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Game Design Round Table 3: Observing Open Worlds

Started by mittens Jun 29, 2009 at 12:04 AM 12 replies 8.5k views

Original Post

Jun 29, 2009 at 12:04 AM

The last Game Design Round Table can be found here. Guidelines Here are some of the rules/guidelines it would be nice to have people adhere to (or read and then willingly ignore):

What I write as part of the topic description is not intended to be an argument for or against a given mechanic, nor does what I write necessarily reflect my full thoughts on an issue. It's mere intended to be an introduction to the topic that, hopefully, more people will expound on.
The goal here is to talk intelligently about the topic at hand, as such, any responses would hopefully attempt to make some sort of argument.
An argument does not have to be lengthy to be well-constructed or well-written.
Don't just toss in buzz words for the sake of using buzz words; the idea here is to discuss the mechanics at hand for the purpose of determining why they are good or bad and to convince other people of your own perspectives. Tossing in buzz words "just because" does more to segregate a discussion than promote it.
This post will actually be closed when the deadline is up as to keep the discussion fairly self-contained. The closing date for these is up in the air at the moment; this thread will be closed either a week from today or two weeks from today (depending on the number and quality of responses received).
Don't be afraid to generalize your points as you discuss points with users. It goes without saying that a good game design may depend heavily on the game it's being used in and the way it's implemented, but the idea here is to pick out great ideas and argue them for their intrinsic worth.
Don't get too caught-up in minor details and always realize that, generally, the goal here is to make intelligent arguments to comprise a design discourse.
Please, please, please use your real names in your post if you feel comfortable; the resulting article just feels awkward when I have to reference a bunch of aliases.

Round Table Topic -- Observing Open Worlds When I was coming up with a topic for this round table, I realized that I quickly went back to thinking about all of the games I have been playing over the last few weeks: Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Infamous, Prototype, and Skate 2. All of these games have a unique approach to how they tell a story, introducing gameplay elements, and the handling of progression through the game. It's strange to see so many similarities between some general mechanics between these games, but to see each one handle certain components so completely differently. Infamous starts players off in a well-sized chunk of city with, primarily, standard methods of movement and a few primary missions to undertake as it slowly introduces players to the world. Prototype and Spider-Man: Web of Shadows both start players off at a point in the game much later than the actual "starting point" and give their players a taste of what kind of super-powers they'll have towards the end of the game before they properly start and wipe the slate clean. Both Prototype and Spider-Man both have one singular thread of missions that players can embark on to actually advance the story (along with narrative-independent optional side-missions). Red Faction: Guerrilla leaves the entire world open (and destructible, but that's irrelevant here), but progression through anything other than the primary cities is generally difficult. Skate 2 leaves the entire world open, provides players with a few "key activities" for progression, but also allows players to discover new activities and challenges purely through exploration. The one game I have played in memory that had a truly open-world approach to both narrative and gameplay was Realtime Worlds' Crackdown. This is a game where the player is given the task of eliminating three major crime organizations, with each organization calling a major section of the game's city their territory. The player, then, has completely freedom to decide how this problem is tackled. Crackdown's structure is completely different from the likes of Grand Theft Auto 4 where, essentially, the structure is that of a linear game taking place in a large sandbox. It seems that this is the standard approach taken to open-world games: very directed narrative with traditional mission beginnings and endings where the gameplay is executed in specific locations of a large world. This allows designers to craft a traditional story while attempting to keep the gameplay open, varied, and unique by virtue of everything unfolding in a large sandbox. Befitting of its topic, this discussion will be a bit more wide-open with room for people to discuss the narrative and gameplay benefits of the open world game structure. This means that contributions could be purely design observations on different approaches to sandbox gameplay, gameplay stories that illustrate a particular point, comparisons of different formats, or whatever else. This may be a hard topic for me to make a summary article out of, but I'm sure I'll figure something out. I realize the subject this time around is huge, non-specific, and has a ton of room for a variety of topics, but I'm sure you guys and gals will make something out of it. That said, here are some particular questions to start things off: Relevant questions that may be good to tackle in this discussion:

