Into the Infinite: The Challenge of Open World Games
On Starfield, Star Citizen, and a game about a little bird; out now in The Spectator
“Starfield is intermittently, unexpectedly profound.
As my custom spaceship lands on one of the game’s thousand planets, and my customized character steps into the neon lights of a strange alien city, I’m struck by the sheer scale of this digital universe. This is the game I dreamed of as a sci-fi nerd child and teen, burying myself in The Icarus Hunt, The Long Earth, Foundation, Hyperion, Dune and boundless other sci-fi novels that transported me from a rural Australian library and into space. And here I am, transported there again, through an Asus M16 gaming laptop. There’s a big galaxy out there, and it’s yours to explore.
And yet, however vast, it’s a desolate universe. These vast, procedurally generated planets are mostly empty, and if you try to explore their wildernesses, you eventually hit a pop-up that says you’ve reached the end of the map. Seeking adventure, I was slapped with the barren artifice of the world I’d picked, reminded that I’m not an adventurer; just a writer, sitting at a laptop, distracting myself. Once again it was profound; just depressingly so.”
Out now in The Spectator: my piece on the freedom, challenges, and potential of open-world games. Give it a read!