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The Itinerant Gamer on Game and Player

The Itinerant Gamer

Nathan Riley  //  August 24, 2010


More developers need to fill the worlds they make.

T

he notion of freedom in gaming is a strange one. More often than not it's a contrived pseudo-effort — an illusion in which we are led to believe a massive space populated by a matrix of the same buildings, trees and sidewalks seen an innumerable amount of times is actually genuine content.

It isn't. It's merely filler. For it to truly work there needs to be something else, a veritable "secret ingredient." How often can it be said that developers include this vital ingredient in their mix?

In the likes of Sucker Punch Production's Infamous, the world becomes a blur of greyscale, utterly useless without the enemies that populate it. Even in the beautiful world of Red Dead Redemption, a tapestry of old-world warm colors, unpicking the threads will leave you with pithy attempts at mini-games. Sprawling beauty is the biggest lie in games; no amount of it can veil a poor attempt.

Yet when executed perfectly it inspires awe — the same awe felt at defining points in the "real world." When executed perfectly beauty inspires awe — but has to be paired with other elements.Be it an ocean on a clear day or cloud-capped mountain, it will deliver belittling wonderment. A well-conceived vista in a game has the same effect as a well-placed master shot in a film. However, this beauty has to be paired with other elements. When done, it grants an unimaginable sense of scale.

A single genre has persistently created worlds capable of filling us with marvel. Plucked from our mortal coil and transported to a far more fantastical environment, the RPG presents us with the best of these worlds — irrefutable proof of games becoming more than their individual parts.

Fallout 3 was one such game. Released in 2008, it is the story of the lone wanderer, tasked with tracking down his father and saving the denizens of the wasteland. This game is one of the greatest examples of well-crafted world. Despite the fact that the game is a sea of grey and that there's a poor amount of diversity in the buildings you're surrounded by, there's something that keeps you going.

The world is filled with a seemingly infinite amount of unique spaces, each with a story to tell — be it an audio log describing a family's struggle to stay alive, or a corpse with gun in hand lying next to a campsite. The world is massive, not because of its physical attributes but because of the ideas it places in your head. It's this sparking of deep thought that other games lack, giving them a flat, lifeless feel.

Fallout 3 is massive, not because of its physical attributes but because of the ideas it places in your head.The Assassin's Creed series suffers from this, forced into a free-roam universe because it's the new popular dynamic within games— growth for the sake of growth. While free-roam has done wonders for games, it has to be said there is nothing wrong with the traditional manner of a linear level system. What really is in the world of Assassin's Creed besides the main story?

There's some almost useless collectibles, put there because it's seen as a gaming norm. There's also a selection of side-quests — repetitions of story missions without the feeling you've actually accomplished anything. There's a hidden puzzle that grants a small insight, yet nothing worthwhile. The story in Assassin's Creed is its greatest strength. All that free-roam offers is time spent traveling, slowly. While the game is very good-looking, the open world gifts beauty with one hand and takes patience with the other.

While the development of free-roam in games is a very promising aspect, it's not the ultimate one. If it is a genuine addition then by all means let it stay. But a vast, open world is only beneficial to the story if it's filled with complimentary ideas, not dull collectibles and meaningless side-quests.

Developers need to understand that a character's freedom is unimportant compared to all potential interactions that characters can have within that world. What's the point in freedom if there's nothing to discover? Developers need to fill the world they make if they stand any chance of enamoring us; any chance of lasting success.




Michael Ubaldi // August 24, 2010 // 10:59 AM

This is a topic I've wanted to write on for some time. I see the next required step of evolution in simulated environments — especially those in sandbox and free-roam games — to be a shift away from improving rendering and animation and toward partially automated content generation.

The problem seems to be that on one hand everyday life the furthest thing from static mundanity; while on the other a gigantic world can't suspend disbelief when players finally reduce it to patterns and contrived repetitions.

The logistics are likely beyond a single developer; I see a ripe market for middleware developers, if they happen to be on the same wavelength.


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