Przybylski, Rigby, and Ryan (2010) propose that players’ engagement with games is strongly influenced by basic psychological needs: autonomy (feeling of choice), competence (feeling effective), and relatedness (feeling connected). In their motivational model, autonomy is central: when players feel they can choose how to play—whether to explore, take detours, or pursue personal goals—they experience greater intrinsic motivation and deeper engagement.

Applied to the fast travel vs. riding/walking choice: riding or walking preserves and amplifies autonomy. It allows players to choose routes, respond to emergent events, and pursue self-directed objectives (side quests, scenic detours). That increased freedom supports intrinsic motivation, making the experience more immersive and rewarding. By contrast, fast travel reduces choice and removes the interactive opportunities that satisfy competence (navigational skill, overcoming obstacles) and relatedness (encounters with characters or place-based stories). Fast travel is efficient, but according to the model it can lower the psychological satisfaction that comes from self-directed, skillful, and socially meaningful play.

Reference: Przybylski, A. K., Rigby, C. S., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). A motivational model of video game engagement. Review of General Psychology, 14(2), 154–166.

Marc Laidlaw’s essays and discussions on traversal and level design argue that how players move through a game world is not merely functional—it shapes meaning, emotion, and engagement. Traversal exposes players to environmental storytelling (clues, atmosphere, incidental characters) and supports emergent play: unplanned encounters, small discoveries, and personal narratives that arise from the journey itself. Moving through space also cultivates player skills (navigation, situational awareness) and reinforces a sense of place and accomplishment when a route is learned or overcome.

Fast travel trades these benefits for convenience. It reduces tedium and saves time, but at the cost of serendipity, exploration-driven motivation, and the layered storytelling that emerges from being physically present in the world. Laidlaw’s point is that level and world design should take traversal seriously—making the journey worth taking—so that players who choose to walk or ride gain meaningful experiences rather than mere travel time.

Relevant sources:

• Marc Laidlaw, various essays/interviews on level design and traversal (see “Why Traversal Matters” discussions).
• Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010), research on autonomy and engagement in games.

Your preference for riding or walking rather than fast traveling taps into several interlocking philosophical and design considerations: how we experience time, the value of serendipity, the nature of skill and mastery, and what makes virtual worlds feel meaningful. Below I expand on those themes and give more specific mechanisms by which non-instantaneous traversal enriches experience.

1. Temporal experience and narrative pacing

• Traversal imposes tempo. Moving through space creates a rhythm that shapes emotional and cognitive engagement: tension builds, curiosity accrues, and small events gain weight because they occur within a sustained flow. Philosopher Henri Bergson emphasized lived duration (la durée) — the qualitative, felt experience of time — which riding/walking preserves better than the discontinuity of fast travel.
• Games can use travel time as narrative space. Encounters, dialogue, and environmental details encountered en route contribute to emergent micro-narratives that complement the main plot. Without that intermediate time, storytelling becomes more episodic and compressed.

2. Serendipity, discovery, and environmental storytelling

• Slow traversal encourages incidental discovery. Players are more likely to notice abandoned camps, side-quests, or world details that contextualize lore and moral texture. This produces deeper world-building and a sense that the world exists independently of the player’s goals.
• Environmental storytelling (designers place clues, objects, and traces that tell stories nonverbally). Those traces are most effective when players move through the space rather than skip it. Fast travel turns crafted spatial narrative into mere backdrop.

3. Skill acquisition and meaningful practice

• Navigation, route planning, threat assessment, and attention are skills that develop through repeated traversal. Practicing them yields a sense of competence and agency (self-determination theory: autonomy, competence, relatedness — Ryan & Deci).
• Mastery over traversal can shift playstyles: learning shortcuts, exploiting terrain, or anticipating NPC behavior feels rewarding. Fast travel short-circuits that learning curve.

4. Embodiment, presence, and immersion

• Movement fosters embodied simulation: the player imagines being in the character’s position, feeling the distance, weather, fatigue, or landscape scale. Philosophers of mind and aesthetics (e.g., Merleau-Ponty on embodied perception) suggest bodily engagement deepens experiential richness.
• Immersion is not simply graphic fidelity but continuity and the ability to attend to low-level details; traversal preserves continuity.

5. Risk, investment, and meaningful choices

• Traversal introduces risk and opportunity cost. The possibility of ambushes, weather effects, or resource depletion gives choices weight: is the journey worth it? That weight translates into moral and strategic significance.
• Fast travel eliminates risk and reduces the significance of selecting a route or deciding to explore — choices become binary instead of gradient.

