Book part:

Erkundung als virtuell-fiktionale Immersionsstrategie. Das prospect pacing der Open-World-Computerspiele als Spiegel nicht linearer Spielereinbindung

This paper broaches the issue of exploration as a virtual fictional strategy and critical agent to immerse players in vast open world games. Complex networks of places, quests and spatial arrangements are built for simulating a freely explorable environment full of diverse and dense atmospheres. The non-linear multipath landscape is the core gameplay experience and leaves it to the player where to go, what to accomplish and in which order. Narration then mostly is embodied by the environmental storytelling of evocative landscapes and architectures with multiple nuances communicating the world’s story. The core thesis is, that classical strategies like dialogue or text as well as stringent quest chains or story arcs are neglected in favor of a landscape experience and the player’s individual ludic creation of meaning by the urge for discovery. The paper differentiates between urban and rural open world game intrinsic space and analyzes current open world franchises in order to verify the above thesis. Exploration needs the simulation of vastness which means the dichotomy of free roaming and helplessness at the same time. In order to analyze the exploration and structure of non-linear landscapes in open world games an interdisciplinary approach is used merging methods and terms from research fields such as architecture, art history, urbanism, philosophy, game studies, landscape gardening, geography and theory of space. Thus not only the players’ courses of action, play patterns, agency and embodiment with the avatar are thematized, but also the concepts of wilderness, landscape and navigation. Critical to the latter points are modular treaties on European landscape gardens as modular and atmosphere creating areas as well as Jay Appleton’s prospect-refuge theory (1975). For the game intrinsic distillation of former survival instincts and navigation habits of men, which nowadays are used or experienced for entertainment, the term prospect pacing is coined. Thus open world games with a focus on exploration simulate a distinct, rhythmized environment in order to immerse the players into a vast network of places and points of interest.