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[TinyGolem]

Hi there everyone! 
We are a small group of devs currently building a game called Slyceverse. The basic idea of the game is world exploration/sandbox. We’ve done some basic prototyping and now we would like to find out what people actually expect/dream of when they hear world exploration.

Our wild ramblings can be found here -> http://blog.slyceverse.net/

World Exploration/sandbox games
- Does the world really need another world exploration game?
- What would you like to see/ expect in a World Exploration game?
- What would keep you coming back?
- What percentage of time would you spend exploring/building/crafting?

Some examples of what we see as World Exploration/Sandbox games

http://www.minecraft.net/
http://www.terraria.org/
http://cultrl.wordpress.com/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/winterkewlgames/yogventures
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/07/05/voxel-populi-planet-explorers/
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/14/realm-explorer-looks-intriguing-but-hmm/

[JMStark]

So you're making a game about punching trees?

I kid, but when you ask what would be attractive about a procedurally generated sandbox game, I think about how they are almost exactly the same, in tone, in mechanics, in structure, in setting, etc. If you want to blow minds and get people talking, subvert these.

For example, what if you made a exploratory, procedurally generated kart racer?

Sorry, that was a bit out there. Maybe you get what I mean to say.

[Paul Eres]

i think there's probably room for more variation in the 'minecraftlike' genre, sure. there are like 10,000 platformers and 10,000 jrpgs, and only like, what, 100 minecraftlikes? (i mean finished ones.) so there's lots of room to discover new stuff in it, the genre isn't played out yet, there's only a perception that there's too many of them because there's a gold rush to make the next big minecraft

it's similar to tower defense in a way. there were a couple of very successful tower defense flash games, and after that there were like 1000 TD games made. but each one was at least slightly unique, even the most cloney, and each one added to the genre by trying at least one small thing that was new, and the genre evolved gradually, step by step. there were plenty of people saying 'enough! too many TD games!' too; but what's the alternative? make another roguelike, or another fps game, or another rhythm game? no matter what genre you're working in there's hundreds or thousands of games very similar to it, even if you mix genres there's dozens of games that mixed the same genres you are mixing, there's no escape

[Muz]

I don't get the philosophy behind your game. What does the player do? Why would it be fun?

You can't just make a 'sandbox game' and ask people what they want to see in it. You have to tell me what makes it special. Why would it be different? What's fun about it that I can't get in Minecraft or whatever? What possibilities?

It's impossible to say how much time I would spend building/crafting/exploring, because it depends entirely on how the game is constructed. Some worlds are tiny, 100% explored, so there's little joy in exploration. Some games have a strong community, so building/crafting is more fun. Some games are PvP, so castles are vital, and people will end up specializing. Or if you've got a skill set that rewards specialization, then people could well spend 90% of their time on one activity.

[Danmark]

The biggest flaw shared by most games in this genre is that they never really coalesce into coherent, expansive, and substantial games (Minecraft's early-dev success is partly to blame).

Individual gameplay elements other than construction are terrible, there's tons of make-work grinding, actions have few long-range consequences, the world is static and dull save for the player's direct modification of it, few if any discernible actors exist to share the world & interact with...

What fascinates me is that, no matter what quirky theme their devs try to shoehorn in, these games end up with those same undertones of isolation and despair as anything from the former Eastern Bloc (Operation Flashpoint, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro 2033). If they're world exploration games, you explore dead worlds. If they're sandbox games, they're lonely sandboxes stripped of all toys that the neighborhood cats have shit in.

[1982]

(Operation Flashpoint, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro 2033). If they're world exploration games, you explore dead worlds. If they're sandbox games, they're lonely sandboxes stripped of all toys that the neighborhood cats have shit in.

Cant comment on Metro because I haven't played it, but OF/ArmA series definitely is not exploration or sandbox. It has quite a large map and free movement, but thats it. Stalker is more of an exploration as you literally explore and dig for treasures. But maybe the map is not vast enough for such game. Sandbox it is not either.

Try GTA San Andreas for pretty nice sandbox game, or even Just Cause 2. Both have very lively worlds. Heck they are set in modern urban areas, instead of isolate desert or wasteland.

Good exploration / sandbox game is easy to make. Build large enough, interesting map. Hid treasures of various degree of value. This means that there has to be some kind of good system for using treasures and or selling them in meaningful internal market. Diablo 3 has pretty nice idea for treasure hunting, though it is multiplayer. Too bad the actual game is crap. If you could take treasure mechanism from Diablo, and put it in Minecraft you might have something there. Sure, Minecraft could be expanded to whatever direction as is fundamental mechanism is pretty strong.

[rivon]

Metro 2033 is definitely not a sandbox and it is definitely not an open-world game. It's like STALKER but linear. You can't freely explore anything.

[Danmark]

@1982, rivon:

What fascinates me is that, no matter what quirky theme their devs try to shoehorn in, these games end up with those same undertones of isolation and despair as anything from the former Eastern Bloc...

Sandbox games like the ones OP are talking about share undercurrents with all games from the former Eastern Bloc. Isolation & despair can be an effective theme, especially when it has cultural significance to developers, such as the Eastern European ones who feature it prominently in their games. But it's only present in Minecraft-alikes because devs botch their designs. That's what I was trying to get across.

Try GTA San Andreas for pretty nice sandbox game, or even Just Cause 2. Both have very lively worlds. Heck they are set in modern urban areas, instead of isolate desert or wasteland.