6. When fast travel is justified

• Time scarcity and repetitive transit: if content is identical each time and the repeat is monotonous, fast travel reduces tedium without harming narrative. Good design can mitigate loss by making repetitive routes richer (dynamic events, variance).
• Quality-of-life and accessibility: fast travel can serve players with limited time, mobility constraints, or neurodivergent needs. The ethical design choice may be to offer both: preserve exploration for those who want it while enabling shortcuts for others.

7. Design implications and hybrid solutions

• Dynamic traversal: populate routes with random or scheduled events so repetition stays engaging (see roguelike / open-world event systems).
• Forced downtime as design: some games convert travel time into meaningful activities (e.g., camping, conversations, inventory management) so even necessary travel contributes to narrative or systems.
• Conditional fast travel: require discovery of a route or payment of in-game cost to fast-travel, preserving exploration incentives while allowing convenience later.
• Fast travel with consequences: make skipping risks reduce potential rewards (e.g., missed side-quests or collectibles), making the choice consequential.

8. Psychological and ethical dimensions

• Valuing journey over destination echoes philosophical traditions (e.g., Stoic and Buddhist teachings about attention to process). The preference to slow down fosters mindfulness and curiosity rather than instrumentalizing the world as a set of tasks to be completed.
• Conversely, insistence on slow traversal as a virtue can be elitist if it ignores players who need shortcuts. Ethical game design considers diversity of preferences and capacities.

Further reading and sources

• Marc Laidlaw, essays on traversal and level design (game designer reflections).
• Przybylski, A. K., Rigby, C. S., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). “A motivational model of video game engagement” — on autonomy and engagement.
• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-Determination Theory — competence, autonomy, and relatedness.
• Papers and talks on environmental storytelling (e.g., Chris Dahlen and others discussing emergent narrative in open worlds).
• Philosophical background: Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception — on time, embodiment, and perception.

Summary Riding or walking preserves temporal continuity, invites serendipitous discovery, supports skill development, and yields greater immersion and meaningful choices. Fast travel trades those qualities for convenience and efficiency — useful in certain contexts (time-limited players, repetitive routes), but it risks flattening the world into waypoints. Good design balances both: keep traversal rich and meaningful, but provide accessible options for different players.

If you want, I can convert these ideas into specific game-design guidelines or give examples from particular games (e.g., The Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, Red Dead Redemption) showing how they handle travel.

Slow traversal—walking or riding rather than fast traveling—creates the time and attention necessary for incidental discovery. As players move through space at a human pace they are more likely to notice small, off-path details: abandoned camps, scraps of dialogue, environmental cues, or emergent encounters that suggest prior events and lives. Those discoveries seed side-quests, complicate moral choices, and flesh out setting-specific lore. Because such details are encountered organically rather than delivered as objectives, they foster the impression that the world continues to exist and evolve independently of the player’s main goals, which deepens immersion and strengthens the felt significance of both place and narrative.

I prefer riding or walking because traveling lets environmental storytelling and emergent narrative unfold at a natural pace. Papers and talks on environmental storytelling (e.g., Chris Dahlen’s discussions of emergent narrative in open worlds, Marc Laidlaw’s essays on traversal, and related academic work) emphasize that:

• Details matter: Designers place clues, set-dressing, and incidental events throughout spaces; encountering them in situ creates meaning that’s easily missed by fast travel.
• Temporal context: Events and NPC behavior that change over time or depend on player presence produce narratives that are revealed only through movement and timing.
• Player agency and interpretation: Moving through environments encourages players to connect disparate details into stories, exercising imagination and creating personally significant narratives (see literature on player authorship and emergent play).
• Skill and attention: Navigation and exploration foster spatial memory and engagement—elements linked to enjoyment and presence in game-play studies (e.g., research on autonomy and immersion).

Fast travel is a practical option for reducing tedium or accommodating time constraints, but it often bypasses the layered, place-based storytelling that makes worlds feel alive.

Selected references:

• Chris Dahlen, commentary on emergent narrative in open worlds (various essays/interviews).
• Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters” (game-design essays).
• Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010), on player motivation and engagement (self-determination theory applied to games).

If the route between A and B is time-consuming and offers the same content every trip, repeated traversal becomes monotonous and can sap enjoyment. In that case fast travel is a reasonable choice: it respects the player’s limited time and removes tedium without necessarily harming the core narrative. Good game design can further reconcile convenience and richness by introducing variation or meaning into routine routes—dynamic events, environmental changes, branching encounters, or small rewards—so that even repeated trips retain surprise and value.