What are the benefits of a fully free-form open world progression in open world games?
Conversely, what are the benefits of methodical, directed progression in an open world game structure? Is the structure of a line of primary missions (missions which advance the game's core storyline) along with a host of side-missions/objectives an ideal case for open world games?
How does the wide-open nature of gameplay in an open world game impact gameplay and a designer's approach to creating missions?
"Should" open world games strive to present the same types of stories as traditional games do or should the focus be on providing a toolset for player-born narratives? (This is the heart of emergent game design)

mittens

Jun 29, 2009 at 12:06 AM

This round table seemed a bit longer than most, so this one is starting today (Monday, June 29th) and will end on Tuesday, June 7th (since Tuesday is when they normally end). So there's like a whole extra day now. Crazy.

JasRonq

Jun 29, 2009 at 12:26 AM

Well the first thing that comes to my mind is the difference in aims a designer might have. For instance you may create a game with a story in mind and that means linear narrative. That story though may come alive best in a tightly controlled linear world or it may best live in an open sandbox world. The sandbox can be used by multiple stories so this can lead to games like Oblivion where there were a few long quest lines telling a complex story co-existing in an open world.

On the other hand the designer may not be a story teller. It is possible in fact that he has no story in mind, but instead a world he wants to share. If the game is designed from the standpoint of portraying an experience or a vision to the player, then an open, emergent story might best serve the open emergent world. Emergent game play, world, and especially stories are a hard job to tackle, but I feel it is likely the starting place of many artists gone designer.

So, does the open world need to be served by and open story, or does a linear story need to be served by an open (or linear) world?

buckED

Jun 29, 2009 at 1:07 AM

It may be just me, but I think a game needs a strong and thus fairly linear story.
I am not saying that having an open story is bad. I am just saying that it's hard to tell such a story. If you have to many possible branches some, if not all of them will suffer in depth.

If you create an open world you need something to keep the player interested. Roaming the world may sure be fun, but if you don't have anything for the player to focus her mind on they might lose interest. After all we want to be rewarded constantly. A strong story can do exactly that same thing.
There are of course other ways of rewarding a player, such as item aquisition and leveling. But these will cease to provide any significant difference in their reward after a certain time.
A well-thougt-out plot however can include twists and turns and thus statisfy a player just like a good book would.

That's of course just my opinion because I am cleary very concentrated on story in games.

The bottomline is:
Have a free world, but guide the player through a strong narrative.

The hard part is of course not making it to linear, since you do not want to take to much freedom from your player. Adding optional side missions might help here to make the player feel like he's free to do whatever he wants and able to return to the main plot whenever he feels like doing so.

Wavinator

Jun 29, 2009 at 2:46 AM

I'll always prefer a sandbox game over a linear experience. Rather than spoonfeeding the player, well done sandbox games tend to demand far more from a player in terms of creativity, imagination, strategic planning and intrepid exploration than a game with a rigid storyline. With sufficient complexity sandbox games also have the advantage that the experiences they present are, by their modular nature, are often unique (or at least highly individual) when taken as a whole. This can make a player feel that the adventure he or she has had is truly their own, rather than something carefully scripted by the designer.

Of course this strength is also a great weakness and is one of the hardest challenges I'm dealing with at the moment in my own design. If the world is open and you're free to assemble experiences as you will, what's to stop you (by your actions) from assembling mediocre or bad experiences and thus having a mediocre or bad game? I'm talking about closure and what makes the sum of your activities meaningful.

Linear games excel in this area, and although it's annoying to me as a sandbox fan it's also no surprise to me that many recent sandbox games have been trying to incorporate linear gameplay. Linear gameplay allows a designer to craft a series of singular, significant experiences that culminate in an emotionally resonant whole precisely because they happen one and only one way. Unlike in a game like Morrowind, where you can stumble on the end of a good storyline (and ruin it) just by wandering into the wrong place, a linear series of missions can surprise the player and mould their perceptions in a way that makes the end result satisfying.

