Exploring Sense of Place in a Video Game Set in West Virginia

Have you ever become attached to a place in a video game? A virtual environment that you've obviously never visited in the flesh but which you start to think of it like a real place?  Maybe the dwarven capitol of Ironforge in World of Warcraft? The spaceship The Normandy in Mass Effect? Link and Zelda's land of Hyrule? Maybe you you have become so familiar with those virtual places through repeated navigation and interaction that you attach importance and character to it like you do your childhood home, the first place you ever had a part-time job, or the neighborhood through which you walk your dog? Or even a whole city?

This is a relatively new concept that some researchers, such as my guest expert this episode, call "sense of place."