Slashdot Mirror
Building a Successful "Open" Game World
M3rk sends an excerpt from an opinion piece on Gametopius discussing what it takes for an open game world to be successful. Interesting stories and characters are important, but they must be balanced by varied and entertaining gameplay. The lack of either will be a limiting factor in how many people return to play once the primary plot is completed. Quoting:
"A game like GTA IV takes itself and its fiction very seriously. It spends a lot of time, effort, and gameplay resources convincing you that the world you are traveling through is the same world that the story and cutscenes take place in. It may not be a game that allows you to own or control property to the degree seen in Burnout Paradise or Saints Row II, but it wants its world to be cohesive, not divided. ... While GTA IV's game systems almost serve its plot, Saints Row II and Burnout Paradise live for their game mechanics. Sure, these worlds are fun to look at and explore, but any exploration and discovery that the player enjoys merely drives them to these games' raison d'être: fun systems to play with."
A game like GTA IV takes itself and its fiction very seriously. It spends a lot of time, effort, and gameplay resources convincing you that the world you are traveling through is the same world that the story and cutscenes take place in. It may not be a game that allows you to own or control property to the degree seen in Burnout Paradise or Saints Row II, but it wants its world to be cohesive, not divided.
Burnout Paradise? Is that a typo? Of his five or so examples of open world games, I'd say that's the ONLY one with less control over the game world - particularly in the sense of controlling "property" - than GTAIV.
halo is a rather poor example... you are the sole character seeking to save your race. It has a pretty good story; kind of farfetched, but not too much.
Space Quest, Maniac Mansion, King's Quest, etc were quite "open" games in the sense that players were encouraged to try anything they could think of to solve puzzles. Quite often there were multiple answers to a single puzzle (consider the permutations just through the "demo" portion of Zak McCracken and the Alien Mindbenders, for example).
The biggest problem with so-called "open" or "sandbox" gameplay is that gamers are given a giant, flat piece of concrete and a single toy with which to play around. It can be fun for a while, but quickly gets boring when you realize that the underlying gameplay has no mutability, no change. One of the most famous quotes about gameplay and rules is "before you can think outside the box, there needs to be a box" - which is why systems with underlying rules (such as pencil-and-paper roleplaying games)spur much greater player creativity than "blank slate" mechanics.
"Storyline on rails", like Half Life, can be fun. Equally fun can be "explore the storyline" or "choose your own adventure" style gameplay. The problem for "open" games, by contrast, is that by the time you finish their weak-ass, boring "storyline" mode, all you're left with is the concrete slab and a single toy. Sure you can do "whatever you want" (defined as "whatever crap minimissions were flagged as infinitely repeatable") but that gets boring as hell. Sure, maybe there's an achievement for screwing and then killing 1000 hookers in GTA 5: Attack of the Censors. Sure, maybe you get a "trophy" for retrieving 2000 kids' balloons in Spider-Man 4: Beating a Dead Horse. You know what? That kind of "gameplay" bores the crap out of me."
Give me a good, solid exploration/adventure style title over the GTA model any day of the week, please.