Psychological dimensions

• Attention and meaning: Walking or riding promotes sustained attention and curiosity, turning mundane movement into opportunities for noticing, learning, and memory formation (higher encoding of place and events). This enhances intrinsic motivation and sense of autonomy (see Self-Determination Theory: Ryan & Deci; Przybylski et al., 2010).
• Flow and competence: Traversal can scaffold small challenges (navigation, resource management) that foster competence and occasional flow, making achievements feel earned rather than trivialized by teleportation.
• Serendipity and narrative: Unplanned encounters and environmental storytelling give rise to emergent narratives and emotional surprise, increasing engagement and attachment to the world.
• Cognitive mapping and embodiment: Physically moving through space strengthens spatial cognition and a felt sense of inhabiting the environment, which supports richer recollection and ownership of experiences.

Ethical dimensions

• Respect for design and craft: Choosing to travel honors the designers’ intention and the labor embedded in crafted spaces; it treats virtual worlds as works of art rather than mere backdrops.
• Value of effort: Preferring the journey reinforces a virtue-like appreciation for effort, patience, and perseverance—traits that translate into real-world dispositions.
• Accessibility and fairness: Ethically, the option to fast-travel matters—some players need it for time, disability, or comfort. Valuing journeys should not exclude or stigmatize those who rely on shortcuts.
• Social and communal effects: In multiplayer or shared worlds, traveling can foster communal encounters and shared experiences; indiscriminate fast-travel can erode opportunities for social interaction and community-building.

In short: riding/walking deepens psychological engagement and affirms ethical values around effort and respect for crafted worlds, but it should coexist with fast-travel options to respect diversity of needs and circumstances.

Short explanation

Choosing to ride or walk rather than fast-travel can be read through the lens of Bergson and Merleau-Ponty. For Bergson (Matter and Memory), lived time (la durée) is qualitative and indivisible: the flow of experience cannot be reduced to discrete teleportations. A journey’s temporal richness—memories accumulating, surprise, and the felt continuity of passing moments—constitutes its meaning. Fast travel flattens that durée into instantaneous, homogeneous time, depriving the player of the qualitative texture Bergson treats as essential to consciousness.

Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception) emphasizes embodied perception: knowing the world is inseparable from being a body-in-the-world. Moving through space cultivates an intercorporeal knowledge—skills, attention, and a sense of place—that reveal the world’s significance. Perception is active, tacit, and shaped by movement; the route itself discloses affordances and meanings that teleportation bypasses. Thus, walking or riding preserves embodiment and the perceptual engagement that grounds meaning and accomplishment.

In short: Bergson highlights the irreducible value of lived time, and Merleau-Ponty shows that perception is embodied and revealed through movement—together they justify preferring the journey over instantaneous arrival. References: Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception.

Movement fosters embodied simulation: by traveling through a virtual landscape you imaginatively occupy the character’s position and register qualities like distance, weather, fatigue, and scale. This kind of bodily-via-imagination engagement deepens perception and value. Philosophers of mind and aesthetics—most notably Maurice Merleau-Ponty on embodied perception—argue that perception is not a detached representation but a bodily, situated activity; moving through an environment thus changes what you notice and how the world matters to you. In games this yields richer environmental storytelling, serendipitous encounters, practiced navigation skills, and a stronger sense of earning the destination. Fast travel preserves time and reduces repetition, but it short-circuits those embodied, exploratory processes that make virtual worlds feel lived-in.

References:

• Merleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenology of Perception (esp. sections on embodied perception).
• Marc Laidlaw, essays on traversal and game design.
• Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010), research on autonomy and player engagement.

Some games treat travel not as empty filler but as deliberate downtime—periods where the player can engage in other meaningful activities that contribute to narrative, character, and systems. Examples include camping to rest and bond with companions, dialogue trees that reveal backstory, crafting or inventory management that shapes future choices, or small minigames that reward attention. By embedding these mechanics into transit, designers turn unavoidable movement into a rich space for reflection, relationship-building, and strategic preparation. This preserves the pacing and immersion of a continuous journey while respecting players’ time and giving otherwise repetitive segments clear purpose.

Reference notes: this approach echoes broader design thinking about converting friction into meaning (Marc Laidlaw on traversal; game-studies work on player engagement and motivation).

Mastery over traversal reshapes how you play: by moving through the world you learn its contours, discover shortcuts, exploit terrain advantages, and predict NPC routes or ambush points. These skills create a feedback loop—attention leads to knowledge, knowledge leads to creative tactics, and tactics feel rewarding. Fast travel short-circuits that learning curve by teleporting you past the opportunities for practice, planning, and serendipitous discovery; it saves time but removes the incremental mastery that makes movement itself a meaningful part of gameplay.

Reference: Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters”; see also Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010) on factors that support player engagement.

