Former R-star designer talks about the dilemma of open world gaming: too big for players to not want to explore

2025-03-24 20:28:46|Myriagame |source：minecraft skins

Recently, former GTA6 designer Cameron Williams shared his insights on open-world gaming on GDC.He believes that some open-world games are too bloated and huge, causing players to experience "exploration fatigue" - that is, "the bigger the map, the weaker the exploration motivation."

Williams takes "Red Dead Redemption 2" as an example, saying that developers need to force the players to experience side content through the main task, otherwise most players will go straight to the target point.In the general environment, the battle to seize users' time with free service games is very fierce, and players prefer a compact world like "Metro: Escape" rather than the traditional design of "running for half an hour and harvesting for two minutes".

He also took Assassin's Creed: Shadow as an example, pointing out that although the game is popular, the game design relies too much on fast travel mechanisms to make up for the huge distance between goals, which is full of problems for players who pursue straight-line plots.

Williams believes that these problems will lead to "open world fatigue" and reduce players' willingness to explore.Although question marks or other icons on the map can guide players to specific locations, they may also cause players to "exploration anxiety".Players will hesitate to spend a lot of time traveling to these locations and whether the final harvest is worth it.

It is worth mentioning that "GTA6" will be a very innovative open world masterpiece, which will include real-time traffic accidents, dynamic weather and other content.Hopefully it can solve the dilemma facing open world games at present.

• 

  "Assassin's Creed: Shadow" A

• 

  New "Battlefield" new map in

• 

  "Assassin's Creed: Shadow" I

• 

  "Raiders of the Lost Ark: An

• 

  "Assassin's Creed: Shadow" S

• 

  The visual effect of "Assass