That said, I hate linear content in a sandbox world unless it's completely optional. But I'm also not a big fan of player created stories (for reasons mentioned previously). I guess I prefer the linear storytelling straightjacket all the way on (as in FPS games where I tend to check my brain at the door) or all the way off, and half-linear measures leave me feeling that the designer is somehow taunting me or assuming I'm too stupid to take care of myself in their world. My gold standard for sandbox games is the venerable Binary Systems classic Starflight from the 80s. Their approach to storytelling was to scatter the narrative about an immense universe and challenge the player with putting it together. There were no missions per se, but the player was driven to overcome the sandbox world's limits in order to learn more; if they failed, the universe was eventually destroyed (and although they could keep playing, without closure the experience was ultimately meaningless). Starflight, to me, embodies the core element of what makes a sandbox game with a story good: You have immense freedom, but it comes with responsibility. The designer doesn't coddle you through the world, constantly remind you of what needs doing or provide waypoints that lead you by the nose. Nor does he gate content, assuming you can't take a few knocks. Instead, he relies on you to use your brain and put the narrative elements together.

Maybe it's an ethic that's out of fashion in our current quick-fix culture, but I think the meaning you get from such an experience is far more rewarding than meaning that's handed to you through linear missions.

-Aaron Miller

Malazar

Jun 29, 2009 at 2:11 PM

Sandbox games are great, there's freedom to explore and take things at your own pace, which is great. But, if they are too open, you can find yourself lost or aimlessly wandering about not quite sure what to do next.

At the same time, linear content gives structure, but, can feel restrictive - what if I want to go over that hill over there, or go visit that town, or even little things like how you go about achieving the same objective - perhaps I see some cunning or just plain silly method of achieving an objective that feels like it *should* work, but for some reason, there's an invisible wall in the way or my avatar in this world just refuses to do whatever it is I'm telling them to do.

I feel the best content is that which is structured to a degree, but that structure is flexible, something not too rigid, by allowing objectives to be done in different orders or allowing for multiple methods of achieving objectives. Afterall, If I wanted to watch a movie - even an awesome one - I'd go watch a movie, but if I'm playing a game, It's important to feel that your decisions are relevant.

-Pete McDonald

JohnJ

Jun 29, 2009 at 4:18 PM

As mentioned here, most games with "open worlds" take the GTA approach; they embed a linear plot-line (sometimes with limited branching) into a sandbox game environment. This creates the illusion of a fully open world at first to some extent, but it wears off as you realize what's going on.

Every game is a sandbox game - just with different levels of scope and complexity of the simulation. The less complex the simulation, the more need there is for a human-composed plot to fill in the blanks left by the simulation. Every game has these "blanks", so an effective linear plot shows itself in most games to be a powerful tool to add to the immersion.

A completely open world would have no pre-written plot at all; the plot would emerge from the simulation. Obviously, linear plots are implemented typically because the kind of dynamics (social, political, etc.) for the story style desired would be far too complex to implement in a fully dynamic simulation in most cases.

I think we all agree on the consequences of linear plots though, and that fully open worlds are the future of video games. The challenge then is coding a simulation covering social, political, as well as the obvious physical and graphical levels in enough detail and depth, and managing this across a huge game world, usually too large to fit entirely in RAM without data LOD of some kind.

Note that while human-written "plots" (linear events that must happen) are counter to a sandbox game design, a fully open world can still have human-written "stories" in that the game simulation and AI strategies / characters themselves can be carefully crafted in such a way that the situation encourages a certain type of plot to emerge. Obviously, even if a game has a 100% realistic simulation, it would be no different from real life and therefore there would not be much motivation to play it. This is where the emergent game design comes in; rather than writing exciting linear plots, you write exciting environments, situations, and AI dynamics.

