Game Design Essentials: The Top 20 'Open World' Games
Aha - so John H's second in Gamasutra's 'Game Design Essentials' series, following '20 Difficult Games', looks at the roots and design lessons of 'open world games' - titles in which the player "is left to his own devices to explore a large world" - from Adventure through Metroid to Grand Theft Auto.
Here's something from his intro, helping to define the tricksy term: "When we discuss "open world games" in this article, or sometimes "exploration games," we mean those games where generally the player is left to his own devices to explore a large world. What all of these games share is the seeking of new, interesting regions at whatever time the player deems fit. No force forces the player's motion into new areas. There's no auto-scroll, and there are no artificial level barriers."
The whole article is a little retro game-focused, sure, but as Harris says, design mechanics are often much more clearly delineated or oddly exposed in those earlier titles - and I like his discussion of the classic Adventure on the Atari 2600: "Adventure's fun comes from the way all of its simple objects interact to produce complex behavior... carrying the sword, the bat might brush it across a dragon on his flight, killing it. This is possible because all of the objects in the game function automatically, which they have to be anyway since The Button is devoted to dropping stuff. A lot of the fun in Adventure comes from the unintended consequences of the player's actions." Chaos can be fun!
Comments
I don't know. It seems this article focuses almost entirely on Japanese games in the Metroidvania-style. The GTA-games feel a bit out of place there.
TBH, when I think about older "open world"-games, I think of games like Hunter(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_%28computer_game%29), Midwinter , the Mercenary-series (maybe this should be "open worlds"), Star Control II, Elite, Quest for Glory (1), et.c.
Posted by: fluffy bunny | September 27, 2007 9:38 AM
A fantastic series... Besides, I never knew APB was considered open world and am elated to see Slime World still being recognized for the amazing masterpiece it's always been...
Posted by: gnome | September 27, 2007 11:34 AM
This was all over the place; it really lacked focus. Side scrollers are not open-world games; the idea that Castlevania is open-world is laughable -- the game is completely rigid, you can't do anything out of a very specific order with many choke points (boss fights, etc.) The lack of mentioning space games (such as Elite) or MUDS/MOOs or Meridian 59 or Angband or many other true open-world titles where you could actually change the world is laughable. Oh, and why not mention every single one of the Zelda series? That soaked up a lot of space.
Posted by: zink | September 27, 2007 2:20 PM
I suppose I could take your criticism more seriously zink if you backed it up a bit better. For example, I mentioned exactly two Zelda titles, out of twenty. And as far as Elite goes it's interesting, but the scenery kind of gets old after a while?
My point was, there are lots of kinds of games that can be considered exploratory. By listing out lots of different kinds, we can see outlier cases as well as the obvious ones.
Posted by: John H. | September 30, 2007 2:37 AM
How interesting is the scenery in Adventure, then? I mean, sure, Elite looks crap today, but isn't it the gameplay we should be considering?
And besides, how about Frontier: Elite II and Elite III? There you can visit a large number of unique planets that actually look interesting.
Another thing, have you played Hunter (I linked to it earlier)? Writing about open-world games and not mentioning Hunter should probably be considered a crime...
The Mercenary-series should also get more attention, IMO. They look like crap, but they were way ahead of their time, and to this date there haven't really been any games that have attempted anything similar.
And finally, one game that would not only have deserved to be in the article, but also fit very well with the focus on platform-adventures, is Exile. It is one of only three games that have posthumously been awarded a 10/10 by Edge.
Posted by: fluffy bunny | September 30, 2007 6:49 AM
I'm surprised that Robot Odyssey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Odyssey) isn't on the list. In a way it is like Adventure, but with a lot more interesting emergent interaction.
Posted by: Malcolm Ryan | October 1, 2007 7:07 PM