Immersion isn’t just how good a world looks; it’s the continuity that lets attention settle into low-level details. When you ride or walk, sensory flow—sights, sounds, incidental events—unfolds continuously and unpredictably. That ongoing stream lets you notice subtle cues (weather changes, distant NPCs, environmental storytelling) and form causal links between moments. Fast travel breaks that stream: it skips intermediary states and removes the temporal context that gives small details meaning. Traversal preserves continuity, so your attention can register, connect, and emotionally invest in the world rather than just its static endpoints.

References: Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters”; Przybylski, Rigby & Ryan (2010) on engagement and autonomy.

• Serendipity: Unplanned, valuable moments that occur by chance while you travel — an unexpected NPC, a rare sight, or a random event. These surprises create emotional spikes and memorable anecdotes that can’t be fully scripted into fast travel; they reward attention and make the world feel alive.

• Discovery: The process of finding things for yourself—hidden locations, shortcuts, loot, or lore—through exploration. Discovery produces curiosity and competence: you learn the map, develop strategies, and feel ownership over what you’ve found, which strengthens engagement and satisfaction.

• Environmental storytelling: The way a game/world communicates narrative through its setting rather than explicit text or dialogue—ruined buildings, scattered journals, blood trails, or placement of objects. Walking lets you perceive context, make inferences, and piece together stories from the environment; that interpretive work deepens immersion and emotional resonance.

References: Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters” (game-design discussions); Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010) on autonomy and engagement.

Fast travel can be preserved as convenient without collapsing the meaningfulness of movement if designers attach real consequences to skipping the journey. If bypassing traversal reduces the chance to encounter side-quests, collectibles, environmental clues, NPC interactions, or dynamic events, then choosing to fast travel becomes an ethical and epistemic trade-off rather than a neutral convenience. Players weigh time saved against opportunities lost: autonomy and efficiency versus curiosity, discovery, and the satisfaction of earned achievements.

This design approach preserves accessibility and respects players’ schedules while maintaining exploration as a valuable mechanic. It makes the decision reflective: players who value narrative depth and emergent experiences will travel; players who prioritize pace and goals can fast travel but accept diminished extras. In short, consequences convert fast travel from a binary convenience into a meaningful, consequential choice.

Relevant thinking: this ties to design principles about meaningful player choice (see Marc Laidlaw on traversal) and motivational psychology regarding autonomy and competence (Przybylski et al., 2010).

Fast travel is justified when it serves the player’s practical needs without undermining core design goals. Key situations include:

• Time constraints: The player has limited playtime or must reach an objective quickly (e.g., to finish a quest or meet real-world scheduling needs).
• Repetition and tedium: Traveling the same route repeatedly with no new encounters becomes monotonous; fast travel spares unnecessary repetition.
• Accessibility and fatigue: Players with physical, cognitive, or sensory limitations (or who are simply tired) benefit from options that reduce sustained navigation demands.
• Pacing and narrative needs: The story may require skipping low-stakes travel to maintain momentum or preserve tension; designers sometimes intentionally compress time.
• Player agency and choice: Offering fast travel respects diverse playstyles—some players prioritize completion, others exploration; giving the option supports autonomy (see Przybylski et al., 2010).
• Resource management: In games where traversal is purely transactional (no discovery, no emergent gameplay), fast travel can be the sensible default.

In short: fast travel is justified when it preserves the player’s control over time, avoids needless tedium or barriers, and coexists with systems that still allow meaningful exploration when the player desires it.

Temporal experience refers to how time feels to the player: walking or riding stretches and textures time, letting moments breathe, tension build, and small events accumulate. That slowing creates room for noticing details and for the game world to register emotionally; time becomes part of the medium of storytelling rather than just a unit to be minimized. Fast travel, by contrast, collapses temporal depth into an instant, turning the world into a set of coordinates rather than a sequence of lived moments.

Narrative pacing is how a story’s beats—setup, discovery, escalation, resolution—are distributed over time. Traveling on foot or horseback lets pacing unfold organically: encounters, environmental clues, and quiet interludes can foreshadow or echo main events, so arrival carries emotional and cognitive weight. Fast travel short-circuits that build-up, which can flatten suspense, diminish foreshadowing, and make milestones feel arbitrary. In sum, choosing actual traversal preserves temporal texture and allows pacing to shape meaning; fast travel optimizes efficiency but often sacrifices the narrative momentum that makes destinations feel earned.

References: Marc Laidlaw on traversal in game design; Przybylski, Rigby & Ryan (2010) on engagement and meaningful experience.

Environmental storytelling is how designers communicate narrative through placed objects, lighting, sightlines, and traces of past activity rather than explicit dialogue. These elements are arranged across space so that movement—pausing, turning, approaching, and lingering—creates a temporal rhythm in which revelations unfold. When you ride or walk, you pick up cause-and-effect relations (a scorched hearth, a trail of blood, a toppled statue) and assemble them into a coherent story in your mind; the route itself stages pacing, surprise, and context.