Consequently, without a linear plotline, emergent game design becomes vitally important in a fully open-ended game since bad simulation dynamics cannot be covered up by a well-written story.

- John Judnich

[Edited by - JohnJ on July 6, 2009 7:18:31 AM]

swiftcoder

Jun 29, 2009 at 4:54 PM

Quote:
Original post by JohnJ
fully open worlds are the future of video games. The challenge then is coding a simulation covering social, political, as well as the obvious physical and graphical levels in enough detail and depth, and managing this across a huge game world, usually too large to fit entirely in RAM without data LOD of some kind.

That seems to be an area that hasn't received a whole lot of attention. Dwarf Fortress might be the shining example of this sort of simulation, but it will bring a modern computer to its knees, and in many ways it isn't a very deep simulation. I am sure it could be improved on (Dwarf Fortress contains some *horrific* code), but this type of simulation is still very computationally intensive.

As for LOD, most traditional simulation techniques assume that you are simulating all entities in the system. With a simple approach to LOD, where we regard the simulation as a spatial quad-tree, we have to perform a 'fuzzy' simulation of various global parameters, and then generate local behaviour on the fly as it becomes visible to the player. The problem is that (much like erosion techniques), the actions in neighbouring high-LOD tiles should affect the current tile (actors moving between tiles, etc.), but the neighbouring tiles may not be in simulation (memory) at all.

Shawn Myers

Jun 29, 2009 at 7:25 PM

I feel that some form of a linear backbone is necessary to a satisfactory game, whether the game structure be totally linear or open world. With that said, I'm of the impression that wide-open games should consist of many mutually exclusive sub-missions in addition to the core mission. I also believe that a majority of those missions should be optional to the player, including the core mission of the game. What this creates, in turn, is a free-roaming game consisting of optional narratives that the player can pick and chose at their will, thus allowing the player to mold their own character how they feel appropriate. Consider Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Nearly everything in the aforementioned game is optional, including the main quest. The player can spend well over a hundred hours simply reaping enjoyment from entirely optional sub quests, some of which are large enough to be fit into a separate game in and of themselves. Though the quests are linear, the player is still empowered with the ability to choose which quests to complete (or not to complete) which creates a strikingly powerful illusion of choice. This feeling of choice instills in the player a deeper attachment to the world and character at hand, and thus keeps them immersed and actively involved in the game. Reinforcement of progression of the main story arch (nagging the player to follow the main quest) is not necessary due to the large wealth of supplementary material that can keep the player interested. Notice how the availability of many sub-missions is the sole factor that makes Oblivion open-ended. Remove this extra material and we still have the game (the main storyline) but now we have a totally linear story that the player is thus forced to play (as there would be nothing else to pique the player's interest.) Thus I believe that the best form of an open-ended game is one that offers the player a wealth of optional non-critical missions - missions not pertaining to the main story arch - where each of these missions are involved and linear in nature. Furthermore, I believe that the core story arch should be as equally optional as these supplementary missions.

-Clinton Myers

JohnJ

Jun 29, 2009 at 7:56 PM

Quote:
Thus I believe that the best form of an open-ended game is one that offers the player a wealth of optional non-critical missions - missions not pertaining to the main story arch - where each of these missions are involved and linear in nature. Furthermore, I believe that the core story arch should be as equally optional as these supplementary missions

IMO this is a very good step in the right direction, since it certainly adds freedom, but it somewhat evades the issue I think. Basically you're describing breaking up a game into a series of little fixed linear plots in addition to a large linear plot. This is better than just one big linear plot, but it's like breaking up a few books into chapters and letting the reader swap between books, reading one chapter at a time. The stories themselves are still linear, even though the player has the freedom to read them at any pace / order, it's still very restricting in terms of what you can do.

