MMOGs and Sandbox-Style Play

An anonymous reader writes "Why do so few games truly embrace the sandbox metaphor? The folks at GamersWithJobs have their own opinions, and think that MMOGs may be replacing The Sims as the center of the 'emergent gameplay' movement. From the article: 'I don't know if it's a function of age, or experience or perhaps just changing tastes, but my favorite games are increasingly the ones where I can find my own methods of play. I loved that Dead Rising simply gave me a maul, a chainsaw and an army of zombies. Perhaps my love of MMOs is as much related to the opportunity to explore and adventure on my own as any actual construction of gameplay.'"

So, typo or not?

[ReverendLoki]

I loved that Dead Rising simply gave me a maul , a chainsaw and an army of zombies.

I can't decide if this is a typo or not. I know it takes place in a MALL, as in a shopping center, but I haven't played the game, so I'm a little short on details. I know it's known for giving you a wide variety of weapons, but is a MAUL, as in a large two-handed warhammer, one of them? Or does any large impromptu bludgeoning device count? Is this a typo, a clever play on words, or an unintended pun?

Star Wars: Galaxies

[cmize]

When Star Wars: Galaxies first came out it was more of a sandbox game and I absolutely loved it. I would love to see another game try it because I think SOE handled the whole game badly and I'd like to see that type of game done really well.

Re:Star Wars: Galaxies

[Terminal Saint]

To this day I still maintain that with the exception of the combat system, Galaxies is the best MMO released so far. And truth be told, the combat was still fun in the first couple weeks, back when everyone had crap gear and no advanced professions.

Sandbox vs Storyline

[hollywoodb]

I can't dispute the popularity of the Sims or Second Life, but I'm really not a big fan of the "sandbox" style of play. I would much rather have an engaging storyline and objectives, both short and long term as far as the shelf-life of the game is concerned.

I've played A Tale in the Desert [atitd.com] and its a decent game. No combat, and arguably a bit of a sandbox-style game. You can basically do whatever you want within the limits of the game, but there are objectives and goals as well. The most rewarding aspect is working with fellow players in a guild to advance in the game. In the end, though, I don't feel the game offers anything beyond a little enjoyment. It isn't engaging enough for me to justify paying the subscription price.

I've also played quite a bit of EVE Online. Now there's a bit of a storyline to EVE, but the general goal of playing as far as I can tell is either to get really rich, really powerful, or both. As you progress in skills and equipment there can be some great fun fighting battles with your teammates to protect territory you have claimed as your own. But in the end for me it suffers the same fate as ATITD, it doesn't offer anything beyond a little enjoyment. It isn't engaging enough for me to justify paying the subscription price.

What I'd like to see rather than "sandbox" style games where you can be anything you want to be are games where what players do have a direct impact on the game world. Picture, if you will, a game that actually evolves beyond adding features. I'm not much of a visionary, but I'll try to put this forward to illustrate what I'm trying to explain:

Think of a real-time Risk-type game with at least a few thousand players. Your alliance manages to take over a territory after a long enduring battle against the territory's previous rule. Anyone "living" (not everyone needs to be involved militarily) now falls under your jurisdiction and is subject to laws your alliance has explicitly written. However in a seperate area of your empire there are players who prefer a different form of government than yours. They manage to stage an uprising while your alliance has neglected to keep military presence in that area...

Now that's a game I would play, something where what I and what others around me do actually affect the game world in a significant way. Imagine a WWII style game where if your armies run around gold-mining instead of fighting towards a common goal the Third Reich actually does take over Europe and now you're behind the eight ball. Imagine in that game a real chain of command based on a democratic system where those at the top actually lay out strategies and plans for invasion, defense, disruption of enemy supply lines, etc. Imagine your enemy suddenly doesn't get that shipment of ammunition before you stage an offensive. Imagine being that enemy and suddenly being up shit creek and trying to scramble reinforcements. Imagine decision makers having to decide which engagement is more valuable and which victory can be sacrificed.

real or no real

[User 956]

I don't know if it's a function of age, or experience or perhaps just changing tastes, but my favorite games are increasingly the ones where I can find my own methods of play.

