in a game like Gone Home or Tacoma, the world is inert until you have an effect on it. The fact that you are opening a cabinet and picking up an object and rotating it isn’t important to the game world… What’s important is that through affecting the game world, you’re creating(p. 131)your understanding of it
This really explores how in Gone Home, everything you know about the story is how in depth you explore the game. Every new note or snippet reveals something new to the story that produces some sort of appeal and satisfaction. Agency is related to this as "through affecting the game world, you're creating your understanding". The player feels satisfaction through finding something new and completing the missing pieces of the puzzle of what has occurred while Katie was gone.