A true open world is a world where, like I said in my other post, the rules of the simulation determine the story and the plot. Once you realize how a simulation and AI can be designed to make an infinite number of interesting dynamic plots happen under your (the designer) rules, you'll see I think that a game's story "backbone" doesn't have to be derived from good predefined linear plots - it can be derived from good characters, good environments, and good interactions. And the immersion factor increases exponentially because the virtual world actually does become much more "real" this way.

Note that what I'm referring to at least theoretically is the optimal open-ended game, where you'd have the same quality, excitement, and immersion of storyline as with a human written story, except everything is 100% dynamic. This isn't possible, but I think you can come close enough.

Quote:
As for LOD, most traditional simulation techniques assume that you are simulating all entities in the system. With a simple approach to LOD, where we regard the simulation as a spatial quad-tree, we have to perform a 'fuzzy' simulation of various global parameters, and then generate local behaviour on the fly as it becomes visible to the player. The problem is that (much like erosion techniques), the actions in neighbouring high-LOD tiles should affect the current tile (actors moving between tiles, etc.), but the neighbouring tiles may not be in simulation (memory) at all.

Well, this is getting into the technical implementation which could be a whole thread on it's own. We should probably try not to get too deep into this, but there are definitely ways (I found, anyway) to implement effective high-level LOD where memory is reduced drastically as well as CPU, without sacrificing fairly consistent results at least statistically. If I'm interpreting you correctly, I'll just say a quadtree like that most certainly seems the wrong direction for this (although it depends on the type of simulation I guess).

- John Judnich

ChrisA9

Jun 29, 2009 at 10:07 PM

Something which I think no one has mentioned just yet is the difference between designing for a sandbox experience, and designing to compliment a sandbox environment, and maybe I am completely wrong. But with that said, I feel that there are many open world games which either give you a very linear narrative, much like Grand Theft Auto IV, or those which let you almost do anything, such as Fallout 3. In GTA IV when you first start off you have no choice but to do the missions progressively in a particular fashion. There might be different permutations as to the order of which you do them in, but in the end it's a linear progression.

Fallout 3 has this as well, but, when you get out into the open-world (thus, we're excluding the vault experience) there seems to be a bit more freedom about it. For example, I didn't follow the path you should when I first started playing Fallout. Most likely because I didn't see it, but regardless, I just didn't. I ended up in a village two towns over, rescuing people from a prison which I had no business being at. At the time I thought to myself, man this is really hard! Later on after watching a friend play and I was telling them what mission I was on they had told me they had no idea what I was talking about. About 15 minutes later, they received the mission which I was on. That completely fascinated me. However, Fallout does suffer from the issue of having a really open world so at times you get lost, much like it was mentioned earlier in these posts.

Quote:
Sandbox games are great, there's freedom to explore and take things at your own pace, which is great. But, if they are too open, you can find yourself lost or aimlessly wandering about not quite sure what to do next.

So two examples, both which do a good job at one particular thing. However, I think that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars is a beautiful example of an open world environment. In fact, I think I have never had the pleasure of playing an open-world environment that was as much fun as that one. While I was doing the main story-line missions, every single time I was driving by I would see something which I had the option to explore, and not only that, but I wanted to! There was this secondary design to the world which enticed me and rewarded me to explore the city. Maybe it was because without selling drugs I would be flat out broke and without money, but the side missions / exploration I was doing was so good that I was afraid of finishing the game.

Another reason why I think the open world of Chinatown Wars wasn't so overwhelming was due to the camera. It always felt really intimate and 'close', so I never felt like I could get lost, while the camera / view in Oblivion or Fallout can sometimes be a bit overwhelming to a player.

With that said, I don't really think I answered any questions heh, but I do feel that GTA: CW is a great title which does open world really well and should be looked at.

- Christian Arca

ToastFlambe

Jun 30, 2009 at 3:15 AM

I would love to have a game like John Judnich describes, where plots are formed dynamically from interactions between the player, the character, and the environment. I think this is what's going to drive the "next step" in game AI that people have been expecting for a long time. But I also think its going to be awhile before we see games that do this well. For the time being, there's still a need for linear plotlines in sandbox games and still room for improvement when integrating these into the world.

