Poll: Will Open world games dominate the next generation?

[Mr Cwtchy]

Sadly, I think they are here to stay. People seem to be under the illusion that you get more bargain for your buck if you spend 40 hours of a 60 hour game running aimlessly across fields, cities, deserts, or wastelands with little clue as to what you'll be doing, as opposed to a highly focused, intense 10-15hour game with many memorable sequences and replay value.

Devs like it because it means not having to bother with clever level design. It's a match made in shallow heaven.

And for all those who argue 'it adds to the immersion', not a single one of these games is as immersive as Myst IV: Revelations.

Has it possibly occurred to you that maybe people *like* wandering around aimlessly in a game sometimes? If they honestly feel that time spent was more worth their money than a shorter amount of tightly controlled gameplay then that's their right.

Honestly I think that if anyone is under an illusion here, it's that you believe your opinion to have more value than it actually does.

 

[Something Amyss]

I don't like it when any oen genre or style dominates, so I hope not. I do hopre for more good open world games, though.

 

[Something Amyss]

Sadly, I think they are here to stay. People seem to be under the illusion that you get more bargain for your buck if you spend 40 hours of a 60 hour game running aimlessly across fields, cities, deserts, or wastelands with little clue as to what you'll be doing, as opposed to a highly focused, intense 10-15hour game with many memorable sequences and replay value.

Of course, it's quite possible they're just not running aimlessly so much as doing what they want to do. I'm having trouble thinking of an open world game where I actually had any trouble figuring out what I'd be doing.

Complaints of shallowness sound more like "stop enjoying things I don't enjoy, guys!"

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I don't know about 'dominate' but you can bet on more publishers attempting to cash in on Skyrim and Farcry 3's success.

Of course they won't understand why those two titles were successful and cock it up, but what can you do?

I wouldn't mind more open world games, but they have to be of decent quality.

 

[The_Echo]

Ugh, I hope not.

Open world games tend to have too little focus to keep me interested. I prefer something with a well-defined direction and wider areas to explore, preferably with hidden areas and collectibles. Currently, open world games don't really marry the linearity of a story with the actual openness of the world very well, and very few have actually built worlds that felt 'alive' to me.

Besides, I don't think long-running franchises getting new installments is enough to call for a new trend or anything.

Pretty much this. Very few open-world games do justice to the story they try to tell (the Elder Scrolls being a prime example of Spread-too-Thin Syndrome). The only one I can think of is inFAMOUS.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I would have thought this past generation would have been the Sandbox generation because of how successful the Grand Theft Auto series. Oblivion was a pretty great herald to a possible domination of sandboxes and there were a ton of them this generation. If it wasn't for the rise of COD this gen probably would have had a whole lot more sandboxes. This upcoming generation could see a lot of sandboxes but (you could say Watch Dog is this generation's sandbox herald) but I don't see there being significantly more (or less) sandboxes this gen than last.

(edited for hilarious spelling mistakes)

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Personally, I prefer open-world games. I think player agency, customisation, branching/dynamic storylines, and a fluid, working game world are all good traits in a game. But for some reason, people are perfectly happy to ***** about arbitrary boundaries, railroading and genericness but when someone suggests open-world games could become more prevalent it's all about the focussed, intense, memorable 5 hours of a linear game. I'm not advocating aimless open-world games where the only difficulty is time. And I'm not denouncing well-made, fleshed out linear games either. There's a place for both, but can we at least compare like with like.

What I will say though it's that it's more difficult to make a game like Dark Souls, where the player has a choice in where to go and what to do, than a game like RE6, so when people make bland linear games it's a bit more disappointing than when they make open-world ones with several bugs.

Oh and also, it's not black and white either. Most non-linear games can be translated into a collection of linear areas that you don't have to access in any particular order. What can be improved, whether the game itself is linear or not, is having levels that aren't linear.

 

[Olas]

Would we consider a game like Legend of Zelda to be open world? Because I have no problems with games like that. I do however get annoyed sick of open worlds that are just massive endlessly repeating cities of monotony used to separate missions, I'm looking at you Assassin's Creed.

