Dopass.com

One of the topics that come up often when game devs get around and talk about what they like in games is the topic of "open world" versus "gated world" game experiences. These conversations often boil down to devs distilling why they play games and what they're looking for, but really the question is a simple one:

Is it better to gate the player, so that pacing and narrative can be assured (As in a movie, say), or is it better to leave the world entirely open and allow the player to do as she pleases (as in a park, say)?

I often find myself ambivalent, in the true meaning of the world, about the topic. As a player, I like to explore, to discover and, above all else, to immerse myself in the worlds that I partake in. That often puts me right smack in the middle of the debate. It depends on the world. Would Portal, for example, have been as fun if I wasn't painstakingly guided through the experience (an extended tutorial, in many ways)? I suspect that it would not... On the other hand, would I have enjoyed Bioshock more if I had been pulled off the rails and allowed to make my own choices on how to proceed? I think I would have - that world felt realized to a degree where I wanted to see more of it, whereas with Portal I think giving me too much freedom too soon would have ruined the experience.

So, is there a right answer? As with literally every game design question you can pose, the answer is, "yes. and no." (It's a long standing joke among my circle of designer friends that "the designer answer is both.") It comes down to what you're trying to accomplish and how you're trying to accomplish it, right? I mean, Portal is an austere world - that's intentional for a number of reasons, the least of which is projecting that "in a lab" atmosphere that they wanted... Would such a pristine, unblemished -- and mostly empty -- world be fun to explore unfettered?

Is it even a topic you can tackle so broadly? I mean certainly every game should not be open or gated, right? So is it every game in a genre? Every game in a franchise? Does it matter?

No. It really doesn't, because - and here's where I have to cowboy up and just admit something I really don't like - irregardless of the "are games art" debate, games are games. Entertainments. You have to - as in you as a designer or dev have an obligation to - do whatever makes your game most enjoyable to its intended market.

Why don't I like that games are just games? Because, what's fun for you might be different from what's fun for me. As a designer, I can't just make the games I want to play, unless I happen to be emblematic of the market I want to sell my game to. No, instead I have to make the games my market will find fun.

Therein lies the aspect I hate: I know what it is that's fun for me that games haven't really done before. I know how to innovate for myself, but what about for the guy that thinks Quake is better than half-life, or that the PS3 is the best game system evar? I flat out don't understand that user, so how do I know what to make for him, other than by looking back at what that guy liked, before? And if I do figure it out by looking back at games past, am I not just contributing to the same downward spiral of game self-similarity that I lament about, all the time?

So, I hate that I don't get to make games for me (that I have to go with the choice that makes the game more fun for the "demographic"), because it means that all this yearn I have to innovate often has to be deliberately ignored, so that I don't alienate the real audience (and I've had it hammered into my soul by a million design directors: I am NOT the audience we're selling games to). I feel like it makes me worse at my job.

This was most evident to me, when I pitched a game called "derelict" at a now dead studio.

Derelict was meant to be an Xbox game, a first person or third person action game that, at first glance, seemed your typical "man versus aliens" yawn-fest, but what made Derelict interesting (To me) was the systems I'd designed so that the game would watch how you played it and then catered itself to your play style. Some day I intend to make this game, so I'll skip the specific details (because no one has done anything like it yet, even though I pitched the idea first about 5 years ago), but they don't matter anyway - what matters is the response.

"So... you don't have any weapons?" the creative director asked.

"No, not at first. You'll need to improvise them, if fighting is your thing." I replied.

"If fighting is your thing?"

"Oh yeah, it's totally possible to finish the whole thing without killing anything. I call it the 'brainy' approach."

"The what?" -- Blank stares on most, open disgust on the face of the studio head.

"This game will never sell. Why don't you get it? Next you're going to tell me that our war game should use cute anime characters."

"Actually, I had a few notes here, with some sample images; I think you could totally go mad-scientist/ultraman with it and get a really quirky off-beat take on the otherwise passé ww2 game..."

"Get out of my office."

OK, so I'm paraphrasing, but the experience has totally stuck with me, in the 5 years since. I've mentioned Derelict to my gamer friends and explained exactly what it was, how it did it's "I'm watching you and playing back" trick and what that meant to the overall experience. Every single one, from 9 year old child up to 45 year old flight sim player all responded positively... but not one game dev exec has ever viewed the concept with anything other than open and obvious disgust.

For a bit of that time, I harbored the idea that our execs are all essentially mad - that they've lost touch with the market completely, but that can't be true... They've made the industry way too damned much money. I've come to realize that while I hate what it means, if you want to make money in this industry, catering to folks like me seems to be the wrong way to go. Those Design Directors aren't wrong -- about that, anyway.

But, surely I'm not the only guy that likes immersive games that make me think, right? So if that's the "niche" I represent, does that mean they're all as underserved as I am?

Maybe that means I can make a game I want to make, without having to watch it get ground down into mediocrity by the endless compromises necessary to appeal to a mass market. I mean, if I'm not alone, then there's a market, even if it is small. If there's a market, there should be an opportunity.

Or is there? The choices you make that make the game fun might make the game unproducable on anything but a blockbuster budget. The choice of, for example, "Open world or gated world" [Bet you thought I'd wandered off topic, huh?] has a massive impact on how the game is produced and the amount of time, effort and money needed to complete it.

If "open world I can explore as I see fit" is a requirement to satisfy my niche, then that niche needs to be large enough to recoup the resulting larger budget an open world game needs, in order to get made.

Derelict, despite the "play it any way you want to" mantra that inspired me to create it, is a gated game. Gating makes the "catering itself to you" trick a lot easier to pull off without spiraling production costs into the stratosphere... It also gives me the tools to enforce the pacing necessary to tell a story (you didn't really think I'd make a game without a story, did you?!), which actually makes the world more immersive as the context of the narrative adds emotional depth to the play spaces.

Does that mean that Derelict, ostensibly made for the folks like me that usually prefer open world games over gated ones, fails to cater to my niche? I like to think the answer is no, but I'm not really sure, to be honest. I'd have to find a studio exec that isn't afraid to take a risk on a niche game to know, and I'm not sure those exist. Not really.

- Snipehunter