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Assassin's Creed And the Future of Sandbox Games 73

Posted by Zonk from the open-gaming-is-a-good-way-to-go dept.
Wired's Game|Life blog, and the site of gaming academic Henry Jenkins, discuss sandbox games and the impact of Assassin's Creed . The relevant discussion on Jenkins' site is actually written by GAMBIT lab supervisor Matthew Weise. He argues that open-ended worlds, by their very nature, require some restraints on the player's avatar. Otherwise, the game's meaning is diluted. Likewise, if you're going for a 'sandbox' world, allow that limited character unlimited opportunities. "When I think of open-ended world design I tend to think of worlds that don't involve such limitations. Call it the result of a childhood playing Ultima. I think of worlds in which, if you need to kill the dragon in the cave and you happen to have a drill, there's no reason you can't just drill straight down, bypassing all his little traps, and kill the bastard. That's open-ended to me. That's sandbox. The pleasure of such incredible agency is much more satisfying than any forced narrative structure."
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Assassin's Creed And the Future of Sandbox Games More

Assassin's Creed And the Future of Sandbox Games

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  • boring (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @02:14PM (#21945058) Journal
    I find open ended games to bore me more than structured ones. I mean sure I get the new sword and the new shield and now I can goto another area, but I have no sense of progress. Instead I'll get bored and just give up, where as a game with a focus or several paths I can follow happily feeling I'm achieving stuff rather than just wandering blindly grinding to level up stuff.

    • Re:boring (Score:5, Funny)

      by Deltaspectre ( 796409 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @02:16PM (#21945104)
      It works well if there are a lot of fun distractions and "sidequests" to do. Just look at GTA: San Andreas... "I'm taking my towtruck to the do...AIRPLANES! LETS GO FLY AIRPLANES!"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nf1nk ( 443791 )
        Was there actually a use for the tow truck? It was fun and all but I only remember one or two missions that needed it.

        • Re:boring (Score:5, Funny)

          by Deltaspectre ( 796409 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @02:28PM (#21945242)
          I just use it once in a while to tow the random unsuspecting person at the stop light and drive them into the water.
          • That's one of the best arguments for wide-open game play I've ever read or heard. I might have to find a cheap copy of the game so I can do just that.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by lb746 ( 721699 )
              Steam just added all the rockstar games to their list. I think all the GTA series is something around $29, quite a good deal I plan to pick up this coming weekend.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Mercano ( 826132 )
              Its on Steam for like $18.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by jcnnghm ( 538570 )
              Stealing the train and derailing it is pretty neat, as is skydiving. If you get a ramp truck and drive it to the top of the mountain, you can grab a motorcycle, jump off, and sky dive down if you bring a parachute. Sometimes when you carjack somebody the passenger will stay in the car, at that point head on collisions and driving into the water can be fun.

              San Andreas was a really cool game, there are so many little things you could do.

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by Gingernads ( 831161 )
            You can also use the GTA:SA towtrucks to tow other towtrucks! I managed to get a train of 6 going for a few miles. Corners and traffic were a pain though.
            GTA:SA was quite simply one of the best games I have ever played for pretty much allowing you to do whatever looks feasible.
      • GTA has focus though, you have to follow it through to unlock new stuff, it's done in a way that feels free but is still restrictive enough to feel you're moving forward.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) *
      I think it only works where the world is itself interesting enough to make the game worth playing. I love sandbox games, though admittedly I seldom finish them, because finishing to me seems like it's missing the point.

      I think a dynamic world coupled with a multi-user environment offers a lot of sandbox possibilities. Imagine GTA if you could be a cop, shooting down other dumbasses who were running over prostitutes? That'd be a hell of a game.

      I think in the long run the genre will transition to MMOs...That'
      • Imagine if you could be the prostitute, making money turning tricks, dodging cars, fighting off johns who want their money back, and running from the cops?

        How about if you work for the mob boss the GTA guys are trying to kill?

        What if you're a crooked construction boss who makes money building buildings on the loan shark's money. You also make protection payments so your office and your sites don't get shut down, and the GTA-type guy with a body comes to you to pay you cash to hide some bodies in a foundatio

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by misleb ( 129952 )

        I think a dynamic world coupled with a multi-user environment offers a lot of sandbox possibilities. Imagine GTA if you could be a cop, shooting down other dumbasses who were running over prostitutes? That'd be a hell of a game.

