Hey all. Long time no blog.
So why not?
Sandboxes–and all iterations of it, be it game editors or Halo’s Forge system–are simply awesome. They’re a broad world where anything can happen. Minecraft, with its simplicity and minimalism, made this work to great effect. Who doesn’t want to build their own death star out of dirt and stone, or Forerunner metal, or steampunk steel, or Dovahkin magic, or whatever? It’s fun for the sake of making something out of what’s essentially nothing, or making something out of objects in ways they were never meant to be used (or shouldn’t be meant to be used).
Given that, it’s somewhat astonishing that so few games actually feature such a system. Off the top of my head, I can think of Halo, Trials, Skyrim, Minecraft, Starcraft (and many RTSs)… that’s not an impressive list. That’s probably a third (or more conservatively, a tenth) of the more notable games that I can think of.
Of course, there are certain limitations that prevent many a game from having an editor feature. Games that are have a lot of objects, are too linear to seem feasible, and so forth are often excluded. After all, we’re not seeing Call of Duty providing a builder pack (although Nuketown and TranZit are nice free-roaming-ish gametypes), at least not any time soon. Most sports game are as “free” as far as flexibility gets, naturally pigeonholed to their respective sports. Most shooters and hack ‘n’ slashes seem to be quite linear (Spec Ops: The Line comes to mind, among others), while most RPGs and indie games have movement freedom, but not quite creative freedom.
I suppose it’s only natural that game developers don’t simply hand out their hard-earned work to be fiddled with by the masses. Yet, is that really a bad thing? If I’m not mistaken, Counterstrike was actually a mod conceived from Half-Life. People certainly enjoy the nuances and complexities of coming up with a remake of Super Mario Bros. 1-1 on Minecraft. And Halo is prime for any sort of racing gametype, given Forge Worlds’ enormous map and bank of objects.
I wonder, as well as ask you, why more games don’t embrace a more democratic and player-side sandbox system?
Hmm, this blog seemed bigger in my mind. Ah well, discuss.