History Main / ThrivingGhostTown

** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'' is the point where the series plays the trope straight along with being the first game in the series follow its VideoGame3DLeap, fully utilizing SpaceCompression. Bethesda did this on purpose to address criticisms of ''Daggerfall'' that, despite the sheer size of locations and cities, they don't have a whole lot of individuality or character to them. This results in stated-to-be-massive cities like Vivec being small with populations of barely 100, while smaller towns and villages end up with single digit populations. As TropesAreNotBad, the space compression allows for far greater content ''density'' while the smaller cities and lower populations prevent CPU resources from being wasted rendering superfluous buildings and tracking random [=NPCs=].

* While most ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' games play this straight, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' averts it. The main city is big, with lots of people milling about. It displays why this trope can be a [[TropesAreNotBad good thing]], though, as if you want to TalkToEveryone, you need to use your minimap to find [=NPC=]s you can actually talk to.

-->--'''The King of the Dwarves''', ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV''

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess'' has several ThrivingGhostTown locations as well as several not-so-thriving towns which are nearly deserted. Castle Town, however, includes many random passersby who will ignore you. You ''can'' interact with them... if watching them scream, cower, and brandish weapons at Link's wolf form counts as interaction.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyDimensions'' apparently has a [[ThrivingGhostTown Thriving Ghost Empire]]. Avalon is a technologically and militarily advanced empire, and as such you would expect several major cities in its territory, and yet when you obtain the airship and fly over Avalon's territory, it is devoid of any organized settlements apart from the castle. [[spoiler: This is [[JustifiedTrope justified]] in that when the world became whole again, some pieces went missing, including all of Avalon's cities.]]

** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' has Primm and Novac, which appear to rely entirely on small local farms and traders passing through just to feed the dozen or so inhabitants. [[ExaggeratedTrope Exaggerated]] after one update removed a large portion of the game's unnamed NPCs (to keep the game cache small when the DLC packs were added). Towns and military bases ended up being almost completely empty. This gets pretty comical sometimes: for example, when the NCR President arrives to give a speech to a crowd of ''four'' soldiers, two of which are assassins in disguise. Mods exist to reverse this.

Due to TheLawOfConservationOfDetail, towns and cities in [=RPGs=] appear [[SpaceCompression much smaller]] than they would really be, rarely having an observable population of more than a single digit (or, at most, the 'teens); which is of course far smaller than any [[http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm realistic level of economic sustainability.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Pokemon}}'': Most towns and cities in the game tend to have rather scant populations. Even cities noted for being large have populations at most comparable to small real-life towns -- Lumiose City, the largest settlement in the games, has only 416 inhabitants. Some particularly extreme examples include Lavaridge Town and Ever Grande City in Hoenn: the first consists of a Gym, a Poké Mart and Pokémon Center alongside two solitary houses, which combined with its rather out-of-the-way location raises questions about where the store finds enough business to stay afloat; the second consist of nothing besides the Pokémon League and a Pokémon Center. Likewise, most starting towns rarely have more than ten inhabitants.

-->-- '''The King of the Dwarves''', ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV''

* ''VideoGame/JaysJourney'' mostly has houses with locked doors, but the only actual house (as opposed to shop) in one town belongs to the MsFanservice playable character... the UnfortunateImplications of which are ''not'' [[LampshadeHanging left unremarked.]]
* Zig-zagged in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins''. Denerim and [[VideoGame/DragonAgeOriginsAwakening Amaranthine]] are implied to be ''much'' larger than you actually show. It also helps that Denerim is so big that it requires its own map screen, and you don't explore every inch of the city, only the parts that are relevant. Likewise, Orzrammar does not have a map screen like Denerim, but it's implied that the action is just that close together, plus it looks a bit like they might have been tiered. Justified with the Dalish "towns" because it's a nomadic camp. However played entirely straight with Redcliffe and Lothering.