Ironically when I'm in an open world game I tend to feel less free than when I'm in a linear one. Why? Because in an open world game you eventually always to follow markers and arrows on your map telling you what locations to visit to in order to continue the plot. It's almost like a person is ordering you around. "Go there, talk to that person". In linear games however you're generally just moving forward and letting your surroundings define your path, not being specifically told where your destination is. Sure you may be walking down a narrow corridor, but at least you aren't being told to walk down the corridor by a minimap that guides your every step.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

harold... harold

Erm. Why're you blaming oblivion and watch dogs on Harold? Harold had nothing to do with them.
[sub]Which is a passive aggressive way of saying that the word you want is 'herald'.[/sub]

In other news: Nah, sandboxes are hella expensive to make, so I can see a lot of developers still pushing the corridor shooters until the next big thing comes along. There'll be plenty of sandboxes, they'll have a decent share of the market, but there won't be huge numbers of them.
Look at it this way: you can't really blow much more money on huge expensive setpieces in linear games than some developers are already. Take the eiffel-tower blowing up scene in COD MW3. The budget is going to hit a glass ceiling when the maximum graphical capability is reached for each setpiece/cutscene/whatever and after that it's only going to go up or down depending on how long you want your campaign to be. However, a non-linear game can basically be as huge as you want, and as packed full of stuff as you want, so the budget 'needed' to make one can basically inflate indefinitely. There'll be a few sandbox games that end up being the most gigantic flops of all time, and after that there'll probably be fewer of them.

 

[FreakofNatur]

It's a genre equally viable as all the other genres. Mechanics-wise, OWG(Open World Game)s are very very difficult to plan for and to make interesting. We've seen most OWGs ride their success on sheer ridiculousness rather than solid, engaging gameplay because it's just more fun to break the game rather than for the devs to second guess all the paths a gamer would take. Such a game that thinks before the gamer does would take an extra 3 years to figure out through development, and by then the market they were aiming for could have ceased to exist.

That said, OWGs cost a lot of money. Think MMOs, but just minus the servers and customer support. A true OWG like skyrim would take so much dosh to carry out, it might just be totally unviable in the first place. Some games give you the illusion of an OWG, but they are essentially not:They have a linear storyline and some actions are inappropriate at sections of the storyline, such as in Mafia 2 and in Saint's Row 3, wherein the former there aren't many save points, beating the point of progress in a OWG, and in Saint's Row 3, some parts are simply blocked off due to storyline.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

Not unless it gets a hell of a lot less resource-intensive to build an open world that doesn't suck. Seriously, only a handful of developers have the know-how and/or cash to make a decent open world environment that it's actually enjoyable to play in, and the increased demands of new graphics technology aren't going to make it any easier to do. Even if AAA goes that way, which I kind of doubt, smaller developers will almost certainly stick to more limited and linear environments because they're theoretically less expensive to produce.

 

[KarlMonster]

Eh, ES:Oblivion was a decent open world, since you could always jump into a large body of water to run away from nasty things. I think that FO3 really clinched what was possible to do in an open world game, since it had storyline, random explorables that you could visit, but also a bleak permeating atmosphere that had unintended (but predictable) effects on the players. That bleakness was genuine success in creating a post-nuclear wasteland.

For the future, I think that some developers just don't know what to do with an open world. Volition seems to have figured it out with SR2, SRtT, Red Faction:Guerrilla. All good uses of large spaces. But they had good stories that needed to be set in an open world. Consider the recent disaster Omerta, which should have been an open world, but isn't. There were a lot of things that I disliked about Bulletstorm, but I could have forgiven half of those problems if the game wasn't leading me around from set-piece to set-piece. [Thanks EA!] Too many games like Metro 2033 are too busy telling you their tightly-woven story - where they have to be sure that they show you all of the key story points - to let you wander away from the rails. Metro 2033 also could have been a neat open world game, and that would have been much better than what it was, since the game telegraphed (not foreshadowed!) the ending right from the start.

I was just about to wonder out loud if I didn't miss out on a title, and wouldn't the greatest open world game be an organic environment zombie survival game? But of course, there is such a thing. It's the Day-Z mod and the future stand-alone Day-Z game. I don't have high expectations for the first iteration, but if it proves to be functionally organic, it could easily be a world-beater. Or an open-world-beater.

It's funny that all I really want from the next generation is a couple of good single player games... It's not too much to ask right?

No, sir, it is not.
I can point to a bunch of titles right now where multiplayer was a terrible idea. About 3/5 of my Steam library is made up of games with a multiplayer component that I have never used. Multiplayer unnecessarily inflates the game's price up front, and in about 15 months the servers will be nearly empty.
If they want to sell us MP, it should be a DLC add-on module. I'm reasonably sure that they can do that with little trouble, and this way they can scale the cost of the module to the cost of operating the servers. [Or better yet, a micro-transaction pay-as-you-play format.]

And yes, Day-Z would be much better without multi-griefer.

 

[Terramax]

Of course, it's quite possible they're just not running aimlessly so much as doing what they want to do. I'm having trouble thinking of an open world game where I actually had any trouble figuring out what I'd be doing.

Complaints of shallowness sound more like "stop enjoying things I don't enjoy, guys!"

Has it possibly occurred to you that maybe people *like* wandering around aimlessly in a game sometimes?

Saying something is shallow isn't the same as saying it's not enjoyable.

I enjoy lots of shallow games. Simple mobile games for instance. But I'm not under any misconception that they have any level of depth to them. They're usually simple and shallow.

