Making Up The Rules
Like most warm-blooded creatures, I don't particularly care for being told what to do. It's not that I'm bad at dealing with authority figures and go racing off in a convertible with a Marlboro jutting from the corner of my lips anytime someone asks me for a favor, but like most people, given my druthers – and who doesn't want their druthers? – I'd prefer to chart my own unimpeded course through life. While there is a simplicity in sacrificing free will, a comfortable reliability to predetermined and immutable schedules, there is an obvious downside to unrelenting predictability, just ask people in prison. For myself, despite the constant and crippling stress, the freedom of owning my own business exceeds the safety of working for the man, or the woman, or androgynous gender-neutral person.
My feeling on freedom within game environments skews the same way.
Traditionally in the discussion of non-linear gameplay and the boons thereof I'm supposed to say something positive about the Grand Theft Auto series, so here goes: GTA has never sodomized me. That's about the best thing I can think to say about Rockstar's overhyped, stereotype simulator. While I academically recognize the value of the game's open ended structure in popularizing that style of gameplay, I'd prefer to find emergent gameplay from mowing the lawn than hijacking another car and running over pedestrians in the streets of not-New York, not-Los Angeles or not-Miami. The game has less appeal to me than hiring Kevin Federline to dress-up like a clown and host my son's next birthday party. Actually, I'd kinda like to see Fed-Ex as an emasculated kid-party clown, but that's unrelated to the issue at hand.
A fundamental resistance to all things GTA may be the reason that I have been slow to fully encourage the modern concepts of open-ended structure and emergent gameplay as a design philosophy, when, now that I think on it, I've been creating my own emergent gameplay for years. The great sandboxes of Wil Wright, despite the lack of a hip buzzword, showcase how non-linear gameplay concepts were well fleshed before Rockstar shoved the method into three dimensions and bloodied it up with cop-killing and whore-humping as encouraged activities. While the PS2 gory gun-fest illegitimately takes a lot of credit for popularizing free-form design, the king of open-ended gameplay success came a full year before.
The Sims is nothing if not the ultimate exploration of non-linear game structure. The most successful PC game in history with 54 million units sold worldwide as of February 2005, it may lack the pizzazz of being able to shoot innocent people in automobiles, but it is every bit as much a free-form world as GTA, giving players endless tools to create their own fun. With no discernable point aside from accumulating wealth and possessions, the real fun of The Sims is in recreating your own family and putting them in untenable, often deadly, situations. I dare any man who played The Sims for any significant time to claim they didn't put some measurable amount of that time into trying to create Sim Lesbians. That one certainly wasn't in the manual. Nor was the endless fun of suffering some sad sim the unspeakable horror of being locked in an empty room where they wept for loneliness, hunger and a decent place to go to the bathroom.
In the wake of The Sims, another non-linear favorite was released, though my enthusiasm for this game was clearly in a minority. While Peter Molyneux's Black and White was largely lambasted by the gaming press and faithful, and not without reason, those who divested themselves entirely from the supposed game and managed to indulge in a sandbox style of play found a game far better than anything Lionhead had slapped together. Black and White's creature was a fascinating exploration of reactive artificial intelligence, and hours of fun were to be had in simply training your beast, or slapping him silly as the mood struck. While the sequel to Black and White had much more focused gameplay mechanics, and thus became a merely ignored title as opposed to widely maligned, it lost much of its charm by having specific goals.
The same complaint could be levied against The Sims 2; that by giving each sim desires of its own, these goals interfere with the gamers ability to simply play.
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 mall, 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. The best forms of play for me have become ones not where the developers are challenging me, but where I am challenging myself.
- Elysium
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I'm very curious to hear if anyone from Second Life picks up on this article. Is it a game, is it a second life? What is it besides the darling of all media outlets from Discover magazine to Newsweek?
I played There for a while (I think it was There, so long ago it seems) and it seemed too open ended, too sand-boxy. I needed something to push me forward, some danger. I needed the adrenaline, but I wish it would come from something other than violence.
wordsmythe wrote:
Crouton wrote:
Truth it is, devising your own way to play is often best way to invest time in a game.
