Home on the Open World Range

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Legend of Zelda gamesA recent article in the Journal of Internet Research described a study that came to the conclusion that open-world games (OWGs) “may offer unique cognitive escapism opportunities, potentially leading to relaxation and enhanced well-being.” Well, duh! Pretty much everyone playing OWGs has known that for the past three decades since those games were published. After all, isn’t escapism the whole point of gaming? People have played games for millennia: to gamble, for intellectual challenges, for entertainment, learning, competition, and often for simple solo pleasure. But open-world games are a recent invention, and while not unique to the computer era, have certainly expanded in scope and popularity since personal computers became available.*

What amused and bemused me about the article is that the authors chose to speak to people playing Legend of Zelda games which are not, at least from my perspective, the best representatives of the many open-world games available (and a more cartoony art style than many PC games). And, while no doubt highly entertaining and immersive for many, these are console games that appear to appeal to a much younger audience than, say, adult-oriented PC games like the Assassin’s Creed franchise, Witcher III, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, Starfield, No Man’s Sky, Sniper Elite franchise, Mass Effect franchise, Euro Truck Sim, Grand Theft Auto franchise, and so on.

Still, while I would like to see the scope expanded in subsequent studies, and a wider range of games introduced, I believe the concepts of the study apply to all forms of open-world gaming.**

These games, for those who don’t know and don’t play them, are a blend of storytelling, expansive environments, and gameplay, essentially like interactive novels, but played on a computer or gaming console. Gameopedia defines it thus:

An open-world game features a non-linear game world design where the player is able to freely traverse the environment, which consists of many different areas and structures that can be visited any time. Players are not restricted to a specific path that they have to follow to reach a location, though certain areas of the game can be accessed only after the player reaches a certain point in the game. The open world may be procedurally generated or pre-created.
Exploration is the heart of open-world design – players can access various locations, many of which feature their own biomes…

Arstechnica adds this:

…to really classify a game as open world, it’s got to be about freedom. There should be a sense that, within the rules of the game world, you can do anything at any time while freely moving about the space. It’s essential for true open-world games to offer the freedom to decide when to do things, which by extension means a freedom to do things other than moving on to the next main story beat.

Hogwart's LegacyAnother important aspect of modern OWGs is in the visual presentation. Today these games are almost photo-realistic simulacra of objects, places and people. They have three-dimensional depth, complex, often destructible environments that can be traversed, entered, and explored, and may include buildings, caves, forests, rivers, oceans, wildlife, mountains, spaceports, ships, towns, houses, farms, and computer-controlled/animated characters (called NPCs, or non-player characters) many of whom can be interacted and conversed with. The more realistic they look, the more realistic they feel, the greater the immersion in them.

We can’t ignore the fun factor in gaming and in reviews of OWGs there is a lot of online discussion over the amount of fun vs work a game entails. By work, I mean what is commonly called the “grind” — doing quests and small actions that provided experience points (XP), and often in-game resources and cash, to allow your character to develop and progress. Both major and minor quests are usually present; the former progresses the main storyline; the latter is usually for exploration and adding colour and depth to the gaming environment.

Assassin's Creed OdysseySome OWGs involve considerable hand-eye coordination to have the characters run, jump, fly, fight, climb, etc. Some involve a lot of combat between the player and NPCs, sometimes considered violent. Others (like Euro Truck Sim 2) involve no violence, but are rather based on economic goals (in the case of ETS2, driving transport trucks to pick up and deliver cargo through Europe, travelling to dozens of realistic-looking cities and towns; the driving physics are well simulated).

