How popular are sandbox games? I know a lot of people enjoy them but are they among the top successful genres? What defines them as good game? I suppose some games can be addictive but I find it difficult to pin point the exact feature that keeps players hooked. What if the GTA games were stripped of their storyline and the player was just told to build up his reputation where he could then "cash in" and see how he faired... would players still like the game? I find myself wondering about this because I find that a lot of projects fail because the group underestimates the content they wish to incorporate in their game. Although not a real example of a good project I did dab a bit in the RPG Maker when I was back in high school. I was never able to finish a game because filling up content took so long and the writing never really competed with professionally written storylines. The project I was currently working on was a top-down shooter with RPG elements ala Diablo. The idea seemed good enough but I found that my team mates didn't realize just how big of a task this was. This is why I'd like to rework my initial idea and try and make a basic survive-as-long-as-you-can scenario with RPG elements with a single, but not necessarily small, map. So basically my question is... what makes and breaks a sandbox game like this. How can I determine if my game will be fun? I'd hate to actually develop the prototype and start playing and go "Wow our game sucks" after five minutes of play. How do I keep my game from being novelty-based and have the players get bored after they get used to the features presented in the game? Are simple gameplay elements favourable or should I go into more complex features?

For me, any game is great when the choices the player makes result in consequences.

One of the earliest and still best sandbox games was Fallout. From a design standpoint they made sure that not only where quests interrelated, but that any style of character could finish each quest in their own way.

If you dont believe me, google Fallout 3 Design doc (can find them at www.nma-fallout.com I believe) and read their designs. Each style of character had a way to do each quest and when you did a lot of quests the shape of who your character was in the world began to have meaning.

Exploration is no doubt part of any sandbox game...but make sure that what people find all over the map ties back into the main game at least partially.

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Original post by Vanquish For me, any game is great when the choices the player makes result in consequences. One of the earliest and still best sandbox games was Fallout. From a design standpoint they made sure that not only where quests interrelated, but that any style of character could finish each quest in their own way. If you dont believe me, google Fallout 3 Design doc (can find them at www.nma-fallout.com I believe) and read their designs. Each style of character had a way to do each quest and when you did a lot of quests the shape of who your character was in the world began to have meaning. Exploration is no doubt part of any sandbox game...but make sure that what people find all over the map ties back into the main game at least partially.

Well Fallout was great but it also had a storyline to accompany it. I'd like to avoid a story, kind of like the Sims or Sim City (although the genre is completly different).

I like to think of sandbox games in two separate categories. First, you have your exploratory sandbox, where you can travel around and do stuff not necessarily related to the main mission of the game. The Grand Theft Auto series, Destroy All Humans, and even Gran Turismo to a certain extent.

The second category is what I call the "personalization" category. This would be Sim City and all the Maxis games, the Tycoon games, etc. These games don't necessarily have a main goal, even if the game offers mini-goals to strive for.

Personally, I think the first type of sandbox game lends itself quite well to a storyline. An undead survival game could have a light, but decent storyline to offer. Part of the reason for this is to add a suspense factor that staves off boredom. In GTA, the storyline (even really campy elements sometimes) are used to prevent player access to certain elements such as new, better weapons, new vehicles, and access to different areas of the map.

You would be surprised what can compete with "professionally written storylines" depending on what your outlook is. I'm not encouraging shoddy writing - we have an entire forum devoted to that here, but there have been plenty of games that were good despite a weak storyline - especially early on in the history of video games.

Another way you can give the player some additional freedom, and although its a big decision, it may pay off - especially in the field of indie game development - is to give the player freedom to create their own maps. Top-down 2D maps are easy to create, and some games have lived well past their potential thanks to the freedom of player-developed content. Spore, the new Maxis game that seems to be everywhere nowadays (for good reason), LIVES on player-developed content. Half-Life and Quake mods are some of the most interesting methods of free-expression I've ever seen.

Sorry for a lot of ranting. I think you've got good potential with your game, but don't give up so quickly on a storyline.

Thanks for your input wildhalcyon.

I agree that good gameplay can overshadow a bad storyline. However my concern, although it might of been unclear in my previous post, isn't with the writing of a story. Even if I was to get a team member who specializes in story writing it wouldn't make it easier to implement.