Fast travel collapses that temporal and spatial structure into an instant: the same clues still exist, but they become static backdrop rather than events you encountered. Without the intervening movement, you lose the sequential cues (what you saw before and after), the affordances for exploration (hidden alcoves, side paths), and the small surprises that reframe a destination. In short, environmental storytelling is most effective as a practiced, embodied experience—walking or riding preserves the crafted narrative flow; fast travel turns it into mere scenery.

References: Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters” (game-design essays); Przybylski, Rigby & Ryan (2010) on player motivation and engagement.

Design implications

• Trade-offs: Designers must balance player autonomy, narrative pacing, and respect for player time. Removing long traversal can streamline the story but also erode exploration, worldbuilding, and the sense of earned achievement (Laidlaw; game-design literature).
• Player motivation: Players vary—some seek efficiency, others seek discovery. Systems that assume one preference risk alienating the other group (Przybylski et al., 2010 on autonomy and engagement).
• Accessibility and fatigue: Long walks can be tiring or inaccessible for some players. Fast travel can serve as an important accessibility and quality-of-life feature.
• Meaningful traversal: If travel exists, it should be interesting—introduce encounters, environmental storytelling, and choices so traversal feels like content rather than filler.

Hybrid solutions

• Conditional fast travel: Allow fast travel but limit it in contexts that would undermine story or discovery (e.g., disable in areas with active emergent events).
• Costed fast travel: Require resources, cooldowns, or in-game currency to fast travel, making the decision meaningful and preserving some tension about route choice.
• Partial shortcuts: Unlocks or vehicle upgrades that reduce travel time without eliminating traversal (mounts, fast trains, gliders).
• Automated but observable transit: Use cutscenes or short interactive sequences for long-distance travel so players skip tedious walking but still see environmental changes and get worldbuilding beats.
• Optional incentives: Place unique encounters, collectibles, or achievements along routes to reward actual travel while keeping fast travel available for those who prefer it.
• Accessibility toggles: Provide settings for motion sensitivity, pacing, or automatic pathing to support players who cannot or do not want to traverse manually.

Summary A flexible, player-centered approach preserves the virtues of riding/walking (discovery, practice, immersion) while respecting time and accessibility through thoughtful fast-travel options. Designing traversal as meaningful content rather than mere connective tissue best accommodates diverse player preferences.

References: Marc Laidlaw on traversal; Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010) on player motivation and autonomy.

Risk: Traveling on foot or by mount exposes you to hazards—ambushes, environmental dangers, resource depletion—that force attention and create stakes. These risks make decisions consequential: choosing a longer safe road versus a dangerous shortcut matters because failure has tangible costs. Risk transforms movement from mere transit into an activity with suspense and moral/strategic weight.

Investment: Taking the long route requires time, attention, and sometimes resources. That investment builds attachment: the landscape, NPCs, and items encountered become part of your story because you engaged with them. The more you invest in the journey, the more meaningful the outcome feels; completion yields a sense of earned achievement rather than cheap convenience.

Meaningful Choices: When movement involves risk and investment, choices about route, pacing, gear, and companions become meaningful. Players balance objectives (speed vs. safety, exploration vs. efficiency), creating trade-offs that reflect their values and play style. These trade-offs produce distinct experiences and personal narratives—something fast travel usually collapses into a single, undifferentiated click.

Together, risk and investment turn travel into a domain of meaningful choice: not just getting somewhere, but deciding how, why, and at what cost you will arrive.

Navigation, route planning, threat assessment, and sustained attention are practical skills that improve through repeated traversal. Each journey requires you to read the environment, choose paths, anticipate hazards, and adapt when circumstances change. Practicing these micro-decisions builds spatial competence and situational awareness, which in turn creates a stronger sense of agency: you feel capable of influencing outcomes rather than being passively teleported.

This experiential skill-building aligns with self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci): autonomy (choosing your route and methods), competence (mastering navigation and threat management), and relatedness (connecting to the world and its stories). Those psychological satisfactions make the journey itself meaningful, not just the destination. Fast travel preserves time but skips the opportunities to learn, notice, and earn that sense of place and mastery.

References:

• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. — Self-Determination Theory (autonomy, competence, relatedness).
• Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010) — player motivation and engagement.

Choosing to walk or ride instead of fast traveling turns ordinary game movement into a form of skill acquisition. Repeated navigation and attention to the environment exercise spatial reasoning (remembering routes, landmarks, and map layouts), situational awareness (noticing threats, resources, or narrative cues), and decision-making (choosing paths, pacing, and responses to events). These micro-practices accumulate: small successes—avoiding an ambush, finding a shortcut, spotting a hidden cache—reinforce learning and competence, which in turn make future journeys smoother and more satisfying.

