Opening the World of Contextualised Player Experiences

Games provide a variety of experiences for players. Currently, research focuses either on games as undifferentiated wholes, where games provide summative experiences, or on a feature-level basis, where it is difficult to generalise findings. However, specific gaming experiences cannot be explained from these approaches. Open world games for example (a popular game type known for giving players high levels of choice over what they engage with) allow players to have uniquely different experiences. Current approaches cannot capture what about this gaming experience players enjoy or why. To do so, a `context specific' approach is needed, which this paper demonstrates. In this study, eleven players of open world games were interviewed about their experiences. A thematic analysis revealed 5 concepts that interlock together to enable the nal theme; (1) players are situated to scale within the world, (2) the world is large, connected and accessible, (3) the main goal does not restrict players from engaging with other activities, (4) content density is more important than world size, and (5) players can self-pace gameplay through engaging/disengaging with tasks at will. This study highlights how the use of a `contextually-specific' approach can provide insight into specific player experiences, and why players enjoy them.