Some games, like World of Warcraft, have a plethora of menial tasks (quests) necessary for the player to advance: collecting 11 mushrooms, killing nine wolves, carrying a message from one NPC to another then taking the response back. Although they are necessary to reveal the gaming zone and build player skills, these don’t contribute to the narrative and can make WOW and others a very ‘grindy’ game, at least in the early stages.***

A huge amount of data has to be managed by the computer in a modern OWG.  First of all, it needs a rendering engine to create the visual environment, to show the effects of light, to occlude or reveal objects based on distance and proximity, to simulate weather, time, shadow, reflections, wind, waves, water, texture, and so on within a fully 3D space. Then it also needs a physics engine to simulate gravity, flight, bullets or arrows, jumping, objects breaking, running, etc. within that space. Finally, it needs an engagement engine to determine how the player interacts with all of it, with quests, with NPCs, with dialogue, and so on. And do it all in real-time without lags or delays that break the immersion. (Sometime in the future I’ll write about procedural generation and fractals in game design…)

Witcher III screenshotThat’s massively challenging to program and requires millions of lines of code that demand more and more of the hardware to achieve (some of this is discussed in Rizwans Virk’s book, The Simulation Hypothesis, which expands on the hypothesis that we are actually living in an open world simulation much like these games). The improvements in graphic processors (GPUs), memory management, and main processors (CPUs) over the years is due in large part to the demands put on them by increasingly complex games.

Some games downscale the graphics to reduce the demands on the processors and allow older machines to run them (using voxels is a common method to reduce processing demands). Some older games have been ‘remastered’ to upscale them to be more realistic and match the expectations of current users (the visual look of a game only a decade old is markedly less photo-realistic than one released in the last year or two).

Not that these are actual simulations, since that would require far more computing resources than anyone has available on a PC. They are simulacra: meant to look real, to mimic, but not function realistically. If you, for example, follow an NPC in the game, you will find they don’t actually accomplish anything: they are programmed in loops to look like they are doing something when you pass by them, but they do not do much more than repeat the loop. (see this video for how this works in game cities). The point of the game environment is not to replicate reality, but to create a theatrical set for the player to perform in. And that is a lot like fiction.

Euro Truck Sim 2While immersion and escapism are also the point of reading fiction, role-playing games (RPGs) and adventure games are basically interactive fiction narratives in which the player acts as the protagonist of the story. The difference between OW gaming and reading is in agency. In games, the player decides (or has at least some decision-making ability in) the direction of the narrative, rather than simply following it. Although confined by the game’s environment and programming, and by the linear nature of the quests, the player can make decisions that affect the outcome. In many games, there are moral and ethical choices or actions that affect how the game’s non-player characters (NPCs) interact with the player. The player is not simply observing, but performing.****

In that sense, OW gaming lets players become the stars in their own movie, to take the lead role, to choose the dialogue, to chose their own dress and makeup, even sometimes to rewrite the plot. Many OW games offer varying degrees of excitement, emotion, surprise, intellectual challenges, physical (hand-eye coordination) challenges, surprises, scares, and even learning.

Games, of course, have been designed and played for millennia. The oldest board game found dates to about 3500 BCE: the ancient Egyptian game of Senet, which was popular throughout the Middle East from the Bronze Age until Roman times. Sports are closely tied to gaming through competition and challenge. Humans have an innate desire to play games and compete from our earliest days. But OWGs are an evolutionary step beyond boardgames and give us a glimpse into the future when we will have access to them through virtual or augmented reality, through haptic devices to give us touch and feel, and maybe even direct broadcast into our brains.*****

And, yes, I play OWGs, and have been doing so since the earliest days of computing when we had 8-bit CPUs and 64K of memory. Playing now, as I do almost daily, is a galaxy of difference from playing games in the past. Today I might walk the dunes of Ancient Egypt, parkour along the rooftops of Victorian England, fly a hippogriff over Hogwarts, drive my transport rig through modern-day Italy, sail a pirate ship in the Caribbean, or build up my base on a distant planet. Who knows what adventures await me?