Unlike abstract progress bars, meaningful practice in traversal ties improvement to real, perceivable outcomes. The player’s abilities are visible in how confidently they move through the world, how quickly they solve route problems, and how often they turn chance encounters into advantage. That loop—effort → feedback → mastery—creates engagement and a felt sense of achievement that fast travel bypasses. (See Przybylski, Rigby & Ryan, 2010 on autonomy and competence supporting engagement.)

Traversal introduces real risk and opportunity cost. Traveling on foot or by mount exposes you to ambushes, weather, and resource depletion, so every route and timing choice carries consequences. Those dangers force players to weigh alternatives—detour for safety, press on to save time, or conserve supplies for a later objective. Because choices can produce loss or gain, they become morally and strategically significant: deciding whether a journey is “worth it” requires balancing immediate needs, future plans, and values (e.g., caution versus daring). In short, the risks and costs embedded in traversal make movement itself a meaningful decision, not just a passage between points.

Fast travel isn’t just a convenience—it’s an important quality-of-life and accessibility feature. It lets players with limited time, physical mobility constraints, chronic fatigue, or attention-related neurodivergence reach meaningful content without repeated, exhausting traversal. Offering fast travel respects diverse life circumstances and keeps games playable for more people.

Ethically, good design often means offering both options: preserve the rewards of on-foot or on-ride exploration for players who value discovery and immersion, while providing reliable shortcuts for those who need them. Configurable systems (toggleable fast travel, reduced traversal distances, AI companions, or automatic waypoints) let players tailor the experience to their needs without forcing a single mode of play on everyone.

References: Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010) on player motivation and autonomy; game-design discussions such as Marc Laidlaw’s essays on traversal for why movement choices shape engagement.

Ryan and Deci’s Self-Determination Theory (2000) proposes that human motivation and well-being depend on the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Briefly:

• Competence: the need to feel effective and masterful. Walking or riding to a destination lets you practice navigation and problem-solving; overcoming obstacles and discovering hidden elements builds a sense of skill and accomplishment that fast travel bypasses.

• Autonomy: the need to feel volitional and self-directed. Choosing your route, pace, and actions during a journey expresses personal agency. Fast travel reduces those choices and can make the experience feel imposed or instrumental.

• Relatedness: the need to feel connected to others and to the environment. Slow traversal supports encounters, storytelling, and immersion in the game world—fostering a sense of belonging to that world or its characters. Instant teleportation can erode that sense of connection.

Together, these needs explain why taking the time to travel often yields greater intrinsic motivation and enjoyment: it supports competence (you get better), autonomy (you choose), and relatedness (you engage), whereas fast travel prioritizes convenience at the cost of those psychological satisfactions.

Reference: Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-Determination Theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78.

Dynamic traversal means filling travel routes with variable, meaningful events so repeated trips stay engaging. Instead of a static corridor, pathways host random or scheduled encounters (ambushes, NPCs with new dialogue, weather changes, mini-quests, shifting landmarks) that reward attention and make each passage feel alive. This preserves the benefits of riding/walking—discovery, emergent storytelling, skill use—while reducing the boredom of repetition. Designers can borrow techniques from roguelikes (procedural variation), open-world event systems (timed or triggered world states), and dynamic NPC schedules to balance novelty with coherence. The result: travel becomes a source of ongoing engagement rather than mere padding.

References: Marc Laidlaw on traversal; procedural/event-driven systems in roguelikes and open-world design; player-engagement research (Przybylski et al., 2010).

Marc Laidlaw, a veteran game writer and designer (notably on Half-Life), argues that traversal — the player’s movement through space — is a core element of game experience, not merely a means to reach objectives. In his essays and interviews he emphasizes several connected points:

• Traversal as storytelling: Environments convey narrative through layout, visual detail, and the placement of objects or encounters. Moving through space lets players read that story at their own pace, discovering context and subtext that scripted moments alone cannot provide.

• Traversal as pacing: The route a player takes shapes rhythm and tension. Long approaches can build anticipation; unexpected detours create surprise. Designers can use movement to manage emotional beats without interrupting immersion.

• Traversal as skill and engagement: Navigating a world involves perception, memory, and decision-making. These small, repeated cognitive tasks keep players actively involved and reward attention, contributing to a sense of competence and presence.

• Traversal as place-making: Reaching locations by travel gives them weight. Places felt through a journey are more memorable and meaningful than points instantly teleported to, because the journey supplies context and effort.

Laidlaw’s reflections encourage designers to treat movement as an expressive tool—one that can reinforce narrative, tune pacing, and deepen player attachment to the world—rather than dismissing it as mere tedium to be bypassed. For further reading, see his public essays and interviews on level design and narrative in games.

