Video games often reflect real-world biases in how they depict cities. In most open-world games, motorised vehicles like cars and motorcycles dominate the landscape, while buses, trains, and bicycles are sidelined. This mirrors a broader cultural focus on car-centric design in certain parts of the world (such as much of the United States), even though cities are increasingly recognised as key players in tackling climate change, with nearly 70% of the global population expected to live in urban areas by 2050. Globally, transportation accounts for about one-fifth of global CO2 emissions, with road vehicles responsible for the majority of that. Despite this, sustainable mobility remains an afterthought in many virtual cities. Looking at the choices made by game designers, alongside ideas from urban planning, offers insight into why this imbalance persists and how it might shape players’ understanding of urban life.
Why do games overlook public transit and cycling?
Understanding how games portray mobility means looking beyond surface-level choices to the deeper design traditions and cultural influences that shape them. One major factor is legacy design. In early games, technical limitations made it difficult to simulate busy streets or complex transit systems, so cities were sparsely populated and lacked meaningful transportation options. As technology advanced, developers began adding civilian cars to create a sense of realism, drawing on familiar images of traffic-filled streets. Public transit, however, often remained decorative, and bicycles were rarely included. Over time, players came to associate “realistic” digital cities with roads packed with cars rather than functional transit networks. When deciding what features to prioritise, studios often fall back on what has worked before and what looks good in trailers – fast cars, dramatic crashes, and explosions.
Cultural attitudes also play a significant role, particularly the influence of car-centric thinking. In games developed within countries like the United States, where driving is often seen as the default mode of transport, there is a strong underlying assumption that cars are central to how cities function. The image of the lone hero behind the wheel is deeply embedded in pop culture, while public transit and cycling still struggle to be portrayed as powerful or aspirational. Although urban cycling and transit advocacy have gained visibility in the real world, game narratives have lagged behind. It is hard to imagine a Grand Theft Auto (GTA) protagonist who champions public transport because it does not align with the series’ themes of rebellion, power, and excess. Driving, by contrast, fits those themes perfectly.
Game designers also carefully tune how fast and exciting movement feels since travel is often a core part of gameplay. Cars and motorcycles offer high speed, a sense of danger (thanks to the potential for dramatic crashes), and dynamic control – qualities that easily translate into fun. In contrast, public transit and bicycles are typically slower and less interactive. Unless reframed as a race or stunt mechanic, these modes of transport do not deliver the same sense of thrill or empowerment, making them harder to justify in gameplay-focused design.
All of these factors help explain why so many virtual cities end up shaped around cars by default. But how does this actually play out in the games themselves? A closer look at some popular titles reveals the patterns (and occasional exceptions) that define how mobility is represented in digital worlds.
Open-world games: cities built for cars
Open-world action games overwhelmingly build their cities for driving. GTA V (2013) is a prime example – its fictional Los Santos is a vast city where virtually every mission and activity revolves around driving. As gamer Finch Smith noted in his GTA V walkability analysis, “Grand Theft Auto 5 (..) is a game very much centred around cars. Every mission in the entire game has you driving in some way. [..] Los Santos is, at times, so incredibly unfriendly to pedestrians that it starts to become agonising – the city is almost entirely dedicated to cars, buses are nowhere to be seen, and the metro is so poorly designed that even an idiot without an urban planning degree (like me) can tell something’s wrong.” Highways, wide avenues, and parking lots abound, creating a landscape where pedestrians and alternative transport are afterthoughts.
In these games, public transportation primarily serves to enhance the urban atmosphere rather than provide a functional travel option for the player. For example, GTA V features a metro system that loops around the city and a handful of buses populating the streets. Yet, the player’s ability to use these options is minimal. You can enter a metro station and board a train, but doing so is more of a novelty than a practical means of navigation. The bus system is even less developed, as the game does not permit riding buses at all. Overall, the transit network exists mainly as a backdrop to create the illusion of a living, breathing city. Still, some players take it upon themselves to imagine a better system – one even made a detailed Los Santos Transit map with bus routes and schedules.
Bicycles, when present, are often peripheral to the gameplay. In GTA: San Andreas (2004), the player begins by riding a BMX bicycle home – a quiet introduction that stands in contrast to the fast-paced experience dominated by motor vehicles that defines the rest of the game. GTA V also has bicycles, but their role is limited to recreational fun. The bicycle physics are exaggerated, enabling tricks like wheelies and bunny hops that feel more suited to an extreme sports game than everyday city cycling. There is a triathlon event and some stunt challenges involving bicycles; however, there is no real cycling network or bicycle traffic simulation.
There are a handful of games that focus on cycling, but these tend to be niche indie titles, such as Season: A Letter to the Future (2023). Some approach cycling as a competitive sport, like the Pro Cycling Manager series (2001–), while others blur the line between gameplay and exercise, such as GTBikeV, a mod that connects a stationary bicycle to GTA V.
