Game devs secretly loathe doors: a design nightmare
The humble door—a fixture of our physical world—is surprisingly scarce in video games. It’s not that they’re entirely absent; a Final Fantasy VII player might recall a particularly pivotal portal. But for most gamers, doors remain largely inert props, decorative elements devoid of interactive function. The reason, developers say, is far more complex than it appears.
The pathfinding problem: why doors break games
Stephan Hövelbrinks, creator of Death Trash, recently ignited a Twitter discussion highlighting a core issue: “Doors are tricky to put in games and cause all sorts of bugs possible.” It's not merely a matter of aesthetics; it’s a fundamental challenge to artificial intelligence and player interaction. Doors act as ‘dynamic funnels’ and ‘obstacles to pathfinding,’ potentially blocking enemies or creating frustrating impasses. Imagine an AI constantly recalculating whether to burst through a door, circumvent a building entirely, or simply become stuck against an obstacle—a scenario that rapidly consumes processing power.
Liz England, designer on Watch Dogs: Legion, coined the term “The Door Problem” to encapsulate this complexity. She explains that a door isn’t just a barrier; it’s a nexus point requiring coordination across design, art, programming, and sound engineering. The designer determines if a key is needed; the artist ensures visual consistency with the game’s architecture; the programmer must prevent clipping through walls; and the sound engineer must account for altered acoustics when the door closes.
A history of door-related headaches
The difficulty isn’t theoretical. Remedy’s Sergey Mohov, Chief Gameplay Designer on Control, noted that their door system likely required “more work than most abilities and weapons.” Kurt Margenau, co-director of The Last of Us Part II, described implementing doors as “the thing that took us the longest to get right as we envisioned.” Naughty Dog experimented with various prototypes for player-controlled door closures, ultimately opting for a slow, automated closing mechanic to manage enemy flow while maintaining exploration accessibility.
Even established franchises haven’t escaped the door dilemma. Marcin Pieprzowski, former QA director for The Witcher 3, recounts a frustrating bug in the game's prologue where a door would fail to unlock after defeating a boss, requiring a workaround of simply disabling the locking mechanism entirely. The sheer volume of potential issues—broken physics, AI glitches, collision errors—often leads developers to avoid interactive doors altogether.
Fortnite's bold solution: destruction and dynamic design
Fortnite, however, blazes a different trail. In its chaotic multiplayer environment, doors are dynamic and editable, allowing players to create openings mid-battle. This necessitates real-time recalculation of collisions and visibility across a hundred players, demanding exceptional server synchronization. The game prioritizes destruction as a solution; when doors or structures impede navigation or cause physics conflicts, the system favors demolition over complex AI programming. If an enemy bot can’t navigate around an obstacle, it simply breaks through it.
The prevalence of this design choice highlights a fundamental truth: implementing truly interactive doors in games is a surprisingly complex and resource-intensive undertaking. It's a testament to the hidden challenges faced by developers and a reason why, despite their ubiquity in the real world, doors often remain silent, static observers in our digital adventures.