Nobody else is doing quite what Rob Dwiar is doing. Dwiar, who works at GamesRadar as a commissioning editor, has spent much of his life as a games writer thinking about gardens. Or maybe he’s spent much of his life as a gardening writer thinking about games. Eurogamer readers might be familiar with his work from his lovely articles for Eurogamer. But that’s only a part of it. Now, Dwiar has written a book about the intersection of games and landscape. It’s called Genius Loci, and it’s currently running a campaign on Unbound.
Genius Loci promises “a grand tour of video game landscapes and gardens.” It’s a richly illustrated thing, a lovely chunky hardback, by the looks of it, covering everything from Assassin’s Creed to Dragon Age as it takes in the best of video game landscapes, making sense of the design choices, picking through the flora and fauna, and providing a wonderful sense of context.
I caught up with Dwiar recently over Zoom. Amongst other things, I wanted to know what came first for him – gardens and landscapes, or games?
“Gardens and landscapes first?” he asks himself, and then nods. “Because it seemed like we always had a project in Dad’s garden, my parents’ garden now. My dad’s a very keen gardener, so sort of by osmosis, a lot of it made it to me. Not so much my brother, but certainly to me.”