BIMM Berlin welcomes game urbanist Konstantinos Dimopoulos

This conversation was recorded as part of our Creative Industries and You module at BIMM Berlin, which includes a podcast-making assessment. The project connects students with working industry figures, giving them practical experience in research, interviewing, and producing publishable audio; skills that translate directly to creative careers beyond the classroom.

Our students had the opportunity to record a podcast with Konstantinos Dimopoulos, an urban planner turned game designer whose work focuses on what he calls ‘game urbanism’: world-building and level design with a specific emphasis on urban spaces and how players move through them.

Dimopoulos trained as an engineer specialising in urban planning and metropolitan urbanism, completing both a Master’s and a PhD in the field. Games began as a long-term passion-he played, wrote about games, and occasionally contributed to indie projects as far back as the mid-2000s.

Following the 2008 crisis and a shift in academic hiring, he was invited to join an indie studio in 2010 and realised game development could be a genuine career path. Over time, he began combining his two worlds, carving out a niche that didn’t quite exist yet –then working to define it through writing, talks, workshops, and consultancy.

What “game urbanism” actually means

Dimopoulos explained that game cities aren’t true simulations. Even when games include systems like traffic or crowds, what they’re really doing is replicating the feeling of a city through abstraction, suggestion, and ‘smoke and mirrors’. The key challenge is creating places that seem complete and believable, without the infinite detail and consequences of reality.

A major part of his approach draws on legibility: helping players build a mental map through landmarks, districts, paths, and edges, combined with classic level design tools like lighting, NPC guidance, and subtle visual cues.

Cities as storytelling

For Dimopoulos, urban spaces are narrative devices. He pointed to examples like City 17 (Half-Life 2), where the environment makes you feel oppression the moment you arrive, aligning what the player feels with what the story needs. He also highlighted how games use design ‘vocabularies’ to support immersion, such as L.A. Noire’s subtle visual signalling for which doors can be interacted with, reducing frustration without heavy tutorials.

Key takeaway for students

Not every city should be effortlessly navigable—getting ‘lost’ can be part of the experience. The real skill is choosing why your city feels the way it does, then designing consistently toward that goal: comfort, oppression, wonder, confusion, or scale.

We were very grateful for Konstantinos Dimopoulos’ specialist input and advice.