For me the next innovation in terms of architectural design in video games came in strategy games such as Age of Empires and Cossacs. For a while architecture became a background for linear arcade or fighting games such as Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter, which was a major step-back from being used as tools of interaction. Even in adventure games, architecture was merely an object for the main characters to interact with or to move upon. However with strategy games the architecture became part of the character of the game. Architectural objects were used to make cities or to spawn soldiers with which to fight with or as food production depots. Age of Empires, released in 1997, was one of the first games of its genre of history based real-time strategy, though it was influenced by similar games such as World of Warcraft (1994) and Civilization (1991). It's market success prompted sub-sequential release of many expansion packs and sequels and influenced many other strategy games and simulations.
The architecture was dfferent for each type of building, for each time-frame and for each nation or civilization. Players would need to familiarize themselves with specifics of each civilization, architectural features, advantages and disadvantages, build times and strength factors of buildings and compete with other civilizations, manage economies and wage wars against enemies. So essentially players would need to design cities to withstand economic growths, time limitations, war efforts and population demands. Players would become urban designers in a sense by creating virtual cities and managing the citizens within it.
The game Cossacks first released in 2001 was the Ukrainian equivalent of Age of Empires, but equipped nicer graphics and was set in historical events of 16th and 17th centuries. The game was one of my favourite strategies to play as each nation that I could play for had unique architectural style and detailing reflecting the actual real world national architecture.
More about Age of Empires here:
Age of Empires by Wikia
And Cossacks here:
Cossacks - European Wars by Wikipedia
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