It could be a function of age... as you get older, you realize that life itself is a kind of 'sandbox game' where you make your own path, and set your own goals within a larger pre-existing system. So having a game where you can approach it with your same day-to-day mindset, but also run down zombies with a jeep, makes sense in its appeal.

Important premise

[HomelessInLaJolla]

> my favorite games are increasingly the ones where I can find my own methods of play

A system will continue to run when the rules are broken. A game ends when the rules are broken. Many games don't end suddenly when the rules are no longer followed but, rather, they begin to repeat themselves and become quite predictable and, thus, boring.

Good games are few and far between: one of the reasons why chess is timeless. It has rules, they cannot be broken, yet people still play it.

Football, basketball, volleyball, soccer, etc. are arguably not games as the rules have been slowly evolving. They are systems. Systems tend to persist longer than games.

The conceptual difference between the two is very important. Society is a system, constantly evolving, and it is both conscious and subconscious, both behavioral and psychological, both learned and inherited.

On rare occasion one will find a "game" which can be turned into a system. My favorite was "Pirates!" on my Amiga 500. I played it through once or twice by the script and then continued to play it for months with the only goal in mind to maintain a "notorious" reputation with all four nations while still sailing, docking, trading, and plundering wherever I pleased.

Exodus: Ultima III was another good system (excellent music on the C=64, as well). Most f4ntasy adventure games could be made into systems.

Expansion packs are very important parts of games because they allow the original game engine to be expanded, making it closer to a system. I've found that games which have confined maps tend to wear out more quickly--another reason for expansion packs.

Some guys play with their nuts. Other guys play with their car alarms.

Realtime physics is a big win

[Vector7]

The basic problem with MMORPGs games is that so few of them contain any real action or physics component. In something like WoW, you can run around in real time, but your interaction with the world is basically limited to whatever commands (attack, spells, etc) the developers program in. In something like GTA you get so-called "emergent gameplay" simply because you have some terrain and a physics engine, and it's a lot of fun just to race around trying to abuse it. Pedestrians, other vehicles, police, etc add an extra dimension of entertainment, but a mostly decorative one - fundamentally, GTA is fun because driving around insanely is fun, and everything else is just there to stimulate your imagination and placate that part of your mind that expects some context it can relate to. In most MMO games, the basic mechanics of the world don't enable much more than walking around and admiring the scenery. Gameplay in these environments is more contrived in the sense that it requires a greater mental investment in roleplaying and fabricating some motivating work-reward structure (which might be OCD trying to max your character out, social activity within a guild, or whatever).

Given an MMO with greater interactivity than the typical "run, click, watch animation" style, there are a lot of fun things you could do. A fine example of emergent gameplay within a very simple system, from my childhood playing the NES, was the game River City Ransom, which had just enough physics that two players could invent mini sports to play using the objects lying around, like baseball using a pipe and a rock, or a crude form of soccer by kicking a trash can around the map. There's an elemental simplicity to this that transcends the games of stat manipulation (decorated with pretty scenery and storylines) that RPGs typically offer.

If it sounds like I'm ragging on WoW, it's only because I'd rather be playing an MMO version of a game like Zelda.

Want to change the game world?

[Anonymous Coward]

Play Wurm Online. It's a 3D fantasy MMOG written by a couple guys out of Sweden, entirely in Java. It's a big come-down for people accustomed to Oblivion-level graphics, but it has the outrageous (by MMOG standards) feature of allowing the players to dig up the terrain, rearranging it to suit themselves. You can also tunnel through rock. It's a skill-based game, rather than level based. You can choose to concentrate on any mix of upwards of 70 different skills that pleases you, doing what you want.

Some things to note for all you amazingly twisted "classic" MMOG gamers out there:

1) There are absolutely no quests.
2) Mobs do not drop gold, weapons, armor, tools, panties, or anything else when you kill them. If you're good at butchering, you get meat, furs, teeth, eyes, and sundry other animal parts.
3) Cash is not required. Period. While there is an in-game currency, it is entirely superfluous, if you choose to play that way. Anybody can make any item in the game. (Eventually. Might take some practice.)
4) Two servers, with travel between. One PvP, one not. Don't even start to complain.

It's very much a boutique game. If you're willing to accept that it wasn't developed by a mega-corp, and therefore has some glaring deficiencies by modern standards (characters don't animate), and if you like self-directed gameplay, you might like it. It's one big sandbox world.

