnership with and supported by the RMIT City North Social Innovation Precinct.

Further refinement of the downloadable virtual environment was led by Vei Tan, Dr Patrick Macasaet, and principal worldbuilder Ashlin Cam.