        As long as it didn't simply turn into yet another team FPS. For example, the dumbasses would have to actually run over the prostitute. You can't just arrest/shoot any PC that isn't a cop. There has to be "stars" on them. There'd also need to be some incentive for a player to commit

        • I don't know how you play the game, but any time I pick up a GTA game or clone, it's next to impossible for me to keep from committing several hundred crimes in any given ten minute span...
      • Sounds like you want APB from Realtime Worlds. http://www.realtimeworlds.com/index.php?id=383&pid=3 [realtimeworlds.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grumbel ( 592662 )
      ### I mean sure I get the new sword and the new shield and now I can goto another area, but I have no sense of progress.

      I think Gothic2 solved this very nicely, at least for most part. You could go basically everywhere whenever you want, but doing so early on would kill you very quickly, since you neither had the equipment nor the experience. Later in the game you earned that experience and could thus more freely navigate around. What helped a lot is that Gothic2 didn't have respawning enemies, so once you

    • Oblivion (Score:2, Insightful)

      by tieTYT ( 989034 )
      I had this complaint about Oblivion when I played it the first time. The game is more unstructured than Morrowind (its prequel). Oblivion boasts having like 200+ caves to explore or something. But, the enemies and the items they drop totally depend on the level you're at. If you're level 1, they drop wooden arrows and cloth armor. If you're level 10, they drop steel arrows and mithril armor. So, when faced with the question, "Should I explore this cave or should I explore that cave?" you eventually re
    • Open ended is the way to go. GTA is a great example of how great open ended is. Assasin's creed is terrible. So much potential yet they built half a game then just copied and pasted the same quests. Had they put as much emphasis on story and quests as GTA, Assisins Creed would have been a superb game instead of the borefest it is. Fiestas Benalmadena [boxfiesta.com]

  • Assassin's Creed was no sandbox... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PrescriptionWarning ( 932687 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @02:17PM (#21945110)
    Sims, Black & white (the first 1), Morrowind, now those have more in common with the sandbox style of play. Assassin's creed has fairly open levels to be sure, but I heard with all your wall climbing abilities there are still far too many walls the game limits you from going beyond.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dyslexicbunny ( 940925 )
      I always envisioned Thief being much more like a first person Assassins Creed in a huge city (I've only watched 20 minutes of Creed before I left). Something where you can wander the city and do whatever and take jobs to raise funds to work towards getting intel, bribing folk, getting better equipment/skills, or snagging a disguise for more prospective work.

      The only limits would be funding to get the intel - in theory you could go into this badass place right at the beginning but you might not be able to

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by renegadesx ( 977007 )
      I'd say Assassin's Creed was about as sandbox as GTA only with climbing walls replacing stealing cars and other "equivilents" between modern times and the crucades.

      Despite Creed was a good game and all, it failed to meet it's near impossible expectiations.
  • The other day I was replaying Vice City and in the mission where you break the safe cracker out of jail I reflexively drove the guy home despite the police trying to slam me off the road. I get to the glowing pink halo just to note on the map that it wanted me to go to a Spray N Paint on the way to where I was. By then it only took a couple of more hits from the cops and my NPC passenger went up in flames with the car. I had to replay the mission following the game's route even though I'd made it to my dest

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Maybe it isn't such a good idea to drop a guy off in front of his home when a thousand police are chasing you?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by beluv ( 757231 )
      The problem there is that you led the police right to his house.
  • Baldur's Gate 1, Baldur's Gate 2. 'nuff said.

  • Sandy Assassin's Creed (Score:5, Informative)

    by hansamurai ( 907719 ) <hansamurai@gmail.com> on Monday January 07, 2008 @02:49PM (#21945564) Homepage Journal
    Having played through Assassin's Creed, the best thing the game has going for it is its open world. The game is the single most repetitive game I have ever played, partly from how open it is. While its openness is beneficial for exploration (finding and climbing viewpoints is awesome), going from point A to point B should only take X number of minutes, but actually takes 5X because guards are spotting you from a 100 feet away because you're not walking as slow as possible. I really had high hopes for this game and while the first few hours are fun [thefirsthourblog.com], if you get through them you have basically beaten the game. Here's my full review [blogspot.com] here.

    I've never read Henry Jenkins but I totally agree with him that Metal Gear Solid and Mario 64 are really good sandbox games, even if they aren't the typical open game.

    • Re:Sandy Assassin's Creed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by flitty ( 981864 ) on Monday January 07, 2008 @03:40PM (#21946302)
      This is how I feel about Assassin's Creed: If you want it to be the most repetitive game ever, it can be. Same with GTA. You can use your sword in every battle, only doing counter-attacks and the combat then sucks. However, you can force yourself to swap weapons in the middle of the fight to fight a different style, and it becomes fun. You can solve the quests (of which there are about 5) the same way each time, or you can find new ways of completing the tasks, adding variation to the game.

