In a recent seminar at GDC, Cameron Williams, formerly of Rockstar Games, offered a walkthrough of the issues plaguing open-world games. Williams has since relocated, taking his talents to Absurd Ventures, the studio founded by Dan Houser, but he has previously worked on Grand Theft Auto 6 and Red Dead Online.
He stressed that large open worlds with too much content are leading to analysis paralysis and preventing players from wanting to actively explore. The worlds we’re experiencing these days are so expansive and the incentives for travelling vast distances and covering all the bases just aren’t enough anymore.
‘An Impossible Task’
In a panel discussion covered by PC Gamer at GDC, Absurd Ventures’ Cameron Williams took a deep dive into one of the most talked-about issues with open-world games. In his words, they’re becoming too big and diverse, presenting players with so many options that they simply cannot choose what to do next.
This is something that the team at Absurd Ventures is actively trying to avoid.
Players just don’t explore, right?
Whether they just simply aren’t compelled or your game has a huge time investment and it’s hard for players to pick up and put down, which is an increasing challenge, especially with the sort of evolving ecosystem of free-to-play and live service games that are kind of eating everyone’s time and attention.
They’re wondering, ‘Okay, how far away is the next thing? I really gotta run all the way across the map? And what’s my gain?
We want to avoid creating a possibility space so large that players simply just don’t know what to choose.
It’s something I covered in my recent review of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which is a great game but suffers from the open-world fatigue that Williams is referring to. The objectives are far too spaced apart and the world is enormous, which makes it a chore to navigate, leaving players to rely on fast-travel mechanics far too often.
These games can be hellish for what Williams dubbed ‘beeliners’ – players who want to go from A to B with as little interference as possible. They’re the gamers who don’t have time to waste on side content and tertiary missions and want to explore a story and hang up their hat.
Do you think open-world games are becoming far too bloated for the average gamer to enjoy? Let me know what you think in the comments.
For more GPlayr coverage, check out the potential blowback of a GTA 6 delay