Today I want to talk about the different styles of massive multiplayer games, since they are so incredible popular, as well as potential filled area for game developers. The two big styles I want to discuss is the “amusement park” versus the “sandbox” styles.
These fall upon a spectrum, where at one end is the pure “amusement park” and on the other is the “sandbox”. There is also the middle ground, where a game can attempt to combine sandbox and amusement park, often with it differing upon the activities.
Typically the style is a key defining facet of a games identity. It dictates how the content of the game is going to be designed. It is also one of the key draws for certain types of players.
Amusement Parks
Pure, ideal amusement park game play is the idea that the developer controls every aspect of how the player interacts with the game. The name comes from real world amusement parks. The idea is that for a ride, you stand in line, get into a little vehicle of some kind and be taken through by the programmed motions of the ride from start to finish. There is little or no player control over the outcome, often with just the succeed/fail outcomes determined by the player’s actions from a series of controlled challenges. You can’t jump the track and head off in an unexpected direction.
One of the biggest amusement park games on the market right now is World of Warcraft (WoW). For instance, take running a dungeon instance. It is limited to five people at any one time; it has a definitive start and finish with a certain order of progress intended. You first kill your way down some corridors to the first boss, then the second boss, then third etc. etc. until you reach the final boss and the instance is cleared.
Now the wonderful thing about WoW is that it is not so controlled that you cannot stop the ride once it has started. You can swap out group members; you do not have to kill every single boss before leaving. In some circumstances you can even bypass a boss or a certain number of bad guys. The game is an amusement park style just short total control, and in the end it is probably one of the reasons the game is so popular (in addition to the other positive aspects which is a different discussion).
Sandbox
On the other end of the spectrum is a game like EVE Online. It is a sandbox game with very little developer controlled game play. The developers created the galaxy, many of the stations, planets and other locations. They created the rules of combat, how ships work and how skills are learned. There are also some NPC (Non playable character) missions and other things provided by the game devs. Essentially, they took a plot of land, built little wooden runners, filled it with sand, plunked down some toy trucks, shovels and buckets and said “Have at it boys and girls!”.
To continue with the sandbox analogy, some people spend time building sand castles, some spend time digging holes, others spend time socializing. Others spend there time fighting with others over corners of the sandbox or focusing on destroying other people’s sand castles and filling in people’s holes.
While there is a nanny watching the sandbox, she’s reading a magazine and only will interfere if the kids in the sandbox are trying to strangle each other. Beyond that, there’s little intervention.
Development
From a development stand point each style requires different considerations. Neither is necessarily easier to make than the other.
Sandboxes require much more consideration for balancing abilities, skill and powers of players. Since there is much more room for one player to negatively (or positively) impact another player’s experience, having things overly powerful loose in the game can really throw things out of whack within a matter of days. But what sandbox games need less of is the structured and hand designed content. This often can save time and resources and allow the developers to focus on the balancing of the game.
Amusement parks have nearly opposite considerations of sandboxes. They can often have unbalanced or otherwise over/under powered items, skills or abilities without it having a large impact on the game. The developers can spend more time in between having to update the game. On the other hand, they require much more developer designed content. This is fairly time and skill intensive. Often times this requires a larger group of developers dedicated solely to this endeavor.
Both styles of games require considerable efforts on the part of the developer. Neither is easy to do and it often takes years to accomplish.
Players
What ultimately defines a game and keeps many of the players around long after the novelty of the world has worn off is the player community. A strong community is the key to keep a game going regardless of style, lore or setting. If the game provides an easy way to keep in contact with others the player has encountered through their travels then they will continue to keep their account active.
Both sandbox games and amusement park games attract a certain type of player. The sandboxes tend to have players who are a bit more resilient than their amusement park counterparts. Amusement park games tend to attract the normal video game player as well as people who normally wouldn’t play video games, since these games can often be played casually and in small bites, only a few minutes at a time. There is certainly overlap in the player population as well.
The reason for these attractions is pretty straight forward. People who encounter difficult or otherwise “bad” situations early on in a video game are more likely to quit the game. Sandboxes, due to their open nature, are much more likely to be a harsh experience for a player, with an unexpected action like another player killing them or stealing their items, which is enough for some people to quit. Thus, a majority of people who stick with these games are individuals who are willing to keep on trying even in the face of being violated by another player. Amusement parks on the other hand are often a bit less dangerous and allow for casual players and others who are not traditional gamers like stay at home mothers, grandparents and young children can enjoy. These games have rules are usually easier to learn and require slightly less skill/experience to play. Thus, people who might not have been entertained by other games can find these games enjoyable.
Summary
Overall, MMOs are a great genre of games. They appear in many different shapes and forms, with some games being extremely similar of others while others are very novel in their design. They all fall somewhere in the spectrum between sandbox and amusement park. Understanding how these games compare is a great benefit for picking up future games you may wish to play.
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