For example, the most fun my friends and I ever had while we played Unreal Tournament (on dial-up, even) was not when we were trying to blast each other to pieces, but when we were trying to have fun by actually playing, like a gang of kids set loose in a wonderfull world where no real harm can be done, no matter what we do.
Best fun happened when we would stop chasing the best score, and insted try to devise a most cartoonish way to pulverise oneself. One of the most popular ways was to squat down facing a corner and fire six rockets under your own feet at the same time, while others were standing around and crying tears of laughter. Firing a pneumatic hammer in the wall had similar commic relief effect. Don't even get me started with the Flak.
Jumping from insanely high ledges became a sport instead of frustrating mistake.
Redeemer, the ultimate weapon of total destruction was thus turned into a simple camera, albeit a tad dangerous if the operator was unskilled. But still, it was fun to make screenshots of ten or so avatars waving while a huge cross hair was spoiling the view.
UT is just one (or another) example.
Panem et circenses
"You really need to smoke a tree first to appreciate that one." - Sanjuro
Love the article, Elysium.
GTA has the freeform potential, too. I remember playing with a couple of friends on a PS2 and just trying to make the coolest slides with a motorbike, finding jump platforms, ... Good times.
Great article, inspiring.
Roo: "Just to cheer you up if any of the above made you sad: Boobies."
Koning_Floris, on my online 'skills': "Stinking is a skill too!"
Interesting thought-provoker. I share some of the "eh" about GTA, although Bully was more entertaining for me. I think one of the things about simulators (not just Sims, but the whole sim-genre, including flight sim) is that they remove the idea of winning and losing. Certainly, you can play scenarios or set goals, but ultimately, they are proverbial sandboxes. I yearn for new examples (Spore, perhaps?).
With SL, i think things go to far. I've spent a fair amount of time in SL, and in the end, if you're not willing to build things you are relegated to wandering aimlessly, observing others creations, and occasionally interacting with them. But there's not much a non-architect can actually do. Random, poorly designed in-game games don't really make my gamer heart sing. SL in the end becomes not much more than a meeting hall -- it's the campus community center of the internet. It's only useful or interesting if someone else hits up the administration for a budget and organizes a committee to make something happen.
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"In other news, Miyamoto pissed on my head, and gave me a forecast of rain." - *Le
Thank Bejebus I'm not the only one that hated GTA! Every time I read an article praising the GTA series I would wonder, more and more, if I wasn't suffering from some sort of gaming down syndrome. Here's this game that all my gaming peers can't stop raving about and I completely didn't get why.
Call me a goodie two shoes, but cop killin' an' ho humpin' have never been "fun" activities in my mind. Same with stealing cars and running over their owners.
Xbox Live: Trachalio
Pipe Threader Manual wrote:
I thought GTA was a blast, although by the time San Andreas came out I was way over the crappy graphics and the fact I was doing the same things for the third time with a slightly different environment. I've never tried the Sims, but then again, I've never been tempted to. The irony of an article that criticizes GTA's hype and then praises Black & White is staggering.
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Great article, Elysium! I think you just got me out of my gaming slump.
Now I want to go teach the B&W creature new and interesting things the designers never thought off. Maybe I'll see just how many different les... er, Sims I can get to live in the same household.
My power of imagination appears to be severely lacking. Without concrete goals that I'll have to work hard to complete, I just get bored and stop playing. I actually enjoyed the console versions of The Sims more for their reliance on meeting specific requirements to unlock new content. See also: Oblivion.
Everything can be debated, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's debatable.
--Chuck Klosterman, Fargo Rock City
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
We did that quite a bit as well. We would do the cool jumps, or just see how much mayhem you could cause before you got killed/ arrested. I probably spent as much time doing that as I did playing through the game. GTA was actually what spurred me to buy a PS2.
XBox Live: PoppinfreshGWJ
LobsterMobster wrote:
Has anyone ever tried Multi Theft Auto, it's an add on to GTA that some guys built that lets you play it online against other people. Every year or so I get the urge to try it, and play it feverishly for a couple weeks and then I get bored. No missions, just cars and guns and other people to blow up until you get tired.