Yes, it runs in Linux.

http://www.wurmonline.com/ [wurmonline.com]

Open gameplay

[Shadukar]

Slightly unrelated (hey, its Slashdot) but for a while now I have been noticing that the games I come back to play over, and over again are games which give me the freedom to play how I want to. Games where you chose how you solve problems, where you can charge in guns blazing or creep around the edges where you can out-gear/out-manoeuvre your opponents rather than out-twitch them.

Lets look at some examples that best explain what I mean:

Games which did it best:

Deus Ex
- Awesome game for many, many reasons, but relevant is the fact that you could approach each problem from many directions - two guards ahead - you can sneak past them using the vents (classic) you can go in guns blazing, you can set up some sort of proximity mine (gas/explosive) you can take control of nearby robots/turrets) you can tranquilise them, you can knock them out, you can find another way to go. Likewise, the way you create your character, you can dump all skillpoints into pistols, or rifles or you can put all your points into engineering/hacking and you can still finish the game. All styles of play are valid - you kill all the terrorists in the first level for example and your peacenik brother tells you off for killing too many people but the cops are cheering you on. Kill no one in that level and your brother praises you but the cops tell you off for being a peacenik.

Morrowind
- Huge game with incredible aesthetic value of art, flavour and atmosphere, lots to do and a ton of add on quests to expand it further. However, numerous ways to create and play your character open up the possibilities of actual, real re-playing. You can play a stealthy rogue or a rapid direct damage spell caster, or a demon-summoner or an armoured knight or any weird combination of these! You can catch on-rails transport or you can make ring of jumping or ring of flying or cast these spells yourself. The list goes on and on. If you play this game once and just charge everything with the biggest sword, you're missing out - there are many ways to play and finish this game! There is a kinda famous example of some guy that kept making intelligence potions to boost his int till he became so intelligent he could make potions to make himself invincible - yeah, borderline-bug exploit, but goes to show that even a lowly alchemist can make it in this world.

FarCry
- Yes, it is a pretty simple 1st person shooter. You can't bribe your way past the guards, effectively roleplay a "git off my lawn" druid or an evil knife wielding hacker. However, what this game did quite well was having huge open areas with plenty of cover for the player to approach most areas in any way they want. For example, there is a camp full of mercenaries up a head. It has some sniper towers, some guys in tents/buildings, alarm, radio that can call in for helicopter and two fixed position miniguns. You might need a vehicle from that camp, or a keycard, etc. Now this is where the fun starts: you can ride in your car blasting everyone. Or you can use a silenced gun and slowly creep through the camp taking people out 1 or 2 at a time from behind before they can fire a shot. Or you can sneak up into one of the sniper towers and take people out from there. Or you can get up on a nearby hill and sniper or rocket from there. Or you can fire some shots from one direction, run into the forest, run around the camp, then do the same thing from opposite direction, taking a few people out every time. Or you can drag all the mercs into the forest, taking them out as they are chasing you through the trees. Or you can run into the camp and take one of the miniguns and start mowing down everyone. Or find a boat and do bombardment from the nearby river! Or a combination of any of these! Then the helicopter with reinforcements arrives and you have many choices again, from shooting it down yourself to taking up one of the fixed miniguns, etc

Almost made it:

GTA-SA
- A lot of missions were basically "use this car, with this gun, to go on these streets, do not deviate"

Re:Sandboxes still need direction

[Anonymous Coward]

I find your experience with Morrowind and Oblivion really funny actually - I found that I adored Morrowind and became bored with Oblivion after the first bit. I played through the first bit of Morrowind, and then it cut me loose - and I didn't know what I should do - so I wandered the streets of a town and talked to some locals - and I realized that I wasn't on a quest - I was just supposed to go out and live my life in Morrowind, it was incredible to me - and I did - and innexorably, no matter what you do in the game - you eventually falling back into the main story line and fulfilling your destiny - it's awesome. Oblivion I played for a bit, and I was always being told to go to this town and talk to this person to progress the main storyline - of course I could deviate and do side quests - but really I felt Oblivion was actually like a very linear passageway, that just happens to be incredibly wide - you can sidestep all you like, but so long as you keep going forward your really just going the same way.