Open-world games are changing the way we play videogames—and that might be a very good thing.

Open worlds are changing how we play videogames. I've long thought this was a bad thing, but this year I'm beginning to change my mind.

Bethesda's widely hailed Fallout 4 is one of the latest examples of an open-world game, a sprawling epic that can suck you in for hours on end. But it's an older game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, that's got me rethinking vast game worlds. Seven months after its release, I think about The Witcher far more than other games. I wouldn't say I'm consumed by it, but there is a corner of my brain that is devoted to it. I find myself—on a weekly, if not daily, basis—pondering the strength of its characters, the richness of its world, and the satisfaction of a good monster hunt.

I find myself a bit surprised that it occupies my thoughts so frequently. For one thing, I hadn't played it in months. Moreover, I'm only now inching toward what I think is the end of the game. After hundreds of hours, The Witcher 3 remains an open plain, full of unexplored depths.

I can't say that thought doesn't excite me.

Open-world games leave players to their own devices, free to explore what amounts to an enormous sandbox with no boundaries and few rules. They date to the 1980s, but 2001's Grand Theft Auto III set the standard, one that has been expanded upon by games ranging from Assassin's Creed to Minecraft. This year, perhaps more than any other, has seen more examples of the genre, which are becoming the norm for big-budget triple-A releases. It isn't hard to see why. Done properly, it's a goldmine. It keeps players from trading in games too quickly; you're more likely to ditch a linear action game that's done in 10 hours than a sprawling epic that can take 100 hours or more. It's easier to tack downloadable content onto an open-world experience, too.

Still, are we ready for a world in which nearly every AAA title follows the same blueprint? Expansive worlds are expensive and difficult to design, and as such tend to be filled with repetitive content: cookie-cutter tasks, collectibles, and encounters designed to fill a game space that might otherwise be nearly empty. Many of these games de-emphasize the storyline.

At worst, open-world games fail to offer compelling direction, like a vast Netflix queue filled with so many choices that it's paralyzing. I have this problem with the Elder Scrolls games, which offer everything in the world except for a reason to be there. Even more dismaying, a bad open-world game can seem utterly pointless. The setting of Watch_Dogs offers so little in the way of coherency or thoughtful design that it barely justifies its existence. For a long time, I dealt with these issues by avoiding open-world games entirely, or approaching them like a linear game: Sucking the marrow out of the story and leaving the rest behind.

This year, I've tried something different. Interesting games have come so quickly that I've been unable and unwilling to merely plow through the open-world games that caught my intention. Instead I've been coming back to them, time and again, over extended periods, to explore them. Every few weeks or so I'll return to The Witcher or Metal Gear Solid V to complete a few missions, reacquainting myself with these worlds and getting to know their inhabitants a bit better. It's a slow cartography, maps of imaginary spaces growing in my head, inch by inch.

I feel like this might be the way well crafted open worlds are supposed to be experienced—not as gluttonous binges or narrowly focused rampages, but as long-term occupancies. I've found that these games exist more vividly in my mind as I embrace this style of gameplay. They grow in my imagination as they occupy more and more space in my memory. Instead of rushing through them or viewing them as content generators, I abide in them.