Maybe I'm just not creative enough, I think open games like GTA, WoW, etc. are great, but they have to have missions too. If they are just entirely open, I run out of things to do after a while.
"I'm up the spout!" - Jeremy "Nyles" Greenfield
I was stuck with my wife's laptop over our Christmas vacation, and Sims 2 was the only game she had installed. I created the Amityville Horror house... let the first few residents starve, or burn, or whatever, 'til the place was thoroughly haunted, then kept moving new people in. At the end, everybody was going insane from fright as a result of the ghastly visitations.
I can't wait until she plays again and sees the abomination I've created in her pretty world. Mwahaha!
Mercury's been in retrograde most of the week. It's like a full moon with a side of kicked-in-the-nuts. -- H.P. Lovesauce
Some thoughts:
- I liked Vice City, but not so much the other GTAs. This is because I really enjoyed driving around doing fun stuff while listening to the Vice City radio stations.
- I played a lot of Morrowind, but got sort of bored with it as I learned that you don't have the option to do anything more fun than commit heinous murder and larceny. Between that and the lack of RP character depth, I just sort of stopped playing.
- Might there be an overemphasis in the game design world on goals and being able to "win"?
Elysium: The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid.
XBL: E Munnie
elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
Not if they are aiming for the LCD.
While I intellectually appreciate and desperately want to like most "sandbox games", I almost always find myself literally frozen by the options I have before me. If I can force a personal framework within my first session in the game, I can get past it (my person will focus on X, I will start my city here, along this road I just built... to hell if 3 other spots on the map look just as good). But if I can't, forget it. There's just too many damn decisions to make, and they all seem like good ones. It's not really all that good for someone who tends to avoid making final decisions on virtually anything.
Psychotic Foreign Teenage Chicks are so hot. - Legion
I find it ironic anytime a healthy vaccinated person bitches about science...on the internet. - MaverickDago
Perhaps if there's too many good options, you should turn up the difficulty level.
We are talking about Civ IV now, right?
Elysium: The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid.
XBL: E Munnie
elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
Most sandbox or open-ended games still have some form of progression to them. Essentially, reaching the end of that progression could be considered "winning." Continuing with GTA as an example, Vice City specifically, once I had the big mansion and all the weapons I stopped playing. Or in WoW, I hit 60 and had no clue what to do. I didn't beat these games. I could play as long as I wanted and do whatever I wanted but at that point all of the mechanics had been explored and tested thoroughly enough that there was little incentive to do so.
JUST PUZZLED YOUR ASS UP, SON! -Mr Crinkle
Agreed, McChuck, but I like being the one to determine when I've won. I think another solid example is Armadillo Run, which certainly has its own victory conditions but opens the door for limitless emergent gameplay. I use emergent and non-linear gameplay a little interchangably, while there are some distinctions to be made between the two, but the sentiment is the same.
Also Garry's Mod for HL2 is nothing but a wonderful playground, but is a great example of how simply having the tools can be endlessly fun.
"I think Elysium has the right of it" - Certis
I liked X3 as a freeform sandboxy game. Once I climed the vertical learning curve, I found I was quite free to build my empire the way I saw fit. While the management of everything was pretty daunting the branches and advances I could take were fun to explore. The game could use some more in-game competition though. As long as you don't go pissing off an empire or explore really non-secure space, you can actually let your game run itself at a point... the benefit of that is that you can come back to a ton of money and find another way to play and that was one great thing the game did.
The challenges scale up with you. At the start you're a putz in 1 freighter so your challenges are finding individual deals, or shirking that role and going for attacking ships for their bounty or re-sale value. As you progress, your challenges are more about recognizing larger scale opportunities and creating interesting goals like controlling all missile manufacture or becoming a sole supplier of certain minerals. And later you can take on whole empires or pirates or aliens. There's a lot to the game and its probably the most entertaining pure sandbox I've played... plus you get to say Kha'ak a lot. Yep, it can be pronounced how you're wondering.
