Secrets of Game Engagement

5. Fantasy Anchors

In the fifth of our deep-dive articles analysing game engagement systems, we explore those titles that make the experience of being in the world rewarding in itself.

Batman: Arkham City Becoming the Dark Knight Hogwarts Legacy Fantasy Before Systems Dying Light The City Changes After Dark Why Fantasy Anchors Engage Players

Across the dataset, a fifth and final pattern emerges. While some games retain players through improvement, variation, ownership, or consequence, this category engages players through attachment to the world itself.

Players return not simply because they have something left to complete, optimise, or continue building. They return because they want to remain inside the experience.

In these games, the setting becomes part of the reward loop. Mechanics still matter, but primarily as a way of sustaining fantasy, presence, and immersion. The structure is simple:

fantasy → embodiment → presence → desire to remain

The player is not simply interacting with a system. They are inhabiting a role, a world, or a particular emotional experience.

Batman: Arkham City 

Among the games in our dataset, Batman: Arkham City is one of the clearest expressions of a Fantasy Anchor system. Released in 2011 by Rocksteady Studios, the game expands the focused corridors of Arkham Asylum into a dense open-world prison district spanning the rooftops, alleys, and ruined industrial spaces of Gotham City.

At a surface level, it resembles a conventional open-world action game. Players navigate a contained environment, complete objectives, fight enemies, solve puzzles, and unlock upgrades. None of this is especially unusual.

What distinguishes Arkham City is the way every major game reinforces a single fantasy: being Batman.

Becoming The Dark Knight

Movement, combat, stealth, gadgets, detective work, atmosphere and setting all align around the same identity loop. Players glide silently above snow-covered rooftops, grapple between gargoyles, stalk criminals from overhead vantage points, disappear into shadows, interrogate informants, and crash into fights with explosive force before vanishing again into the skyline.

The resulting experience moves beyond competence into full embodiment. Instead of players feeling like they’re controlling Batman from a distance, they feel they’re inhabiting the role itself. 

One Steam reviewer describes the experience this way:

“What really stands out right from the start is the feeling of being Batman. The moment you’re gliding over rooftops, it echoes the dark, grounded tone of The Dark Knight [the Chrisopher Nolan-directed film] - that sense of being a silent guardian over a city that never really sleeps.”

This alignment between mechanics and fantasy is central to the game’s unusually high engagement. Traversal itself becomes pleasurable. Crossing the city is not dead time between objectives, because traversing Gotham feels intrinsically rewarding, where satisfying Batman-like encounters are possible around every dingy corner. 

Arkham as a Character

The city itself plays an important role here. Although much larger than Arkham Asylum, the map remains dense and highly compressed. Villain encounters, side missions, gang fights, Riddler puzzles, hidden secrets, and environmental storytelling are packed closely together. There is very little empty space separating the player from the next interesting interaction.

Importantly, the game continually rotates between different forms of Batman fantasy. One moment the player is gliding across rooftops tracking a signal. The next they are stealthily stalking armed enemies, solving puzzles, interrogating criminals, or chaining together gadget-enhanced combat encounters. The variety matters because it prevents the fantasy from flattening into repetition.

Repetition Inside a Compelling Fantasy

And yet repetition is also part of the point. Much of Arkham City involves familiar activities: combat, side quests, collectibles, traversal, and stealth areas repeated across dozens of hours. But unlike many open-world games, these activities remain engaging because they continue reinforcing the same compelling identity frame.

As another player puts it: “Movement, combat, and atmosphere all align to create that one simple experience: ‘this is what Batman is supposed to feel like’… Arkham Asylum made you feel like you were inside a Batman story. But Arkham City makes you feel like you are Batman.”

This helps explain why players often tolerate, and even enjoy, large amounts of optional content within the game. The playstyle is satisfying before rewards even arrive. Combat feels fluid and theatrical. Stealth encounters feel predatory and controlled. Traversal feels graceful and fast. The fantasy itself becomes the retention structure.

Batman: Arkham City therefore achieves high engagement not simply through progression, challenge, or content volume, but through sustained identity embodiment. The player returns because the game continually supports the fantasy of being Batman.