* Most of the ''Tales'' series tends to play it straight, but ''VideoGame/TalesOfXillia'' averts it for the most part. Every individual area of a town or city usually has as many as a couple dozen or so [=NPC=]s milling around that the player is unable to interact with, in addition to the 5 or 6 that they are able to. Most of the cities in the game large enough to have a massive population go with the "lots of buildings in the distance that the player can't reach" model as well. Still, the marketplaces and such of cities tend to have much less people around than you'd expect.
* ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' is unique in that it has an in-game document that gives realistic estimates of towns' populations, with most being in hundreds and the biggest reaching thousands. The exception was [[ShiningCity Vault City]] at 103. 103 ''citizens'', that is (there's a non-citizen slave population that lives in the slums and outskirts). It justified the relatively small towns you see by making it clear you were only visiting a small area of most of them. The exception is, again, Vault City; the in-universe map indicates that the part you see is ''all'' of it, which is actually consistent with the 103 population.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' justifies this in that all of the towns you find are, in fact, ghost towns. They're just abandoned ruins of old decaying buildings that a handful of people manage to scrape by in. Usually there are about one or two houses, as with only a few limited guards and resources, there can only be so many capable of living in the area. Still, the populations of the settlements seem unrealistically small- Megaton, for instance, is supposed to be a major settlement and trade hub, yet its in-game population is barely 50. It's clear that the populations and sizes are compressed for technical reasons.
* ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' has Primm and Novac, which appear to rely entirely on small local farms and traders passing through just to feed the dozen or so inhabitants.
** [[ExaggeratedTrope Exaggerated]] after one update removed a large portion of the game's unnamed NPCs (to keep the game cache small when the DLC packs were added). Towns and military bases ended up being almost completely empty. This gets pretty comical sometimes: for example, when the NCR President arrives to give a speech to a crowd of ''four'' soldiers, two of which are assassins in disguise. Mods exist to reverse this.

* ''{{VideoGame/Xenogears}}'' handles this in an interesting way. While the trope is played straight with small towns like Lahan and Dazil, larger cities, like Nisan, Bledavik, and Norturne, have their own overworld-style maps, indicating that the cities are realistically-sized, but only certain sections have anything of interest to the party.
* The world of ''{{VideoGame/Undertale}}'' would appear to sustain 12,000 monsters at the very least, [[spoiler: if the fight with Mettaton EX is anything to go by]]. It goes without saying that you'll only see a tiny, tiny fraction of them. [[spoiler: Even in a No Mercy run where the goal is to kill ''everyone'', you'll off less than 1% of the population during gameplay.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' justifies this in that all of the towns you find are, in fact, ghost towns. They're just abandoned ruins of old decaying buildings that a handful of people manage to scrape by in. Usually there are about one or two houses, as with only a few limited guards and resources, there can only be so many capable of living in the area.
* ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' has Primm and Novac, which appear to rely entirely on traders passing through just to feed the dozen or so inhabitants.

* ''VideoGame/Fallout2'' is unique in that it has an in-game document that gives realistic estimates of towns' populations, with most being in hundreds and the biggest reaching tens of thousands. [[ShiningCity Vault City]] -- ... 103.

* It almost goes without saying that ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'' averts this one pretty thoroughly, at least within its own internal logic. A city of two hundred individuals isn't exactly ''gigantic'', as the game considers them to be (kings will usually start arriving around that time), but definitely much better than most in this page. Nations also have thousands upon thousands of citizens, further averting (or at least downplaying) this trope.

In the earliest computer and console {{RPG}}s, this was a matter of economy; every kilobyte was precious and couldn't be wasted on extraneous houses or people. Today this trope exists due to design limitations -- creating realistically sized cities with hundreds and thousands of people, houses and streets would take a tremendous amount of work for both developers and player's hardware, for very little gain. Not only that -- due to the SpeakToEveryone convention in CRPGs, players would feel compelled to ''actually go through'' all these houses and people in the hopes of finding or learning something useful.

* ''VideoGame/TrafficGiant'' gives you cities with many buildings and thousands of inhabitants, and individually keeps track of each one.

* In a few of America's university towns (such as Durham, New Hampshire) the local economy is entirely devoted to catering to the student population. The town becomes this during the summer months, with the students gone and most of the town's services shutting down for the summer, leaving only a skeleton crew to take care of the remaining faculty..

* Mostly averted in ''VideoGame/TheWitcher3'' with the large city of Novigrad being large enough for a player to get lost in and many extraneous [=NPCs=] walking around Oxenfurt and many small villages.

In the earliest computer and console {{RPG}}s, this was a matter of economy; every kilobyte was precious and couldn't be wasted on extraneous houses or people. Today this trope exists mainly due to design limitations - creating realistically sized cities with hundreds and thousands of people, houses and streets would take a tremendous amount of work for very little gain, especially with the level of detail that many of today's Triple-A games go for, as well as being an incredible strain on the hardware's processing power. For most game genres, the only viable solution is to compress cities down to the size of small towns or villages.

Some games {{handwave}} this by implying the town is much larger via expansive background images; our heroes, for whatever reason, are [[GatelessGhetto only visiting a small portion of it.]] Some modern games try to slightly avert this by adding numbers of [[FacelessMasses generic or non-interactable]] pedestrians into city scenes, or buildings that the player cannot enter to give the ''illusion'' of a larger populace and settlement.