While open-world games often present urban transport through the lens of action and personal freedom, simulation games take a very different approach. Instead of navigating the city firsthand, players manage it from above, shaping infrastructure, budgets, and policy. This shift in perspective opens up more room for transit and cycling to feature meaningfully, at least in theory.
City-building simulation games: managing transit from above
In city-building simulation games, mobility takes on a different role. Rather than being experienced firsthand, transit is planned and managed from above, being positioned as a strategic layer within the city’s infrastructure. Games like SimCity (2013), Cities: Skylines (2015), Cities: Skylines II (2024), and Transport Fever (2016) give players an eagle-eye view of urban planning, where public transit is used to optimise traffic flow and efficiency, not to simulate the lived experience of daily mobility.
Cities: Skylines stands out for its detailed simulation of traffic patterns and transit usage. Players act as planners and mayors, laying roads, zoning land, and building infrastructure. Public transport options are plentiful – including buses, subways, commuter trains, trams, ferries, and even monorails – and become increasingly important as the city grows. As traffic builds and demand rises, a well-planned transit network becomes essential to reducing congestion and keeping citizens moving.
However, transit in Cities: Skylines remains somewhat abstract. You do not experience the commute; you draw routes on a map and watch simulated citizens board vehicles. Satisfaction comes from rising ridership numbers or a drop in traffic jams, not from engaging with transit directly. Notably, the game was initially designed around private vehicles, with roads forming the backbone of urban mobility. Public transport is introduced as a supplement rather than a foundation. The base game did not include bicycles, and pedestrians were confined to sidewalks. Cycling infrastructure arrived later with the After Dark expansion, which described bicycles as “a faster alternative to walking” – a telling phrase that positions cycling as an upgrade from walking rather than a substitute for driving.
Jolly and Budke (2023), in their study, Assessing the Extent to Which Players Can Build Sustainable Cities in the Digital City-Builder Game “Cities: Skylines”, found that the game offers a wide range of tools for sustainable urban development but does not treat all aspects equally. While detailed data is available for car traffic and public transport usage, the game provides no statistical feedback on cycling, making it difficult for players to assess its impact. Although extensive bicycle networks can be built and cyclists appear on the roads, these systems have no measurable effect on gameplay success. As the authors put it, bicycles become “a simulation without any impact on the success of the game.” Meanwhile, the core gameplay consistently promotes road expansion, with in-game tips often encouraging players to build highways or roundabouts to improve traffic flow.
This approach reflects real-world past planning practices, which involve solving congestion by expanding road capacity rather than reducing car dependency. James Bausell, writing for Planetizen, noted that Cities: Skylines mirrors many issues found in car-centric U.S. planning, such as prioritising road infrastructure and favouring investment in already wealthy neighbourhoods. That said, some players experiment with more sustainable city layouts, creating transit-heavy areas that rely on subways and buses or using policies to restrict car use through tolls and combustion engine bans. The game’s Mass Transit expansion added more transit options (like monorails and cable cars) and transit hubs, showing an appetite for these features. However, especially for new players, cities often develop around wide roads and busy intersections, with public transit added later as a reactive measure to growing car congestion.
Rethinking game design
The way games portray transport can subtly shape how players perceive real-world urban mobility. When hundreds of millions of players explore virtual cities that function well with nearly everyone driving and little need for public transit, it reinforces the idea that cars are the natural way to move through cities. When transit appears only as background scenery or a management task, it risks being seen as unimportant or unappealing on an emotional level.
From an urban planning perspective, this is a missed opportunity. As a form of mass media, games have the potential to normalise sustainable transport by making it central and engaging. An open-world game could treat subways as usable and strategically valuable, offering ways to avoid traffic, escape police, or trigger dynamic events. Missions could involve tailing a target on transit or racing to make a timed transfer. Cycling, too, could be reframed as an efficient way to navigate dense city streets, not just a stunt mechanic. This would not require turning action games into transit simulators but rather integrating mobility into gameplay through rewards, incentives, or mission design, making sustainable modes feel valuable and fun.
From an environmental standpoint, there is a growing argument that game creators have a role in responding to climate change. As influential cultural producers, they can shape how players imagine the future through the systems and values embedded in gameplay. With its global reach, the $200-billion gaming industry has the power to influence attitudes toward sustainability. Some developers and institutions are already exploring this potential. For example, the United Nations Ozone Secretariat launched Reset Earth in 2021, a project that combines an animated series with a mobile game to educate players about environmental issues like ozone depletion through interactive storytelling. Initiatives like this show how games can move beyond entertainment to engage players with sustainability challenges and inspire more imaginative, environmentally conscious futures.
Beyond the screen
Video games are more than just entertainment. They are powerful tools for shaping how people understand the world around them. As cities confront climate change and the urgent need for sustainable transport, games have a chance to reflect on those realities and inspire more livable futures. By making sustainable mobility a meaningful part of gameplay, developers can help players see that cities built around it are both realistic and enjoyable – and worth striving for beyond the screen.
