10 Biggest Open World Maps In Video Games

1: The Final Frontier (Elite Dangerous, No Man’s Sky, Space Games In General) - Millions Of Cubic Light Years

And finally, the games that are just way bigger than any other kind of game is ever going to be or be able to be: space games. Especially procedurally-generated space games.

Now, while these games absolutely deserve their time in the sun, it’s worth pointing out that were we to give them all an entry no other game would get a look in, because these things are huge.

How huge? I hear you ask. You just covered Minecraft and that was like one billion miles of game map. Well, in the case of space we have to start talking volume. And we’re talking about game areas big enough to be traversed by space crafts travelling at light speed. Chris Roberts said Star Citizen’s playable area is one million by one million kilometres by 200 kilometres high. Meanwhile Elite Dangerous is estimated to be about 13.8 cubic light years of traversable space, and the procedurally-generated universes of Spore and No Man’s Sky are pretty much immeasurably gargantuan. Almost all of these games require enormous maps to cater to the design of the game and massively multiplayer elements and its telling that the vast majority of them are beloved by fans and critics alike.

There is the argument over how much of these space maps are made up of empty space or repetitive filler environments, but if we’re looking at the raw numbers, the space games have it.