Cameron Williams of Absurd Ventures, who has worked on Red Dead Online and GTA 6 was recently at GDC 2025. Given his experience with open-world games as a Former Rockstar developer, he was asked a few questions. He talked about all the issues that surround open-world games getting released these days. He had some strong views, so without wasting any time, let’s see what he said!
Former Rockstar Developer on Open-World Games
In the interview with PCGamer, he stated, “Players just don’t explore, right? Whether they just simply aren’t compelled or your game has a huge time investment and it’s hard for players to pick up and put down, which is an increasing challenge, especially with the sort of evolving ecosystem of free-to-play and live service games that are kind of eating everyone’s time and attention.”
Furthermore, he gave an example of a normal gamer and said, “They’re wondering, ‘Okay, how far away is the next thing? I really gotta run all the way across the map? And what’s my gain?” Pointing out that, “We want to avoid creating a possibility space so large that players simply just don’t know what to choose.”
Also Read: Take-Two Shuts Down The Mod That Gave Early Preview Of GTA 6 Map
According to Williams, these types of issues usually create an “open world fatigue,” and “exploration anxiety” for gamers. Given the issues that he talked about, it is highly likely that Absurd Ventures would’ve made sure to tackle these problems for their upcoming projects. It’ll be interesting to see what the company does, after all, it was founded by former head of Rockstar Games, Dan Houser.
GTA 6 so far has been the talk of the month! It was recently reported that an Analyst has warned that GTA 6 delay could disrupt the Gaming Industry. According to him, a lot of companies could face financial consequences in case they’re unable to adapt to the situation that the most hyped game on the planet could get delayed.