Insisting that slow, deliberate traversal (walking/riding) is inherently superior risks elevating one playstyle as the “correct” or more authentic way to play. That stance can be elitist in two linked ways:

1. It privileges a particular taste. Some players value immersion and discovery; others prioritize efficiency, narrative pacing, or different forms of fun. Claiming slow traversal is morally or aesthetically superior dismisses legitimate alternative motivations (see player-motivation literature, e.g., Przybylski et al., 2010).

2. It overlooks diverse capacities and constraints. Players differ in time availability, physical condition, neurodiversity, motor skills, and cognitive load tolerance. Mandatory slow traversal can exclude or frustrate those who need or prefer shortcuts for accessibility or practical reasons.

Ethical game design recognizes these differences by offering choice (optional fast travel, scalable shortcuts, toggles) so players can tailor experiences to their preferences and needs. That balance preserves the value of slow traversal for those who enjoy it while respecting and including others who do not.

Embodiment

• What it means: The felt sense of having a body or agent in the game world—your actions, perspectives, and sensory feedback are tied to that virtual body.
• Why it matters: Embodiment grounds gameplay choices in bodily terms (movement, reach, viewpoint), making interactions feel more intuitive and meaningful. It turns navigation and physical skill into part of the experience rather than abstract inputs.
• Example: Riding a horse or climbing a ridge feels different because you mentally simulate balance, momentum, and effort.

Presence

• What it means: The psychological feeling of “being there” in the virtual environment, distinct from merely watching or controlling events from outside.
• Why it matters: Presence makes events emotionally salient; threats feel threatening, discoveries feel surprising, and landscapes feel inhabited. It depends on consistent sensory cues and believable comportment of the world relative to your actions.
• Example: Hearing wind and seeing trees react as you approach increases the sense that you occupy that space.

Immersion

• What it means: The overall absorption in the game—how much attention and cognitive resources are devoted to the world rather than to external thoughts or reminders of playing.
• Why it matters: Immersion integrates narrative, mechanics, and aesthetics so the journey becomes compelling. It’s a broader state that includes embodiment and presence but also involves flow, challenge, and meaning.
• Example: A long ride that presents varied encounters, manageable challenge, and coherent storytelling produces sustained immersion; fast travel can interrupt that by collapsing time and removing intervening experiences.

How they relate

• Embodiment (bodily engagement) supports Presence (feeling located in the world), and together they help produce Immersion (deep, sustained engagement). Choosing to ride/walk enhances embodiment and presence, which in turn deepens immersion; fast travel can be useful, but it often reduces these layers.

References: Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters” (game-design commentary); Przybylski, Rigby & Ryan (2010) on motivation and engagement.

Traversal imposes tempo. Moving through space creates a rhythm that shapes emotional and cognitive engagement: tension builds, curiosity accrues, and small events gain weight because they occur within a sustained flow. The continuous unfolding of sights, choices, and interruptions lets meaning accumulate across moments; each encounter is contextualized by the movement that precedes and follows it. Fast travel, by contrast, introduces a temporal discontinuity that flattens this accumulation and treats time as mere repositioning.

This distinction echoes Henri Bergson’s notion of la durée (lived duration): time as qualitative, indivisible flow rather than as a sequence of discrete measurable instants. Walking or riding preserves that felt continuity—allowing immersion, reflection, and a gradually evolving sense of place—whereas instant teleportation privileges efficiency at the cost of experiential depth. Fast travel has practical value (reducing tedium, honoring limited time, aiding accessibility), but it sacrifices the temporal texture that makes journeys meaningful.

References:

• Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory; Time and Free Will (on la durée).
• Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters” (game-design discussions).
• Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010), research on autonomy and engagement in games.

Przybylski, Rigby, and Ryan (2010) propose that player engagement in video games is shaped by satisfying three basic psychological needs from self-determination theory: autonomy (feeling volitional), competence (feeling effective), and relatedness (feeling connected). Their motivational model argues that when games support these needs, players experience intrinsic motivation and deep engagement.

On autonomy specifically:

• Definition: Autonomy means players perceive they have meaningful choice and control over actions in the game, not that they are free from any structure. It’s the sense that one’s behavior is self-endorsed.
• Effect on engagement: Games that offer meaningful choices, multiple viable strategies, or control over pacing (e.g., choosing to fast travel or to ride/walk) increase autonomy and thus enhance intrinsic motivation and sustained engagement.
• Interaction with other needs: Autonomy amplifies the positive effects of competence and relatedness. For example, choosing a challenging route (autonomy) that you can master (competence) with friends (relatedness) produces stronger engagement than any factor alone.
• Design implication: Provide players with options and meaningful agency—not just options for its own sake, but choices that matter to gameplay and player goals. Balance freedom with guidance so players neither feel coerced nor aimless.