And, no, just because you plan to, or enjoy, running around aimlessly, doesn't make it any less so 'running around aimlessly'. You can say that it's in the name of 'exploration', but those two things are ultimately the same thing.

I didn't critique people who play this games as being shallow or unable to comprehend what they're supposed to be doing. Neither did I say there was anything wrong with people enjoying these games. I'm making a point that the games themselves have been designed to avoid putting much thought and creativity in their design.

And, yes, I'd still argue most open-world games are not value for money. If I make a game that is literally nothing more than a huge desert with some rocks, give the player a sword, add a couple of monsters to fight, then charge full retail price, you might get hours and hours of fun out of said games, but that doesn't mean it was worth the amount of money I charged for it, when taking into consideration the little time and effort put into making the very mediocre title.

 

[purplecactus]

I'd like to see more, but I wouldn't like to see them take over completely. A lot of the time I love the perception of freedom and choosing your own purpose that comes with an open world, but there are times where what I want is a solid mission with a definite outcome. Something fairly, linear, you know?

Realistically I'd be over the moon with a few well-developed open world games rather than a whole slew of crap that dominates the market by sheer force of numbers. I'd hate to see the other end of the market suffer and get pushed into a corner.

 

[hazabaza1]

I fuckin' hope not.

Open world games are like linear games, except loaded to the gunwales with forgettable filler content and you have to commute between the interesting bits... if there are any interesting bits... which there usually aren't... because the budget went towards a big, empty, repetitive map, busywork side missions and a ton of dead-eyed interchangeable NPCs with no personality whatsoever.

Please no.

Arkham City.
BOOM

OT: Aren't they kind of already dominating the market? Stuff like TES is really popular nowadays, and so is the "Sandbox open world" like Minecraft of Terraria, and even usually linear series are branching off into more open games. Like Dead Space 1/2-3.

But fuck me do I hope it doesn't happen. I generally enjoy the open world games but I can never really remember much about most of them compared to a good strong linear game.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

Hell, I like a good linear game, I like a good open world game, and I like a good in-between game.
As long as care and effort gets put into some of the more top-tier next generation games, and as long as more linear experiences don't become fully extinct, I'm happy.

 

[Tyelcapilu]

tps/fps is a much more prevailing genre.
See: FC3 TES5 SR COD BF Chivalry MC AC TF2 Dishonored

Open world games these days are also hella buggy
I remember MM6 had like 12 bugs (if even) back in 98, and the select few dungeons were each uniquely built and not just copypasta sidequest filler

 

[Splitzi]

I am disappoint. Where's the poll dude? All the fun was sucked right out of this thread.
Anywho, I doubt they will because people can get over saturated very easily. There will always be a demand for linear games that push you along a predetermined, invisible-walled in area. Some people just don't like open world games.

 

[Something Amyss]

Saying something is shallow isn't the same as saying it's not enjoyable.

You are grousing about them, however. You were complaining that they were here to stay, not something I would expect if you enjoyed the specific games we're talking about. In other words, it's kind of pointless to argue the more generic semantics.

And, no, just because you plan to, or enjoy, running around aimlessly, doesn't make it any less so 'running around aimlessly'. You can say that it's in the name of 'exploration', but those two things are ultimately the same thing.

Since this was originally addressed solely to me, I'm going to treat it as such.

You can easily get over ten hours playing Saints Row 3, which was a more shallow experience than 2 just by playing the story. You more or less set up a false dichotomy of quantity vs. quality, when you can easily get both. Saints Row 2 had a nice story that was pretty focused considering the groups involved. Arkham City has one of the better superhero stories out there, and still has open world gameplay. Mass Effect games have a solid story, and so on and so on.

I didn't critique people who play this games as being shallow or unable to comprehend what they're supposed to be doing. Neither did I say there was anything wrong with people enjoying these games.

Right, all you did was respond negatively to the overall concept of the games, then complain that people who enjoy them are under an illusion based on a false paradigm of either/or logic.

Totally different.

And, yes, I'd still argue most open-world games are not value for money.

Most games are not worth the money, so that's kind of a pointless comparison. You said that people mistake bang-for-buck of sandbox games vs. a tightly focused game of X length. So you're saying that sandbox games in general don't hold up to the same standards as the best of linear games, the clear minority? That's what it looks like, when you talk about open-world games in general, but heavily qualify the linear games you're talking about.

It'd be like if I said that games like Arkham City and Mass Effect provide a more solid experience than your average linear title--true but useless. I'm sure you can be more reasonable than that. Let's compare apples to apples, shall we? Either the average games, or the best of the best. Qualifying only linear games with tight stories and memorable moments and replay value sets a high bar. Then arguing the average sandbox (and an even worse than average example) sets a really low bar.

I think we can do better than this.