'Players don't explore': former Grand Theft Auto 6 and Red Dead Online designer lays out the perils of 'open world fatigue'

So there I am playing a game with a big, beautiful open world. It's got lovely scenery and eye-catching landmarks, it's stuffed with quests and missions and collectibles, and I'm free to go in any direction I choose. What's the problem?

Me. I'm the problem, or at least I'm part of the problem, as former Grand Theft Auto 6 and Red Dead Online game designer Cameron Williams explained in a panel at the Game Developers Conference.

Williams opened the panel with a slide titled "Common Open World Problems," and the first bullet point read: "Players don't explore."

"Players just don't explore right?" Williams said. "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, who is now a senior mission designer at Absurd Ventures (launched by Rockstar Games' co-founder Dan Houser), said these issues contribute to "open world fatigue," which can leave players less willing to go exploring. Question marks and other icons on a map let players know where they can go to find something, but according to Williams, players may also experience "exploration anxiety": they know the location of something, but are hesitant to actually go there.

"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?'" Williams said.

Another potential challenge lies in creating landmarks that players can see from certain vantage points. A good landmark can ground a player on the map and give them the goal of reaching it, but placing too many visible landmarks can result in "analysis paralysis." Williams cited a study from 2000 about people shopping in a supermarket, which found that customers were more likely to buy jam if there were only six flavors to pick from as opposed to 24.

"We want to avoid creating a possibility space so large that players simply just don't know what to choose," Williams said.

There are even challenges in getting players to simply look in a certain direction to draw their eyes to an explorable location. "Any FPS developer knows this," Williams said, "but asking your players to look up and then look 45 degrees to the left is, like, an impossible task, right?"

Sometimes players need to be manipulated into participating in activities, too. Williams gave an example from Red Dead Redemption 2, where the fishing minigame is introduced along the critical path mission, "...and the mission essentially showcases the best possible version of fishing by having companions react to the players fishing skills, and they create opportunities to explain some of the systems in very natural ways.

"It actually enhances the fishing system with context and meaning. So now, whenever players are presented with an option to go fishing, they're going to recall the great memories from this experience as their tent poles," Williams said.

William also brought up a player archetype he called "beeliners" who typically only follow the critical path or main quest, and thus are hard to lure into exploring without throwing content directly into their path.

"You know which player I'm talking about, the one that tries to ignore all of your content. They're like, 'I want to have the least amount of fun!'" Williams joked as he mimed a player sprinting from point A to point B.

As someone who loves open world games, I definitely recognize myself in a lot of what Williams was saying. Over time, question marks on open world maps lose their appeal, and I definitely groan when I see one a long way off and wonder if it's worth my time. I get analysis paralysis when a map is covered with too many icons, and yet I'm bored if there aren't enough things to do. I want to know exactly what I'll be rewarded with before I spend time on it, yet I also want mystery and surprises.

I am absolutely guilty of running through the critical path as quickly as possible, and I am definitely someone who needs to be tricked into playing minigames by NPC companions flattering me about how great I am.

I'm the worst, in other words. I've always known there are lots of problems to overcome in open world game design, but this is the first time I've realized that the biggest problem is probably me.