      Yeah, some people might complain that you can play "massive gaurd slaughter" Creed, but is that worse than a game that fails you out of any mission where you break your cover? And, If I were Ubisoft, I would patch the game so when you were in the "Kingdom" horse riding could be done at full speed. That's my only major complaint. It's a nice solid game though, at least as good as Mass Effect. However, I find myself playing COD4 more often than AC.

      • You can use your sword in every battle, only doing counter-attacks and the combat then sucks. However, you can force yourself to swap weapons in the middle of the fight to fight a different style, and it becomes fun.
        I firmly believe that it is the developers job to create a compelling and entertaining game. Claiming that the player is playing it wrong if he isn't enjoying the game is disingenuous.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by LKM ( 227954 )
          In a way, you're right. Clearly, the AC developers failed to encourage the proper style of playing the game. Even so, GP is correct. AC can be played in a boring way (power through the game as quickly as possible) or in a fun way (take your time, evaluate what you can do, don't do the same thing in each mission). If you're playing it with the first style, you're only cheating yourself. Yes, it's the developer's fault. It's still a good idea to play the game "properly."

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by hansamurai ( 907719 )
        Here is how I found it repetitive, expanding some on my review.

        Combat: You are correct that you can switch weapons up in battle, and I found myself doing that constantly near the end when the game threw 25 guys at you at once for on reason other than to throw 25 guys at you at once. And I admit that when I found out how cool it was to fight with just the assassin's blade by only countering, I had more fun. But, the problem is every large fight seemed to go about the same way. About five guys would approa

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by sanosuke76 ( 887630 )
          Speaking of when the targets killed someone before you could kill them... my main gripe was that (unlike the rest of the crowds in Creed) I couldn't push through the crowds just in time to step in and assassinate the target right before he was able to plunge a dagger into the guy he was killing. I mean, what's the point of being an assassin-hero if you can't make a bold, heroic gesture and save someone's life at the critical moment?

        • The other type of task was...racing. Yes, the epitome of immersion and realism in games; a rooftop race collecting flags. Nobody notices these flags, nobody noticed the masked assassin planting them, and nobody notices you hopping merrily along collecting them.

          I wanted to love AC, I really did, but it's a rail game. I liked it better when it was Beyond Good and Evil. "You can switch weapons during combat, and that makes it less repetitive!" Please.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MutantEnemy ( 545783 )
        The problem with Assassin's Creed is that the civilians and guards don't really behave sensibly, which is essential for the illusion of a realistic, open environment to be explored. To give two examples: in every city there are numerous guys on soapboxes speaking about the crusades and such: "South comes the English King and his infidel army!" etc. Go up to one of these guys and put your hidden blade in his back. What happens? Nothing. Nobody screams, the crowd just wanders off as if he's gone to sleep. S
      • 'patch the game so when you were in the "Kingdom" horse riding could be done at full speed.' But you can ride the horse at full speed in the "Kingdom." I rode all over the territory with both R-Trigger pulled in (fast) and A-Button pushed (reallyreallyfast), and the horse ran like the dickens. Sure, the guards notice you quickly, but you also outdistance them nearly as fast, and after a set amount of time the "wanted" condition resets. No big deal. And I agree with you on GTA; finding new ways to battle,

  • Crysis (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Jumphard ( 1079023 )
    Recently got Crysis for Jesusmas and I am thoroughly enjoying playing through it. I would classify it as a "sandbox" game in the same way Jenkins says MGS is a sandbox game. It gives you objectives (direction) but lets you determine the path with which you want to complete those objectives.

    Do you want to stealth in close and take them by surprise?
    Perhaps snipe the gas pump and make a distraction before blowing them away?
    Maybe guns blazing is your style.

    On top of the many combat approaches, there are multi
    • I agree. On the one level where you have to save the woman inside the school, there are at least five ways to go about it and they are all fun to execute (swimming was by far the least hassle, but you miss out on the high accuracy rifle). That's partly why I got a little annoyed later in the game where it gets much much more linear.

      Thankfully, the climactic battle was worth it.

  • Thief and Deus Ex (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    To me, the Thief series by Looking Glass is the best of the exploration-based sandbox games to date. It is not open, but the sandbox is sufficiently large and the options sufficiently varied to make for excellent gameplay. Want to try entering from the front door? Go for it. Dash for it, kill, knockout, hide, distract, creep, wait, retreat, provoke AI to attack each other, or climb in a *fully utilized and mostly unscripted* 3D environment. Although later games were more sandbox-like, none I've played

  • sandbox games and the impact of Assassin's Creed
    Three pieces of kitty litter in a large, empty box - with no toys to play with the sand - barely constitutes a sandbox game.