Adding events, a lot of dialogue, narrative storytelling, item descriptions, character names/history are all tasks that would take a long time to add to the game. Because this is very time consuming and can contribute towards a linear game what if we just avoided the whole scripted story?

You start in a city infested with zombies/aliens and you have to survive for as long as you can. You don't know how they got there or how you're going to save the world. In a way I think this could be interesting because it could contribute to some form of immersion. The main character would be the player.

That being said, lets go back to my example of GTA. Strip it of it's storyline and implement a "high score" system where the player's unscripted achievements are rewarded when he completes* the game. Now, is GTA's gameplay elements enough to keep a player playing? Do the features of carjacking and purchasing nightclubs to gather money enough to keep the player motivated or do those just get boring?

I suppose I can define my question/problem a bit more broadly: How do you define a feature that keeps a player addicted to the game and doesn't just wear off?

*: I'd have to define when the game is completed. In the case of GTA you could consider the game to be complete when he dies or whenever he'd gain an X amount of influence in the city.

When designing a game I try to ignore any plot or story and design the game as a sandbox game. Thisway I can be sure that the gameplay is good. Once I have completed the gameplay aspect, I then start looking at how the game could have a story included.

I find this method is good because it eliminated the risk of including a feature that only nessesary only because of the story (a weak form of "Deus Ex Machinia"). It also increases the deapth the player feels in the game because the game is designed, not as a linear progression from plot point to plot point, but as a tool for play.

So I would recomend that for any game you are designing, it would be advantagious to at least think about how your game would hold up as in a sandbox play mode.

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I like to think of sandbox games in two separate categories. First, you have your exploratory sandbox, where you can travel around and do stuff not necessarily related to the main mission of the game. The Grand Theft Auto series, Destroy All Humans, and even Gran Turismo to a certain extent. The second category is what I call the "personalization" category. This would be Sim City and all the Maxis games, the Tycoon games, etc. These games don't necessarily have a main goal, even if the game offers mini-goals to strive for.

This is a good concept: the 2 different types of sandbox gameplay styles.

The first type is how I usually design my games and then later fit a plot to it. The second is realy just a SuperGenra (ie it is encompases several traditional game genras) and describes a specific play style. If you have played a game called "Strange Adventures in Infinite Space", then you will know that an entire game can be built around this sandbox style.

However even in the second style of sandbox games there is even a sub category. This subcategory is when you have no restrictions on what you can do. This is like having infinite resources. For example in the game "Sim Golf" the idea is that you can build your golf course, but in the sandbox mode you don't need to think about money and can do what you like with it. This subcategory can be used as a tutorial to help players learn the game.

Tye main benifite in thinking of your game as a sandbox game is that it emphasises the gameplay, rather than how good the story is.

www.spore.com

If you dont know about it already, you should. From the beautiful mind of will wright (the guy who made the sims, sim city, etc.) it is THE sandbox game.

a high score and ranking system would hold players over for quite a bit longer. I don't know if you were considering it but PVP also works to keep them playing. This is much more personal than simply a high-score system.

If you do plan on making it multiplayer then perhaps you could have enemies all wearing different things, so you couldn't tell the difference between a computer and a human. This way you can't just run from humans and just kill the computer enemies. When you kill someone you get something of theirs.


I don't think you can have an "end" to the game. Once people reach the end (or at least after the 3rd time) if your game isn't really, really good then why should they keep playing? Imagine if the sims just ended at a certain point. The score/rank/reputation can relate to how many people you have killed and your rank difference will change how much they improve your rank when they die.



The only way you can really tell if your game is going to be fun is to make a prototype and get as many people as you can to test it out and give their opinions. You can't really ever judge for yourself (unless you're will wright i guess) because you understand it much better than anyone else can. You made something that YOU want, so why wouldn't you like it better than everyone else?

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Original post by giveblood I don't think you can have an "end" to the game. Once people reach the end (or at least after the 3rd time) if your game isn't really, really good then why should they keep playing? Imagine if the sims just ended at a certain point. The score/rank/reputation can relate to how many people you have killed and your rank difference will change how much they improve your rank when they die.

If there was an end it would litteraly end the game. It would basically give you a ranking and tell you a aftermath story related with said ranking. Once this is done the player would have the choice to keep playing or end and start anew.