Open World Sandbox Games
Ranting on the Lack of Inspiration in the Gaming Industry
I am designing a game… really just the worldbuilding right now… and its part of a whole storyverse…
Today I spent hours just making the map of the world…. using Google Drawings.
Suffice to say it wasn't a work of Cartography art, but it was actually fun to make and was great seeing this world we’ve been detailing for over a year come to life! Or at least to see it in real life.
In the past weeks, and much of today after I finished (this version of) my map, I began realizing all of the factors that go into creating a (game) world; especially one meant to facilitate an open world sandbox experience.
There are tragically few games that do open world games right, and even less that give sandbox gameplay its due respect.
Go anywhere. Do anything.
That's the motto… the marketing trope. Yet that is rarely ever the case!
Even a game as amazing as Skyrim is largely shallow in terms of comprehensive open world gameplay. Sure, you can (kind of) go anywhere, but the only things to do is kill things and run around looking for interesting things to do. I mean, Skyrim does this so very beautifully… which is why I spent an easy 150 hours before my xbox broke. The point however is that when you really look at the ‘open world’ piece, you realize quickly that the options to ‘do anything’ is not very open. Some people manage to carve out unique ways to play anyways, like the famous Cabbage Farmer. I highly doubt he was actually able to get as far in the game as he claimed just by selling cabbages, but it was unique.
Then when you take combat into consideration, you really see how flat the gameplay is. Anyone can see the dry combat mechanics in Skyrim. There’s not much flexibility or unique style to the combat at all. Adventuring itself in this huge open world feels uninspired as well. I’m not talking about the ability to find random side quests in the middle of the woods, getting lost/distracted by all of the intriguing sub plots… No, i mean the actual world of Tamriel.
Its not fun to explore for exploration’s sake. If there were no monsters to fight and no quests to do. Could I find simply experiencing the world of Skyrim to be fun? That's a resounding NO!
Now, obviously the reason for this might seem like a no brainer: there's not enough time or budget or even technology to do such frivolous things. The players dont care, they just want to do stuff.
However, I challenge that assumption. I used Skyrim to point out how even the arguably greatest game of this decade doesn't at all push the limits on what an open world should be. The same can be said for The Witcher 3 or GTA5 or MGS or any open world game made today.
These are just the great games… what about ‘okay’ games like Fallout 4 or pretty much any Assassins Creed or Dragon Age Inquisition, etc?
Paul puts it best in his video:
It all comes down to what he says about most devs just filling up a giant world with things the player can do to simply ‘not be bored.’
Illusion of Choice.
I love Open World games. I love Sandbox games. I think we should have more and more games like the upcoming Worlds Adrift and Chronicles of Elyria and Ashes of Creation and (hopefully) Anthem as well as Beyond Good and Evil 2 and Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous…
Unfortunately they (at least the ones that are out now), dont have a true open world. Especially not a sandbox where you can literally do anything.
They simply set up a good breath of limitations and let you out upon a usually uninspired plane of beautiful looking textured polygons.
I mean… the term ‘sandbox’ basically requires the ability to affect the world itself in a real way. That means Persistent Worlds. That means shifting political situations and monster placements and Terrain Destruction!!
Even though our technology has come a long way… it seems we are far from even the ‘One City Block RPG’ dreamt up decades ago…
Or at least that's what they want you to believe… it sure is cheaper and easier to just pump out empty, dry sandboxes and limited open world illusions…
I want more
That's why I will spend the next few years building the games I want to play, because what makes a game fun is actual, real, sustainable gameplay.
Eventually, mainstream ‘casual’ players will come to realize this too.
They’ll come to want true choice. They’ll desire true adventures. They’ll look for more than just graphics, novelty, sequels, and guns. They’ll demand more out of their games (that ask for ever more money with less and less content).
Why?
People aren't stupid… or lazy.
As much as elitists and pessimists and out-of-touch trolls would like to believe, most people are not simple-minded slobs.
They are simply products of their environment.
We are products of our environment.
We, humans, gain our expectations and tolerances and desires and accepted normalities in large part from our experiences.
It is the process of (hyper)normalization that shapes these expectations and tolerances into less desirable, and even self-harmful, paths. Not because people can't think for themselves, but because the mind is inherently fragile.
The brain is meant to be molded… to adapt.
