The 5 First Principles of proper open world game design;

From your previous topic that was a running story and writing prompt, to this post, I'm getting the feeling you're looking more at writing for games than about the topic of game design, which more often is about mechanics and technical details. Game design encompasses level design with the mechanics and layout for why each level plays the way it does, and character design that can develop how a character exists in the world, but the story of the world, the lore, the plot, those are writing, and the way the world looks, the way the characters look, those are art style.

The writers and the art directors all work with the the designers, but they're different from game design, and they come together with other disciplines like engineering directors, creative directors, and production, to build the game. All are important and boundaries between some roles are sometimes blurry, but overall the roles are quite different from each other.

Your first isn't one that's normally that high for the game design. Character “coolness” could be part of a character design, but more of it is writing, modeling and animation detail that gives it, not so much game design. Look at Minecraft, one of the most successful open worlds, the character has no inherent coolness to speak of. In other games, from Dragon Age series to Far Cry to Zelda, any coolness in the character comes from areas other than game design. The story for the open world does need to make sense, but very often those details of coolness come long after the core game design work is done.

The setting can be interesting, but in open worlds it is normally for the broad game design it's just a world. The mechanics of the game world are what makes gameplay into the game, but the art direction and story direction are more often the roles of art director and writer or creative director, less the game designer.

The third and fourth on your list touch on a game designer's big concerns. Yes, the world must be dynamic, and a big part of that is creating a range of mechanics to leverage, and level design that ensures there is always something interesting to do. Zelda BOTW and TOTK had a mix of mechanics and level design that worked well, ensuring that wherever you were in the world and whatever you were looking at you could see something of your main quest, something of a side quest, and very often something to play with as well. The play element often allowed players to use mechanics in an unusual way, like ways to collecting Koroks through archery or a precise race through the world, or in the next game, attaching a Korok to a rocket, putting him on a platform and rewinding time.

Through game history some of the best games provide a small number of mechanics and then push the player to use them in a variety of ways.

Portal was a great example of this. Portal 1 had a small number of simple mechanics, built around the framework of test chambers, and getting yourself, a cube, or both, onto a platform. They built a single mechanic and 19 levels out of it, leaving players desperate for more. In Portal 2 they added a mechanic of 3 ‘gels’, and explored the simple mechanic with 43 main game levels and 54 co-op levels to puzzle your way through.

The Zelda series has always been good at this, giving a small number of tools, and each dungeon building on those few simple mechanics to grow the world. Some are less intuitive, like bombing or burning a specific tree in the early games led to people just burning and bombing everywhere to find them, and cutting every blade of grass in the world, but later on the series they were better at leaving clues and placing some way to use them in a way that progressed as new tools became available.

What mechanics do you enjoy best? What mechanics do you feel have had the widest array of uses? What mechanics felt least useful? Those are critical questions in game design, exploring why any given mechanic is fun and interesting to players.

frob said:
From your previous topic that was a running story and writing prompt, to this post, I'm getting the feeling you're looking more at writing for games than about the topic of game design, which more often is about mechanics and technical details.

Agreed. Thread moved to the Writing forum.

Frob,

Minecraft isn't a open world game, it's a sandbox game.

A cool character is much less important when there isn't a story!

But when w're going to invest 50 hours or so until story driven game, the person In playing is certainly important!

The character sets the tone for everything (it's who youre always looking at!)! They're never a tacked on after thought!

….

likewise the setting sets the entire tone of everything (all the, art, music, level design, gameplay mechanics, have to fit in with it!)….

And if the setting doesn't really matter in an open world game, where you spend much of the time in the same areas, and are obviously encouraged to explore and take it all in, instead of just speeding through it to the end of the level, than in what kind of game does it matter!?

Sure, from a player getting to play the game, those feel compelling. They are a part of the player experience

From a game design perspective, they are far less important. Game design uses character and story narrative, however, the same game design will be fun with a wide variety of stories, and with a variety of visual styles.

It is why designers look at genres of gameplay rather than genres of story. Extraction shooter is an extraction shooter no matter what the story is, no matter what the character or goal is. Capture the flag level is capture the flag regardless of if you have a team shooter or a solo player, regardless if the story leads players to stealth or to racing through,regardless of if the character is cool or not.

The story and character gives it flavor and spice, but the story and character are not what defines it, at least for game design.

Yeah Super Meat Boy, just as easily been Super Grape Boy!

But nobody ever set out to make an open world game without first thinking about it's theme!

Because the vast open world for the player to immerse themselves in, is the entire selling point of the genre!

You're speaking total garbage!

Black_Berry said:
You're speaking total garbage!

No, his definitions of game design are right, and you have no other option than accepting such general definitons.
Becasue if you don't adopt the terms to communicate, there is no point to share or discuss your design ideas at all, since discussion is pointless if people don't agree on the meaning of words. So instead beind salty, you should better learn and adopt such given definitions.

Personally, if i want to design a video game, this is the process:
1. What can the player do in the game? What are his options to interact with a world, objects, npcs, other players, etc.?
For example, i want to jump on platforms, dodging enemies, and collecting coins or powerups.
Notice: It's not about the role or character the player plays, but what he can do.
2. I code the mechanics, make some boxy test levels, and tweak it so it's most fun.
3. If it all works well, that's the point to think about content. I need pixel art or 3D models, so i need to think about characters, background story, music, etc.
Notice: No matter if i play as a plumber or as a princess, i still just jump on platforms, dodge enemies and collect coins. Even if coins become cookies to fit the chosen background story, it's still the same gameplay and thus game design as worked out in steps 1 and 2.