Notes:

* Open-world gaming as popular entertainment can be traced back to the mid-1970s with the arrival of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D, 1974) and other tabletop roleplaying gaming systems, a heritage often overlooked when computer games are being examined. These in turn evolved from tabletop miniatures rules (for a fulsome history, see Jon Peterson’s book, Playing at the World).
Arstechnica considers the text-based computer game, Colossal Cave (1976) which ran on PDP-10 mainframes to be the earliest computer OWG, but since it was not easily available to consumers, its influence was limited. It may have inspired some of the early ’80s PC games like Atari’s Adventure and Apple’s Ultima, as well as text-based computer games like Zork. Several games in the ’80s and early ’90s introduced agency and exploration. Because of limitations in early computer graphics, processors, and memory, the first OWG that resembles today’s games didn’t arrive until 2001: Grand Theft Auto III. As Gameopedia notes, it “featured a 3D open world that could be fully explored, can be considered a precursor to the open-world game as we understand it today.” The first game in the Zelda franchise came out in 1986, on the Nintendo game console. It was not a true OWG, but did introduce players to exploration. The Flight Simulator series, launched in 1980 for the Apple II and TRS-80, was an attempt to create an open world explorable environment, but not as a game per se.

** The authors of the study wrote:

Cognitive escapism refers to the use of media to divert attention from real-world stressors and engage in alternative, often more gratifying, cognitive activities. Open-world games, with their detailed and expansive environments, may provide ideal platforms for this form of escapism. They allow players to immerse themselves in different realities, which can be mentally stimulating and refreshing. For instance, previous work on the psychological benefits of immersive virtual environments highlights the potential for such environments to offer significant cognitive relief

The authors added that

The World Health Organization has recognized “gaming disorder” as a behavioral addiction, highlighting the need for moderation and awareness. Furthermore, extended periods of gameplay can negatively affect physical health, contributing to a sedentary lifestyle.

Which struck me as a flaccid, hand-waving gesture to the “gaming is bad for you” crowd. The WHO itself recognized that “gaming disorder affects only a small proportion of people who engage in digital- or video-gaming activities.” I’d like to see more research into how OWGs can be used to stimulate the minds of seniors and disabled people who don;t have much if any physical mobility. Some work has been done with VR in that area.

They concluded, “Future research may investigate the long-term effects of regular engagement with open-world games and explore their potential therapeutic applications for managing stress and anxiety.”

*** Freud wrote in Civilization and Its Discontents, “…what decides the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle.” This also applies to games. If a game is too grindy, it ceases to be fun. But a game also needs challenges that force the player to overcome. Freud continued, “When any situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it only produces a feeling of mild contentment. We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things.” Finding the balance is the first task of the game designers.

**** More initialisms: MMORPGs are Massive Multiplayer Online RPGs. For example, World of Warcraft, Neverwinter. ARPGs are Action RPGs. For example, the Borderlands franchise. Some of these games are solo — Hogwart’s Legacy and the Assassin’s Creed games for example — others may be co-op so one or more friends can connect via the internet — the Sniper Elite, Borderlands, games for example. Minecraft, a massively popular game of building, crafting, exploring, and survival, is also an OWG, but reduces the computing load by using low-resolution textures called voxels, which has allowed it to be played on a wide range of devices.

***** Although Senet boards and pieces were rediscovered in archaeological digs in Egypt, in the 1930s, no set of rules was found. Various sets of rules have been proposed, and versions of the game are available commercially today. Another ancient Egyptian game found in tombs is Hounds and Jackals. The Royal Game of Ur was an ancient Mesopotamian game, dated 2400-2600 BCE. Chess is a relative latecomer: it was first introduced as chaturanga around 700 CE and spread throughout Europe via the Middle East. Playing cards were invented even later, in China sometime in the 9th century CE, but didn’t arrive in Europe until the late 14th century.

Words: 2,360

One comment

  1. https://www.ncesc.com/gaming-pedia/what-is-the-difference-between-open-world-and-closed-world-games/
    What is an example of a closed world game?
    An example of a closed world game is The Sims, City Skylines, and the Rollercoaster Tycoon franchise. These games have a specific story line that the player needs to follow. While they offer a wide range of gameplay options and freedom of choice, they do not allow the players to actively explore and discover worlds. Instead, they provide specific play spaces.

    What is considered an open-world game?
    In video games, an open world is a virtual world in which the player can approach objectives freely, as opposed to a world with more linear and structured gameplay. Notable examples of open world games include The Legend of Zelda, Grand Theft Auto III, and Minecraft. These games provide players with the freedom to explore and discover the virtual world at their own pace.

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