The Illusion of Game Scale: How Game Worlds Balance Size and Experience

Video game worlds have become more expensive than ever. However, designing a large game world isn’t just about making it as big as possible. It’s about creating the illusion of scale, while still making the world feel alive and engaging. Let’s look at why some game worlds feel empty and how developers can use tricks to manage scale effectively.

Creating a world with real-world distances in a game might sound like a good idea, but it can often lead to issues with pacing. If you were to make a world as large as an actual city, players could find themselves spending more time travelling than playing.

Take Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V), for example. The game’s map, Los Santos, is about 48 square miles. If you were to compare this with a real city like San Francisco, which is roughly 231 square miles, Los Santos feels much smaller. Yet, in GTA V, the world feels expansive and full of life. This is because Rockstar Games fills it with detailed environments, bustling streets, and varied landscapes.

Second-by-Second Gameplay

When designing game worlds, developers think about how players will feel every few seconds. Players want to see action and experience new things quickly. A vast empty space could become tedious, so game worlds are often densely packed with content. In GTA V, you rarely drive for more than a few seconds before spotting something interesting, like a pedestrian doing something unusual or a building with intricate architecture.

Minute-by-Minute Exploration

Over several minutes, players should feel like they’re making progress. If a player spends too much time walking through barren areas, they may become bored. To address this, games use features like fast travel to help players skip over unimportant areas. For example, in The Witcher 3, fast travel lets you leap between key locations, maintaining excitement and avoiding the drag of long travel times.

Game developers use a range of clever tricks to make game worlds feel bigger without actually being enormous. One technique is to use visual perspective to enhance the sense of scale. Disney World is a famous example of this in real life. The buildings along Main Street, USA, have top floors that are shorter than the bottom ones. This makes them appear taller from the perspective of a child or an adult standing on the street.

In game design, similar tricks are used. If you want a city skyline to feel towering, you might make buildings slightly larger in the background while keeping nearby structures relatively close to the player’s scale. Foreshortening furniture is another architecture visualisation trick. By slightly compressing the scale of tables or objects, developers can create the feeling of a more spacious interior without actually changing the room’s size.

Another consideration is how densely populated your world should be. Games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild use a combination of dense and sparse areas to make the world feel diverse. Players will come across empty plains but are rewarded with lush forests or enemy camps every so often. This rhythm keeps players interested while maintaining a sense of vast wilderness.

If you’re designing a game world, here are some tricks to make the most of your scale:

1. Add Points of Interest Frequently: Keep players engaged by adding interesting landmarks, hidden items, or interactive NPCs every few seconds or minutes.
2. Use Mechanics Wisely: Enable players to skip past empty areas, but make them work for it, like unlocking fast travel points through quests or challenges.
3. Play With Perspective: Use architectural tricks to make spaces seem bigger, like narrowing pathways or shortening tall structures to add grandeur.

When designing or experiencing a game world, think about how each moment impacts player engagement.

Second-by-Second: Every second matters. Keep players interested by placing small, dynamic interactions nearby. This could be NPCs having conversations, environmental sounds, or sudden changes in weather. Players should feel immersed and curious, even when just passing through.

Minute-by-Minute: Every minute should feel rewarding. Players should have clear goals or objectives to work towards. Use landmarks, quests, or new scenery to maintain excitement and give them the sense of progress. Exploring the game world should always lead to something worth seeing or doing.

Hour-by-Hour: Across an hour of gameplay, players should experience a sense of achievement. Plan major events or milestones at regular intervals, such as completing a mission, discovering a hidden area, or unlocking a new ability. This helps maintain long-term engagement, ensuring that even extended play sessions feel meaningful and memorable.

This planning approach ensures a game world that feels both immersive and engaging, no matter how long someone plays.

In immersive technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), the careful use of space and scale is essential to capturing the user’s focus and maintaining engagement.

Developers can use compact, layered environments to create a sense of depth and richness without overwhelming users with vast, empty spaces. For example, in VR, subtle environmental cues like lighting, sound, or motion can draw attention to key areas, ensuring the user feels guided rather than lost. Similarly, fast navigation options like teleportation can help users skip unnecessary distances, keeping the experience smooth and intuitive.

By balancing realistic scale with accessibility, immersive environments can feel expansive yet remain practical, ensuring the user stays immersed and engaged without frustration.

Building a large and engaging game world is more than just mapping out a vast landscape. It’s about creating an illusion of scale through clever design tricks, perspective adjustments, and thoughtful gameplay pacing. Just like how Disney designers view the world from a child’s perspective, game developers must put themselves in the player’s shoes. By balancing real-world distances with engaging content, you can make a world that feels massive, yet is exciting every moment.

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