Reference: Przybylski, A. K., Rigby, C. S., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). A motivational model of video game engagement. Review of General Psychology, 14(2), 154–166.

Travel time in games functions as more than connective tissue between set-piece moments; it is a narrative resource. When players move through a world, each step creates opportunities for emergent micro-narratives: incidental encounters, overheard dialogue, small environmental clues, and shifting context all accumulate into layered meaning. These episodic, often unpredictable moments let players assemble stories themselves—bridging plot beats with lived experience and adding texture to character motivations and world history.

If that intermediate time is removed via fast travel, storytelling tends to become episodic and compressed: scenes are presented as discrete units with less buildup, fewer transitional details, and reduced chance for serendipity. The result is a whiplash effect where the player is told what matters rather than being shown how it fits into a continuous, inhabited world. In short, travel time enables pacing, discovery, and the quiet, cumulative storytelling that makes virtual worlds feel coherent and lived-in.

References: Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters” (on movement shaping player experience); Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010) on autonomy and engagement.

Fast travel collapses the rich, graded decisions involved in moving through a world into a single binary action: go now or don’t. When you travel manually, each step offers choices — which path to take, whether to detour, when to rest or engage, how to respond to emergent danger — and those micro-decisions carry varying levels of consequence and meaning. Fast travel removes those intermediate options and their attendant risks, turning exploration into an on/off toggle. The result is a loss of nuance: risk, discovery, learning, and the emotional weight of arriving are diminished because the player never experiences the intermediate gradients that give those outcomes significance.

For a discussion of how traversal shapes player experience, see Marc Laidlaw’s design essays; for the motivational effects of autonomy and engaging choice, see Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010).

Conditional fast travel requires players to first discover a route (e.g., visit a waypoint, unlock a map marker) or pay an in‑game cost before they can warp there. This preserves the incentive to explore—players still encounter environmental storytelling, random events, and the skill practice that comes from traversing the world—while granting convenient movement later when time or repetition makes long treks tedious. The cost or discovery requirement also supports pacing and progression: new areas stay meaningful because reaching them initially demands effort, but repeat visits don’t punish players who prefer to skip routine travel. As a design pattern it respects both immersion and player autonomy, and can be tuned (unlock thresholds, fees, cooldowns) to fit different play styles and accessibility needs.

References: Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters”; Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010) on autonomy and engagement.

Valuing the journey over the destination echoes long philosophical traditions. Stoicism emphasizes focusing on what’s within your control and attending to each action, while many Buddhist teachings cultivate mindful presence and non-goal‑centered awareness. Preferring to walk or ride is an expression of those attitudes: it resists instrumentalizing the world as merely a series of tasks to finish and instead privileges process, curiosity, and the small, often unexpected experiences that shape understanding and meaning. Fast travel preserves efficiency and can be practical, but slowing down fosters attention, skillful engagement, and a deeper sense of place.

References: Stoic practice (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations); Buddhist mindfulness teachings; Przybylski et al. (2010) on autonomy and engagement.

I prefer to actually walk/ride to destinations when possible. Walking preserves discovery, context, and the small emergent moments that make worlds feel lived-in; fast travel trades those experiences for convenience and reduced friction.

Explanation (game design, exploration vs. convenience)

• Traversal as meaningful play: Marc Laidlaw and similar designers argue that movement through space is itself gameplay — it shapes pacing, reveals story bits, and creates emotional beats. Traversal lets designers layer environmental storytelling and incidental encounters that reward curiosity (Laidlaw’s essays on “Why Traversal Matters”).
• Player motivation and autonomy: Psychological research (e.g., Przybylski et al., 2010) ties autonomy and competence to engagement. Choosing to explore voluntarily, with control over pace and route, satisfies autonomy and often increases intrinsic motivation.
• Trade-offs: Fast travel improves convenience, reduces tedium for repeat trips, and respects players with limited time. But overused fast travel can undermine exploration incentives and compress the perceived scale of the world.
• Design balance: Good systems offer both — encourage or gate fast travel so it doesn’t swallow exploration (e.g., unlock via discovery, cost-based fast travel, or limited-use options) while keeping walking meaningful (side content, environmental storytelling, dynamic events).

References

• Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters” (essays on level design and the role of movement).
• Przybylski, A. K., Rigby, C. S., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). “A motivational model of video game engagement” (relates autonomy/competence to engagement).

Short verdict: Favor walking for richer experience; keep fast travel as a respectful convenience that doesn’t erase exploration.