* A good way to see this trope in action is to compare the cities and towns in the Anime/{{Pokemon}} anime to those in [[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} the video games]]. For example, Viridian City in the games is just five or six buildings, but in the anime, it looks like [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:Viridian_City_anime.png a proper big city]].

* Mostly averted in ''VideoGame/TheWitcher3'' with the large city of Novigrad being large enough for a player to get lost in and many extraneous NPCs walking around Oxenfurt and many small villages.

* The whole Southern Water Tribe in ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' appears to be nothing but a small village whose population barely scratches the double digits. Lampshaded when Katara introduces Aang to "the whole town", done really quickly when she gestures to a small group. Justified somewhat, since the men are out fighting in the war against the [[TheEmpire Fire Nation]], and also [[spoiler: the South Pole has suffered several Fire Nation attacks in the last 100 years, most of them with the intent of wiping out or capturing as many Waterbenders as possible. One of those eventually led to the invention of [[DangerousForbiddenTechnique Bloodbending]] by a captured Waterbender driven mad, and the last one ended with Katara and Sokka's mother murdered.]]

* Mostly averted in ''VideoGame/Witcher3:WildHunt'' with the large city of Novigrad being large enough for a player to get lost in and many extraneous NPCs walking around Oxenfurt and many small villages.

* The ''GrandTheftAuto'' game series, particularly later ones, are masters at maintaining the illusion of a thriving metropolis but conserving resources. In ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'' and ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'', while there are may be dozens of NPC characters seen walking around a particular area, and just as many vehicles, the number of buildings one can actually enter and interact with (do activities, etc) is actually very small. And while one can interact with {{Non Player Character}}s and vehicles - hijacking the cars, attacking, and even in ''GTA V'' speaking to a little - the number of plot relevant [=NPCs=] that one can interact with is very small.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' makes efforts to justify this. The story takes place AfterTheEnd, when a good chunk of Hyrule's population was massacred by Calamity Ganon. The villages that are still around have about three dozen or so named [=NPC=]s living in them, with many more scattered across the wilderness.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamstown,_Pitcairn_Islands Adamstown]], which serves as the capital of the Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific. It has a population of ''fifty-six people.''

* An extreme example here in ''VideoGame/CitiesSkylines'': http://www.pcgamer.com/the-strange-tale-of-a-cities-skylines-town-with-only-one-house/

Due to TheLawOfConservationOfDetail, towns and cities in [=RPGs=] appear [[SpaceCompression much smaller]] than they would really be, rarely having an observable population of more than a single digit (or, at most, the 'teens); which is of course far smaller than any [[http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm realistic level of economic sustainability]].

** The population of Manhattan was much larger around 1900 than it is today. In addition to the suburban flight, the very expensive real estate prices in the heart of today's New York City has also contributed to this.
* UsefulNotes/NiagaraFalls on the ''American'' side of the border. The most you'll see in that area are a few hotels and ''maybe'' some residents.

* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' started out with solid aversions of this trope, but later titles play it straight. This goes hand in hand with the switch to SpaceCompression; the examples there have more information on that. As for the towns themselves--
** ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsArena'' thoroughly averts this, as noted. Numerous villages, towns, and cities all across the continent of Tamriel are visitable, and all of them have the size and population to justify their local economy.
** ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall'' also averts this, with full-sized populated areas. The larger cities have hundreds of buildings and thousands of people. However, many of these houses can't be entered, even by the most skilled and determined lockpicks. "This house contains nothing of interest." Further, shops close at night, at which time an enterprising burglar can break in to strip the shelves bare. Players who loiter in the shop until after closing can also clear the shelves free of charge, at no risk to their criminal record.
** ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'' is the point where the series plays the trope straight, along with having SpaceCompression. Bethesda did this on purpose to address criticisms of ''Daggerfall'' that, despite the sheer size of locations and cities, they don't have a whole lot of individuality or character to them.
** ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' also continues to play this straight; towns with a believable population are reduced to shadows of their former selves thanks to the SpaceCompression. The way the world has shrunken down stands out when comparing locations featured in ''Arena'' to ''Skyrim'', such as the town of Riverwood. In ''Arena'' it's a bustling town that contains 200 or 300 buildings, but in ''Skyrim'' it's a hamlet with seven houses.
*** Particularly noteworthy in Skyrim is the complete removal of about 4-5 small towns entirely from the world map, with 3 being just random inns along the road. This wouldn't be so notable if it wasn't for the fact that one of towns reduced to an inn was Old Hroldan, which was the site of a major battle that would be the start of TheEmpire (you know, the major good guy faction in Tamriel). The game even mentions that Hroldan should be a town and calls attention to it with a quest due to its historical significance.