Open world video games and theme parks: narrative and recreational convergences

This work aims to establish the possible ways of relationship between video games and theme parks, media that have barely been studied in their narrative and recreational coincidences. Theme parks have created the ideal of modern leisure that fuses fun and immersive participation in imaginary worlds. Although they have received increasing attention from academic literature, they are still considered a simple product of the leisure industry with little artistic value. Our approach considers the theme park as a cultural practice whose roots it shares with a long tradition of popular spectacles such as cinema, television, circus and video games. As an approach to the latter,  possible methodologies for their analysis are established from various perspectives: intermediality, transmedia, media ecology and media archeology and a comparison is made with the closest video game genre, the so-called open world video games. It is concluded that both media offer similar experiences based on the immersive process in a fictional world with a feeling of being alive, where freedom of exploration and emotional experiences based on attractions and missions prevail, as a desire for personal transfiguration.