Real in virtual or virtual in real? Intersecting virtual and real experience in open-world video games and heritage tourism

The increasing numbers of open-world games provide a sense of immersion, as if users were in a virtual world, by guaranteeing free movement within that world. One example is Ghost of Tsushima, a game developed by Sucker Punch Productions in the United States and released in 2020. The game was created by adding fictional elements to the historical facts surrounding the Mongol Empire’s invasion of the Japanese island of Tsushima in 1274. The developer implemented a virtual world as close as possible to the truth through thorough historical research into local records. This article aims to investigate the relationship and boundary between real and virtual tourism afforded by realistic virtual worlds, as well as provide a hybrid analysis of community discussions around Ghost of Tsushima on the social media forum Reddit. The community’s posts and comments suggest that the game cultivates a sense of immersion that can generate the desire to experience Tsushima, Japan in real life. However, this study also found that the game’s particular representations shape expectations in a way that influences the nature and extent of tourist initiatives.