Unfortunately, this means that those who have the power to create these environments and experiences have the power to shape our minds; whether it be through a constant barrage of ads or news or social media updates or even music and market prices and physical locations, our ideas of what is ‘acceptable’ can be eroded and seeded with new ideas.
This is true on the scale of the individual, as well as society in general.
Fortunately, we have a failsafe. Our (collective) mind(s) can snap back to our ‘original programming’ even after heavy reprogramming. On the per-person level, it only takes one other person or event to trigger this reorientation. Surrounding yourself with an environment or group of people that will question your beliefs and challenge you optimizes for the likelihood of this trigger. On a societal scale, it only takes a small group (usually headed by someone) to begin a wide-scale resurgence of past/lost values. Granted… these could be for the good OR bad, depending on what the past values were.
Nonetheless, this failsafe is almost inevitable in most cases. On the societal scale, this often manifests itself as anything from a paradigm shift of the masses, to a bloody revolution.
What does all of this have to do with gaming?
Everything.
Again, I point to Paul’s video for a more indepth (and much better) idea of hypernormalisation in life and gaming:
The point I want to make by bringing this up is to show how the gaming industry is ripe for, if not already teetering off the edge of, a major snapback to the days when games meant something.
I'm talking games that pushed the boundaries of what was possible every year; that inspired the imaginations of a whole generation of creative people.
‘Casual’ gamers are mainstream.
They are the audience of AAA shops. Thus, they hold the most sway in what the core of the gaming industry does. People are surrounded by an environment of freemium, microtransactions, and illusion of choice in the way of social media; so they come to expect or at least tolerate this in games.
Things happen fast. Only exaggerated or ‘sensationalist’ headlines get any real attention. News isn't very authentic, and there is so much of it that it's hard to remember all the events that happened just in one month.
This carries over to what people expect in games:
- Fast and explosive gameplay
- No authentic or deep storylines
- Non Memorable events
Thus we have shooters. The perfect genre of fast, sensational, shallow, and forgettable gameplay.
On top of all this is the fact that people are so inundated with entertainment, social media, or work that they dont have very much time to spend on gaming.
Subsequently, games have been hypernormalized as generic cash grabs.
This is a race to the bottom.
You can only go so far with microtransactions and on-disk DLCs and shallow gameplay and a blind focus on good graphics.
Despite mainstream gamers preferring graphics over everything, there is an increasingly discontent group of very vocal (and even powerful) hardcore gamers aching for more. People are using their collective weight to throw at review boards and forums and social media to call out publishers like EA and Ubisoft for their malpractice and shallow games as well as even past sweethearts like Bethesda for their laziness.
This is no small group either. In fact, its a whole cluster of groups. One of which includes myself in the corner of gamers who want real, sandbox, open world action combat MMO games. Furthermore, they (we) are demanding (and building) innovative systems to make it happen; pushing the whole industry to evolve (think persistent universes, voxelized terrains, and advanced AI with emergent behaviors and transliteration).
And so it comes full circle.
The gaming genre started out (or at least proliferated) with ugly RPGs. Then open world MMORPGs of old took over the whole industry, forcing it to evolve and reach more people than ever before, competing in graphics (for their time); died a slow and painful death, causing it to devolve into a mess of copy/paste gameplay and cash shops and stale looks; but is now coming back with a vengeance. Stylized graphics are now often lauded over photorealism. People are aware of budgets and often praise devs for a focus on gameplay over graphics.
It is inevitable. If even heavily marketed games like Destiny and The Division and COD: Infinite Warfare can fail so bad despite their being the pinnacle of formulaic, graphic-heavy blockbusters… then the industry doesn't have long before the balance tips back in favor of challenging, story-driven, truly open world games with reasonable pricing models.
It will take a while. Publishers are going to have come to a point where they have no way of ignoring the fact that nobody will accept p2w microtransactions and fragmented games. Hopefully, games like Anthem or Battlefront 2 or AC: Origins or Red Dead Redemption 2 dont fail (because of the inevitable cash shops/cards) for the sick bastards at these companies to justify no longer trying open world games…
Regardless, I have a good feeling that the industry will be ready for the game(s) I have planned. Whether I’ll be joining fellow innovative games with arms, or entering an industry starving for something so awesome is yet to be determined… But I am welcome this change of landscape.
