Former GTA 6 Dev On "Exploration Anxiety" In Open World Games

Open-world games have their unique attractiveness: they grant you the freedom to explore the environment at your own pace without having to follow a specific order. However, as the map grows more expansive, some trends also appear: players get lost or tired in the process. What should be done? 

Cameron Williams, who previously worked on Grand Theft Auto 6, Call of Duty, and Red Dead Redemption, is now a Senior Mission Designer at Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser's new studio, Absurd Ventures. In a GDC panel (via PC Gamer), Williams discussed the issue that players experience when confronted with vast open worlds filled with too many choices.

"Players just don't explore, right?" His presentation started with this question. There might be a few different reasons, "Whether that's because you have a super action-oriented game or because 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."

Williams used the phrase "open world fatigue" to describe this phenomenon. In this situation, players step into "exploration anxiety" and often ask themselves questions like, "Okay, how far away is the next thing? I really gotta run all the way across the map? And what's my gain?"

Some games use landmarks to help players be aware of the direction and, by reaching them, give a goal to reach them. However, not balancing the amount of landmarks well might result in what he called "analysis paralysis," making it hard for players to decide where to go next.

He described a specific type of player as "beeliners," who prefer to move directly from the main objective to the next while ignoring the optional content. "We want to avoid creating a possibility space so large that players simply just don't know what to choose," he said. Currently, Williams is working on an unannounced title with an original IP at the new studio.