ThePolypusher
WAR - Dolz
How many lesbians do you need to make in the Sims before you've won? I say after 2 you've pretty much won, but you can always keep playing. Kind of like after the game ends in Civ. Just because you've won doesn't mean you have to stop.
Elysium: The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid.
XBL: E Munnie
elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
Did anyone actually play through the plot in Pirates!?
Elysium: The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid.
XBL: E Munnie
elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
The plot in Pirates! requires the most idiotic series of actions that there's no way I'll bother. You basically track down a person on a ship, get a piece of a map, then repeat that 15 times. Thats tracking down the SAME person 16 times for 1 fraction of 1 map each time (there are 4 maps)...
Thats not a game.
ThePolypusher
WAR - Dolz
I think the old Elite / Frontier / First Encounters games were great examples of an open ended environment where you could set your own goals. Missions, bounty hunting, exploration, trading, taxi service, military career, piracy, all fun options.
Nice article Ely.
All this science I don't understand. It's just my job five days a week.
I did, but never by hunting the bad guys down. I'd just take them out whenever I ran across them. Again, that game had plenty of different things that you could do, but there were still goals to accomplish. When one was completed, you had other things that you could work toward within the scope of the game. My problem with these kind of games comes when all of the short term goals are met.
Examples:
Rome: TW - I successfully carve out a minor empire, but now I'm at peace with my neighbors. I become unsure of what direction to go next.
Sim City - I get good reviews from all of my advisors and the city is running smoothly. what now? Expand, I guess. Crap, more options.
The Sims - My Sim choice suffers from an utter lack of inspiration. I have no idea of what I want to create.
Tropico - Do I want a cantina or a factory? Who cares, I'm El Presidente!
Sometimes, I think I need a random problem button to hold my interest in Sandbox games. Sure, there's scenarios, but I'm not emotionally invested in that town/map.
Psychotic Foreign Teenage Chicks are so hot. - Legion
I find it ironic anytime a healthy vaccinated person bitches about science...on the internet. - MaverickDago
Like the Sim City disasters menu?
Elysium: The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid.
XBL: E Munnie
elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
I feel similar to Elysium in this respect. People like to play their own games on their own terms. Games within games.
The problem with most "sandbox" games is that they don't have enough options. I know it sounds like i'm nit-picking, but seriously. GTA. What can you do? Not actually that much.
Privateer - though i love the game till i die, you could only really do two things. Private missions for bounty/recon or trading (outside of the main storyline). The same in Freelancer.
SimCity - Build a city, there comes a point when you have either succeeded in making a working city or not, several times during expansions.
Elder Scrolls - You can't do anything except a relatively small amount of unvaried missions, buy a house or eight and the main quest. You can become the head of every guild - an act that makes no sense and has little reward. Basically you have close zero impact on the game world.
Fable, same again, though this is more restrictive a game than ES.
One thing i never worked out is why there hasn't been a medieval trading aspect to these games - especially elderscrolls. Where is the merchant option? It always struck me that if you can buy grain and such, why can't you produce it or trade it? People love X3 and Privateer, i don't know of any trading games within an RPG. Would be simple to attach and could mean another avenue throughout the world besides fighting. Also, where is the weapon crafting in ES games? I'd love to see this.
Why are some aspects confined to MMOG's? (Though Two worlds has item combination)
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There was a kind of merchant option in Fable.
Elysium: The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid.
XBL: E Munnie
elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
a lame, pointless, tacked on one...
ThePolypusher
WAR - Dolz
Indeed. I'm not sure if I was ever able to get any profit out of that. I certainly didn't get any enjoyment.
Elysium: The democratization of the web ... has installed an illusion of a digital first amendment that protects speech no matter how poorly spelled or stupid.
XBL: E Munnie
elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
We do something in A Tale in the Desert that may suit your style of gameplay: It's sandboxy in that there's all sorts of stuff to build, much of it artistic (create your own fireworks, sculpture, glass mosaic), but then we layer goals on top like "create a fireworks shell that judges rate in the top 1/4 at a scheduled show", "create the mosaic that is judged to be the best in the land by other players". And by acheiving those goals your character advances.