Hogwarts Legacy

Hogwarts Legacy approaches the same Fantasy Anchor dynamic from a very different direction. Released in 2023 by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros. Games, the game transforms one of modern the most recognisable fantasy settings into a fully explorable open world centred around Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

At a mechanical level, many of its systems are familiar. Exploration, combat, crafting, collectibles, quests, gear upgrades, and open-world progression follow well-established patterns. In isolation, few of these systems are especially revolutionary.

What drives engagement is the setting itself.

Living the Fantasy

The game’s central achievement is to transform a long-established fantasy into a navigable, inhabitable environment. Hogwarts is not simply a backdrop for gameplay. It is the primary attraction. Walking through moving staircases, attending classes, wandering hidden corridors, flying over the castle grounds on a broomstick, visiting Hogsmeade, discovering secret rooms, and hearing familiar musical themes all become part of the reward structure itself.

This changes the emotional logic of progression. Unlocks and upgrades matter, but largely because they deepen access to the fantasy. New spells expand the player’s wizard identity. Broom flight transforms traversal into spectacle. The Room of Requirement allows players to personalise their own magical space. Even relatively routine activities gain emotional weight because they take place within a world players already care about deeply.

As a result, exploration becomes rewarding almost regardless of objective design. A side corridor, hidden chest, puzzle room, or overheard conversation can feel meaningful simply because it contributes to the sensation of inhabiting Hogwarts itself.

Comfort, Discovery, and Momentum

Part of the game’s unusually broad appeal comes from the number of engagement loops operating simultaneously. Some players focus on spell combat and character progression. Others become absorbed in collecting cosmetics, solving environmental puzzles, decorating the Room of Requirement, breeding magical beasts, or simply wandering the castle grounds.

This layered structure matters because no individual system needs to carry the entire experience. The game continually rotates between exploration, combat, collecting, progression, and low-pressure discovery, creating a steady stream of small rewards and unfinished tasks. Players are rarely far from another puzzle, collectible, side quest, unlock, or visual discovery.

The atmosphere also plays a major role in sustaining engagement. Unlike games built primarily around tension or difficulty, Hogwarts Legacy often functions as a comfort experience. Seasonal changes, warm lighting, bustling corridors, snowy courtyards, familiar music, and low-stress exploration all contribute to a sense of cosy inhabitation. Rather than simply progressing through objectives, players are spending time in a world they enjoy occupying.

Fantasy Before Systems

Importantly, the game’s engagement does not necessarily come from deep RPG complexity. Even many positive reviews acknowledge repetitive activities, shallow morality systems, limited consequences, and open-world structures that eventually become formulaic. Yet despite these limitations, players often continue investing dozens of hours into the experience.

This is because Hogwarts Legacy continually reinforces the fantasy of becoming a wizard within a beloved fictional world. Combat feels flashy and expressive without becoming overly punishing. Progression steadily unlocks new abilities and traversal options. Familiar locations and rituals carry emotional resonance before the game even explains them. The setting itself reduces friction and increases attachment.

Hogwarts Legacy continually reinforces the fantasy of becoming a wizard within a beloved fictional world.

As with Batman: Arkham City, repetition becomes acceptable because it takes place within a compelling fantasy frame. The player returns not simply to complete tasks, but to continue inhabiting a world they do not entirely want to leave behind.

Hogwarts Legacy continually reinforces the fantasy of becoming a wizard within a beloved fictional world.

Dying Light

Dying Light adds a very different dimension to the Fantasy Anchor category: a world shaped by movement, tension, and survival. Released in 2015 by Polish studio Techland, the game combines open-world exploration, zombie survival, crafting, parkour traversal, and co-operative play within the quarantined city of Harran.

At first glance, many of its systems are familiar. Players complete missions, scavenge resources, craft weapons, fight infected enemies, and gradually unlock new abilities. But Dying Light distinguishes itself through the way the world is physically experienced moment to moment.

Freedom of Movement 

In most open-world games, travelling between objectives eventually becomes passive. In Dying Light, movement itself is the game.

Players are constantly scanning rooftops, judging distances, chaining jumps, vaulting obstacles, climbing buildings, improvising escape routes, and making rapid decisions under pressure. Simply crossing the city remains engaging because traversal is fluid, expressive, and slightly dangerous at all times.

This transforms ordinary downtime into meaningful play. Even when nothing dramatic is happening, the player remains mentally engaged: searching for routes, maintaining momentum, avoiding hazards, and reacting to the environment.