Now, if i read your first post, my impresssion is you never thought about steps 1 and 2 at all. You did not, because you take some established genre and design instead, e.g. GTA. That's your standard, your starting point. So all you have to do from here is changing its content more to your personal liking, and then you feel like that's good game design finally. But it's not, since your contribution is not about game design, but about content. Quests, setting, a cool protagonist… it's mostly content, not so much game design.

Game design, means; designing a game! and the character and setting are certainly a part of that!

and yes when it comes to a game like Mario, the designers could have given the game a different theme, and it still would have played the same!

…..I don't know how the game game about, maybe the whole thing was made, before Mario was, I dunno…. But we're not talking about Mario!

We're talking about open world games!

If somebody says “I'm making an open world game”, the first thing anybody will ask is "oh, yeah, what kind of setting? and who do you play as?""

Black_Berry said:
If somebody says “I'm making an open world game”, the first thing anybody will ask is "oh, yeah, what kind of setting? and who do you play as?""

That's the first thing a player asks, but the first thing a game designer or game developer will ask is “what's the play mechanic?” and then “what makes yours different from previous open world games?” Only a writer or someone who's more interested in story than gameplay would ask “who do you play as.”

Black_Berry said:
Game design, means; designing a game!

Which means a lot more than the easy part (the game's story). What Is Game Design? Note also that story plays only a small part of game design in the Extra Credits video, "So You Want to Be a Game Designer."

Very bold of you, young padawan, to come to a site full of game developers and tell us we're all wrong about what game design actually is!

Despite the braindead word games you people want to play, an interesting open world to explore is certainly important in a OPEN WORLD game!

Certainly.

There's a tension between an open world game and a track ride.

At one extreme we have metaverses, such as Decentrand and Second Life, where nothing happens unless some user makes it happen. These tend to be boring overall, but can contain interesting locations and people. Nobody seems to know how to make things that open really fun. They have the interesting event density of real life. That is, most of what happens is banal.

At the other extreme, we have a track ride, where you have to stay on the plotted path. This goes back to the days when you had to put in quarters. The advantage is that you can have good plots with good dialog. The disadvantage is that, fairly soon, you've played through all the plots.

What can be done between those extremes?

How do you make the open world aspect interesting??

You begin by making sure the geneal theme is really interesting, and that character who the player is going to be exploring with is really likeable, and then your create it, filling it with real quality dynamic gameplay all over! (I really like to see a heavy focus on detective stuff(which is connected to the main story))

While not everybody will admit it, I'm convinced everybody felt the same way that I did when the began GTA 4…….

“Ok, this is no longer that silly arcade style game that I used to play, when I'd just hoon around smashing as much stuff as I could for as long as I could until they finally got me…… this is serious shit, where I go flying through the windscreen and die with every crash….. ummm so what do I do? I could carefully drive around this normal city? but that really doesn't sound like much fun! …I'm already bored!…..”

….but, if the game instead the theme of somebody who lives somewhere that is corrupt to the core and who has decided to put an end to it, now everything you see and hear is interesting! (provided its done properly)

Black_Berry said:
I'm convinced everybody felt the same way that I did when the began GTA 4

Check your assumptions. There are people in the discussion who have been game designers since before “open world games" were a thing. Even cutting my teeth on my first games back in 1983 people had the sense to divide them by genre rather than by story.

A dungeon explorer mechanic is still dungeon explorer regardless of it is Wizardry, or Eye of the Beholder, or Tomb Raider. A platformer is a platformer regardless of if it is Commando, Double Dragon, or Super Skateboardin'; the same core mechanic in each. Open worlds are accessible areas regardless of if that's GTA, the map tiles of the original Legend of Zelda, or the text base game of Colossal Cave Adventure.

As for GTA, I'd suggest you do your own homework on the series. To help out your understanding, start here with the precursor to GTA if you can follow the logic. I remember when that was such a revolutionary game, studying it, and even cloning it. That game enabled Rockstar - - then called DMA Design - - as it was their first real success. You'll also need understand how GTA was originally a lawful driving sim, and is exactly the same game design as the lawless driving sim, changing the story didn't change the mechanic, simply reversed the score data from negative to positive.

Sorry, what is your point????

Black_Berry said:
Sorry, what is your point????

Your claims are unfounded. Several of us lived through and personally experienced the things you are falsely claiming, we know better. Others studied it, and also know better. The people involved have given interviews, given talks and addresses, and even written quite a lot about what they actually did and why they did it. For reasons I don't really understand, your posts are doubling-down on factual errors.

The point is that in addition to the resources and corrections others have given to help you educate yourself, those are some additional descriptions of ways to educate yourself, including where David Jones (one key guy behind the entire GTA design and the company) got the idea from. To declare your experience as a consumer rather than understanding the role of developers, and that “everybody felt the same way that I did" that it was hugely novel in 2008 when the company founder had been exploring the core design concepts since 1990 and publishing games demoing the concepts since 1991 is laughable. No, they were not the way you described, he'd been exploring it and publishing games on it for over a decade prior.

Please take some time to study, research, and learn the easily-accessible histories.

My claim that an open world game needs an interesting open world is unfounded? ……ok.

That's not what he said. One of the “claims” he's talking about is this: “I'm convinced everybody felt the same way that I did when the began GTA 4”

I already agreed with you that a game's world should be interesting. There's no need to argue simply for the sake of arguing. Why not just move on to another topic.

What was interesting about GTA 4's open world!?