    Any game where you can mock the zealots around the office who are boasting about their acheivements by saying, "Oooh! Did you press X?!" with mock excitement and have them look ashamed... That's just a great graphics rendering of what a sandbox might look like. It's not a sandbox.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ivan256 ( 17499 )
      I didn't even realize Assassin's Creed was supposed to be considered a "sandbox" game.... What a crock. The "plot" pulls you out of where you are and drops you on a linear path all the time. It's practically a definition of a linear game. Having multiple ways of accomplishing an objective doesn't make the game a sandbox game if the plot is still linear and the places you can go at any given time are limited.
      • Assassin's Creed WAS a sandbox game. Certainly, the world you were in had limits, but so does every sandbox title. As for the plot, I don't think its linearity disqualifies Creed as a sandbox game, it's all about the gameplay. Early on in Assassin's Creed I was climbing up a wall. The controls were still new to me, so instead of going from the stump I was hanging on to an inviting window further up I jumped clean off and belly flopped into the river at the bottom of an adjacent canyon. If the game wasn't s
  • Assassin's Creed's impact on gaming? Does anyone but Ubisoft and Gamespot realize that Assassin's Creed was widely unpopular with the very same gamers who hyped over it prior to release? I was thoroughly disappointed with AC and everything it had promised to deliver me. How this game could become a benchmark for future sandbox titles, or why anyone feels that its impact is powerful enough to write editorials about is beyond me. I was not impressed.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Saint_Waldo ( 541712 )
      Maybe it has something to do with AS moving around 2 million units even with all the bad press? Clashing opinions is the heart of controversy, and AS has that in spades. Some folks love it, some folks hate it, almost everyone interested in video games knows about it. Controversies get discussed. Just because you didn't like it or think it didn't live up to what you imagined it should be doesn't mean there isn't something to talk about.
      • AS = AC, I was up late watching Adult Swim, sorry.
      • I agree with this, but it can't be overlooked that the gameplay was inherently repetitive, and while the control system was intuitive and provided some *very* satisfying bloodshed, I didn't find it to be as innovative as was touted. There have been so many different approaches to the "freeroaming environment" mantra that this one feels like little more than an amalgamation of them all with a medieval twist. I just don't see why it's so original. But hey like you said, these discussions are only good for gam
  • is the sandbox I get from a table top RPG made in videogame form. Games like Assassin's Creed do a wonderful job of giving you a pretty big world to play in, but still battle with the challenge of difficulty versus realism and freedom within the confines of a story. For example, as much fun as Assassin's Creed was for the bits I played, it still felt really linear, to the point that I would almost call it a beat-em-up moreso than a stealth game. Yeah, I could have chosen "not" to mass-kill the guards. B

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GWLlosa ( 800011 )
      EVE Online has some of what you're talking about, although its obviously not a fantasy-based game (its about spaceships. pew pew pew). The trouble with the approach you've laid out is that there are a lot of players, and MOST of them suck at the game, relative to the few that are trying to 'win'. So in your example, if a dedicated employee sat there spinning out quests, about 1% of any given server would actively do them at a breakneck pace, whereas for the other 99%, this content is completely inaccessi
      • I don't think any company can spin out enough unique quests to keep the server happy. So the quests have to be either computer generated or generated by players.

        Again, EVE Online has some of it, but it is limited.

        1) You can always get a quest from a NPC agent, but these are rather repetitive. A few dozen missions that are repeated over and over. Maybe one could come up with a more intelligent mission generation system?

        2) Players can put out contracts that can be viewed as quests for other players. A good id

    • What you say has been tried. Star Wars galaxies, you created a character and then could build it up as you wanted. Be a dancing bounty-hunter. An engineering doctor.

      Well the system was a bit simpler then that, but at least early on it held the promise of you being able to create your own character, free from any cookie-cutter class as we know it from the EQ clones.

      The game also never worked.

      On of the possible proffessions for instance was image designer (or some name like it), a skill that allowed you t

  • I'm surprised theres not more here about emergent behaviour. Any true sandbox (i.e. 'here's a world, go play') should support emergent behaviour. GTA, as much fun as it is, never really lets you do anything the devs didn't design in. Sure, you CAN do things much more than the devs intended you to, but its hard to do something new. Personally, I've only ever seen/done one true bit of emergent play, in a game called Urban Chaos on PS1. Not realising the 'proper' route, I spent quite a while forcing a tru

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