I'm not a fan of the current large-world-with-missions implementation of the open world concept that many games are using today. Too much of my time is spent trekking to missions and then to the places the missions actually require me to be. The story seems disjointed because it's divided up into small, discrete chunks instead of being a flowing, continuous narrative. Side missions exist, but outside of those there aren't many ways to interact with the world.

To me, the problem is one of structure. Current games are structured around the open world. They give you freedom to go where you want, when you want, at the cost of the above problems. The other way would be to structure the game around the plot: transitions between missions would be seamless, along with the ability to choose different story branches and the ability to break out of the narrative to free roam for a bit.

I know this sounds very linear and very level-like, but I think that narrative-driven games like GTA4 are hurt when they're shoehorned into a mission-based format. You can have a linear continuous progression structure for story purposes while still having a large continuous world for gameplay purposes.

- Mark Kalvelage

Edge Damodred

Jul 4, 2009 at 5:32 AM

One thing I notice is that we seem to have different kinds of open worlds. We have what I like to call Theme Park worlds and then we have Simulation worlds.

Theme Park worlds follow a structure where there are lots of different activities to do in the world but they're only accessible at certain locations. Most MMO's and mission based games such as the current GTA series work in this manner. Let's take everyone's favorite MMO WoW ;). You can do such things as crawling through dungeons, fighting epic raid bosses, participate in team-oriented objective-based battle grounds or n vs. n fighting arenas. However to do these things you must travel to such places as objectives for battle-grounds are only in certain contained areas, certain raid bosses can only be fought in certain dungeons, etc.

One big distinction about these worlds is when you're doing one of these activities that is the only activity you're doing. For instance in GTA you take on a specific mission, all your attention is on that mission, you're not trying to run a taxi service and go bowling with your cousin while you're on that mission. And you don't do anything else until that mission is over by either succeeding or failing.

Simulation worlds tend to allow the character himself perform many actions regardless of location and often have NPC's capable of doing such things. Examples of these would be the Elder Scrolls series and Fallout series. In Oblivion you can pick herbs to create potions while traveling to a cave to find some book for a wizard. To reach the cave entrance you may have to jump across a ravine. While you're in that cave you may come across a new piece of armor to wear or enchant later. Also while in that cave you could get bitten by a vampire and now have to decide to cleanse it or live your character life as one. Notice as I described that scenario I used the words "can", "may" and "could". It means that a player's attention isn't necessarily focused on one thing nor are the potential things he is paying attention to related to one another directly.

One thing to really look at is how these two worlds open up to the player. In Theme Park worlds world access progression tends to be opened up by completing a certain mission or task. There's essentially a barrier visible or invisible that prevents the player from entering that area until the particular task is done. For instance in the GTA games parts of the city are restricted by water and or bridges closed off until a particular mission is complete. In Simulation worlds however the player is technically allowed to go wherever he wants but his own player skill or character strength may not allow him to survive in that area for very long. In Fallout 2 you could technically run directly from Arroyo the starting town to Navarro or San Francisco right from the beginning. However since you most likely don't have powerful weapons, armor or skills at this point in time if you encounter a mutant with a chain mini-gun you're most likely going to be a shredded pile of guts and blood very quickly. Note that some MMO's that follow the Theme Park model do have territory progression in this manner although they might restrict certain activities to things like level or certain quests being completed as well, they demonstrate a hybrid of both approaches.

I'm going to come back this post as there's more I wish to add.

*RESERVED FOR FUTURE NONSENSE AND BABBLINGS*

-Leland Wiseman

[Edited by - Edge Damodred on July 4, 2009 9:32:20 PM]

mittens

Jul 17, 2009 at 12:14 AM

The summary article has been posted at my personal site.

I'm not sure how I'm going to handle the design round table going forward; this may be the last one (at least in its current form). I'm tossing around some ideas.

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