The experience and exploration of worlds in single-player video games

Abstract

The author indicates a few of the most common experiences that are encountered, particularly in single-player open-world games where exploration of the world plays a large part of the enjoyment of a game. The experiences mentioned in the essay are: arrival in the world, the gaining of an objective, the revelation of the expansiveness of the world, the first contact with the world’s residents, world routines, travel to the world’s boundaries, and the completist’s exhaustion of the world when one has seen and experienced everything.