The result is a constant low-level flow state. Movement feels easy enough to become intuitive, but deep enough that players steadily improve over dozens of hours. Early on, players scramble clumsily across rooftops trying to survive. Later, they move through the city with speed and confidence, chaining together parkour routes almost instinctively.

As with Batman: Arkham City, traversal becomes intrinsically rewarding. Players often return to Dying Light simply because moving through the world feels good.

The City Changes After Dark

The game’s famous day-night cycle deepens this engagement dramatically.

During daylight hours, Harran feels dangerous but manageable. Players scavenge supplies, explore buildings, complete side missions, and engage infected enemies relatively freely. But once darkness falls, the emotional texture of the game changes completely. Visibility collapses, more lethal enemies emerge, and the city transforms into something predatory and hostile.

Suddenly, small decisions become survival crises. A detour for extra loot can leave the player stranded far from safety. A failed jump can trigger a desperate rooftop chase. Familiar streets become threatening because the player reads the same spaces differently at night than during the day.

This constant recontextualisation is central to the game’s unusually strong retention: the player’s fluid movement is mirrored by the shifting moods of the city through night and day. The same rooftops, alleyways, and safe zones change in their emotional meaning depending on time, preparedness, and player confidence.

Fear, Mastery, and Survival Stories

Much of Dying Light’s engagement also comes from the stories its systems naturally generate. Players remember being trapped outside after dark, barely escaping enemies, making reckless loot runs that spiral into disasters, or surviving impossible chases with seconds to spare.

In this sense, the game continually converts curiosity into risk. Players head toward one objective, notice a nearby police van, rooftop cache, or supply drop, drift slightly farther from safety, and suddenly find themselves sprinting across the city at night with infected creatures closing in behind them.

Importantly, the game’s progression system reinforces this emotional arc. Early on, the player feels weak, vulnerable, and reactive. Over time, movement becomes smoother, combat becomes more expressive, and nighttime shifts from terrifying to exhilarating. Players who once hid from powerful infected eventually begin hunting them deliberately.

This transformation creates a powerful sense of personal growth. The player does not simply gain higher numbers or better gear. They experience themselves becoming more capable inside the world.

Why Fantasy Anchors Engage Players

On the surface, these games appear to be doing very different things. Batman: Arkham City is built around heroic embodiment and kinetic action. Hogwarts Legacy offers comfort, discovery, and nostalgic inhabitation. Dying Light transforms movement and survival into a tense physical experience shaped by fear and momentum.

Yet despite these differences in tone, pacing, and mechanics, a common pattern emerges. In each case, the systems are ultimately organised around sustaining presence.

Batman’s combat, stealth, and traversal reinforce the fantasy of becoming The Dark Knight. Hogwarts Legacy combines the excitement of inhabiting the magical world of the Harry Potter franchise with exploration and open progression. Dying Light turns movement itself into a form of survival expression, where simply crossing the city remains engaging because the world constantly demands attention and adaptation.

In many games, repetition gradually weakens engagement. Tasks become predictable, systems flatten, and players drift away once novelty fades. Fantasy Anchors work differently. Familiarity often strengthens attachment because returning to the world is itself part of the reward. Players are not simply chasing progression. They are re-inhabiting a role that feels intrinsicly rewarding.

Presence as Retention

This is what separates Fantasy Anchors from the earlier categories in this series.

• Mastery Engines reward improvement
• Generative Social Systems provide uniqueness
• Creative Stewardship Systems reward ownership
• Persistent Stakes Systems demand continuity

Fantasy Anchors offer embodiment. 

That is why these games can remain highly engaging even when some mechanics are repetitive or structurally familiar. As long as the world continues to feel emotionally convincing, mechanically expressive, or atmospherically absorbing, players continue returning.

Ultimately, Fantasy Anchors are built around a simple but powerful question: do players still want to be there? As long as the answer remains yes, the engagement loop continues to function.

In the final article in our series, we bring together all the threads of our analysis, presenting a set of key findings that get to the heart of what keeps players engaged with games.

Series: Secrets of Engagement

The Hidden Systems of Engagement Engagement Insights from Steam Data Five Systems of Engagement Series Conclusion: What Keeps Players Playing? 1. Mastery Engines 2. Generative Social Systems 3. Creative Stewardship Systems 4. Persistent Stakes Systems 5. Fantasy Anchors