The Big Bad Wolf
I don’t understand the whole “sandbox” theory of game design. No, more importantly, I don’t understand why we accept stupid terms like sandbox for what we are looking for in a game. I don’t want a sandbox. Have the people who use this term ever played in an actual sandbox? It sucks. Nothing sticks together, there is absolutely no cohesiveness. Anything you build will fall apart. Why are we willing to accept a game being built with shoddy materials that can’t stand up to real use? I understand where people are going with it, in a sandbox you create the fun, you use your imagination. You are not forced to interact with the object the way it wants you to, you can interact with it on your own terms. That’s great…but sand? Really? The best you could come up with was sand?
Honestly, I don’t want to play in a sandbox where no matter what I do the sand just sits there. I want what I do to matter. I want to be able to change how the world is set up. You all go play in your sandboxes I’ll be working on a virtual world.
sandbox, mmo gaming, mmog, virtual world, game design
June 28th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
I loved sand boxes when I was a kid. You need water to make your sand stick together, by the way, but it stays where you put it for a few hours after that.
You also need some props and toys to get the most out of it.
But the point of the sandbox term, at least as I use it, is that you’re not limited in what you can do. You’re free to explore and play and there doesn’t have to be structure.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Like I said, I understand what people are saying and how they can use it/defend it. My real point is…why do we make up these stupid designations for games that are so broad as to be impossible to follow. If you have a great idea fine, don’t tell me games should be a sandbox, tell me what the game should actually have.
On top of that, why do we need to classify the worth of a game on whether it is a “sandbox” or not. Can’t we just judge a game based on its merits? Are people having fun playing it? Good then leave them be. We need to get away from the “My MMO devs can beat up your MMO devs” mentality.
As I said, sand isn’t exactly a material we should be building with though, why are we using this material describe openness and freedom? I don’t like the term sandbox just as I don’t like terms like “viral” marketing. Can’t we just call it what it is? World building and effective marketing.
Let’s be realistic, everyone wants structure…it’s why we are playing a game. Games require structure. Where that structure comes from can vary but we still want it to exist. Having structure doesn’t have to mean losing freedom, it just means utilizing freedom to create structure.
I mentioned a few days ago about how characters in a story should transcend setting. Characters should drive the story to its conclusion. Take that same principle and apply it to MMOs. Let freedom drive the structure don’t let structure confine what freedom you allow.