Building a Successful "Open" Game World 104
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."
Wait, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Meh (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Neither of the factor is a must for a game to be a success. World of Warcraft for example. It has no story, weak characters and gameplay which been obsolete for about 10 years. Halo is another example.
All it takes is to target the right market at the right time and have a huge marketing budget. Everything else is optional
Re:procedurally generated history (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Meh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Idea: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Idea: (Score:0, Insightful)
Slashdot is a pleasant refuge from the "Fr1St POsT" idiocy which is so common on other forums. For that reason alone, I'd like to see the GP moderated into oblivion.
Re:Idee fixe of first person (Score:2, Insightful)
The story told is already happened.
Playing a game takes place in the present.
Everything you experience creates stories in your life. Like this article you just read on slashdot. You can tell it. But like the tactical post analysis of any RTS session, which is sometimes more enjoyable as the game itself, its just the result of the game.
You hardly are able to tell a specific story in a game, except through taking away control from the player.
What you can hope for, is that a game resonates into a story, which lets the player experience another story from his own perspective.
It is a common misunderstanding of game design to think about games like stories. They are not. As is any activity, its taking place in the present. You dont think about how cool you jump and shoot another one in the head. However, you remember it, shortly after, and enjoy the moment of writing "pwnd" in the console or talking about it afterwards. "Remember...?"
And that's why not everything you can do in storytelling will work with games.
Most RTS games let you control a lot of units. So yes, you can identify yourself with a lot of different persons. Even most old RPGs let you build parties. But it's not the same, as experiencing the story of many characters in a movie leading to a plotline. And remember, if there are a lot of characters, their plotlines always cross.
Even if you try different characters, I think especially in an open game, that would not work so much.
Also, there should be a difference between game and toy. A game where you can mix your plotlines to get a movie is more or like a toy, not a game. There has to be some gameplay. Even in SIMs there is. If you play SIMs with a moneyhack you will get bored soon. Even if you can let your characters act out in all possible situations you want to imagine.
Re:Idee fixe of first person (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Meh (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Neither of the factor is a must for a game to be a success. World of Warcraft for example. It has no story, weak characters and gameplay which been obsolete for about 10 years. Halo is another example.
The "Warcraft" and "Halo" worlds are actually pretty well fleshed out with lots of detail, so I don't think these are the best examples for "successful games with no story".
Better examples, IMHO, include: Tetris, Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Band, most flight sims and racing games.