OP is talking about games in the vein of Minecraft, going by his links. It's a little unclear because he doesn't have a concept yet.

[rivon]

Not everything from the former Eastern Bloc has the themes of isolation and despair. Maybe the exploration/sandbox games but not the other kinds of games.

[Danmark]

^ Right now, the only Eastern European sandbox game I can think of, Xenus/Boiling Point, doesn't have the theme (neither inadvertently nor intentionally). Though it's not a Minecraft-alike.

Every other game from the region I've played does. Still a poor generalization TBH. Probably seems that way to me

Hugely tangential, not that the thread was going anywhere.

[rivon]

What about Mafia? Black Mirror? Hidden & Dangerous?

[TinyGolem]

To all that replied, thanks for the constructive feedback!
You have given us a whole lot to think about.

The topic and questions were of a general nature...we just didn't realize how general . Its off to the workbench to iterate the design and find out what the nitty gritty of the game should be and why we would want you all to come and play.

[Graham.]

Take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt.

"Nitty-gritty" is kind of throwing me. I'm going to echo something that's been implied already. Your ideas are very general.

"Nitty" is like polish: the stuff the comes after you've got the meat down: you know, you've got a burger, and now you are deciding how much ketchup to add. What you have is an engine and a concept. That's like a bun and a kitchen. But you don't have the beef yet, or the idea of beef. Your concept reads like: "We have an idea for a sandwich. We have a state-of-the-art kitchen. We like these other restaurants. We can't tell what's going to be in our sandwich, so we want you to tell us. Do you think that sandwich sounds delicious? Are there too many sandwiches like that already? What others things would you like to see in our sandwich?"

An engine isn't a game no more than a paintbrush and studio is a painting. Paintings come from the artist's soul. Viewers can critique a painting, but not a palette.

I don't know if I'm splitting hairs, or off-track. I just see this pattern a lot with indies who are just getting started. They start building before they have a vision, then end up with something that doesn't satisfy them, because they backed themselves into a corner. So I'm going after it because it's such a consistent problem with everyone who's ever struck out on their own. I've dealt with this a lot in my own work.

In the design stages for a game, I'd say what you have is a proposal for receiving the funding to do the research to come back to me with a design outline, not even a design, just an outline. The kinds of feedback you are looking for are more for the "I have a design and need critique" phase. And now you're talking about details. It seems like you skipped two whole steps: the design concept, and the design.

The dev process goes like this:
  . proposal for concept **
  . research/design-prototyping (just paper, no tech)
  . outline
  . minimalist prototype (of 1-3 main features, low tech)
  . design
  . details
  . prototype
  . iteration
  . polish


I just made that up. There is no system. I'm just using this for reference. You are at the first stage, but your language suggests you're more like in the middle. Maybe I'm reading into things. I apologize if I am. I write where I can.

Ok. "World exploration" is a genre. It isn't a game idea. Saying that is like saying, "platformer," "shooter." Before you worry about details you need a good idea of what makes a platformer or shooter interesting, and how your game in particular is different from what is already out there, and why you feel that it has a design that you can deliver on - because of personal interest, life experience, whatever.

World exploration games aren't interesting on their own. Minecraft for example was very carefully designed. If you read Notch's blog, or see videos of him, he talks a lot about the motivation for why things are the way they are. He had a very good idea of what he wanted to make the player feel before he started coding. So when he did code he could make clean decisions by relating them to what he felt his intended experience was.

I hope I'm not being too vague.

It's like if you want to write a fantasy novel. You can't just say: Tolkien, Rowling, R.R. Martin. You need a feeling that gives life to your world, a compelling character or problem, something you can relate to as a human. You've got to put yourself out there, find what's personal to you, really understand it, craft it into something that's presentable, then ask for feedback.

I'm going to take a stab here. Finding the beef in your project is the hardest part. You can't detail your way around it. It is the most uncertain, most humbling, most nerve-wracking experience. It is the blank page and a pencil part, where you face your own insecurities. Every artist, creator, faces it. It's the part that prevented me from creating my own work for so long. Instead I tried to solve well-defined problems, like programming system design things. There is no way around it, or short-cut or whatever. You have to suffer through it, propose ideas and scratch them, so many times that it becomes like breathing. Then you will get a concept, then you can create an outline, then you can build a prototype and say: "oh yeah, this is a game."

The absolute worst thing to happen is pour a lot of your momentum into a project that stops half-way, well, except that you learn crazy from that experience. I've been there so many times.

Again, this is just a general post, because this kind of thing sort of slides around in the shadows a lot of TIG. Sometimes I try to step in and never communicate what I mean clearly, and it makes me wonder what I really mean.

[LaughingLeader]

Off the top of my head, what I'd like to see in an "exploration game" is landscape that actually matters - that motivates me to actually want to go explore, and to continue the journey.

A simple example would be to give reason to why I should go look at something. "Well, those are the mountains. Aren't they pretty?" "Yeah, I see them. Well, I probably don't need to see another mountain again. I've already experienced that one." While the same feeling may not be reasonably true in real life, in a game, where art assets are usually recycled (or in the case of a progen game, generated with some slight variations), it can be easy (as a player) to assume that most of these things are the same all over the sandbox world.

Take sandbox games based in cities, for instance. Sure, they have lots of different buildings, but I never really care about them. I can't go explore what may be inside of one (for most sandbox city games, anyway). So for all I care, they're just background fluff that convinces me I'm in a city. Most of these games aren't made with the purpose of exploration, so that may be all right.

For a sandbox exploration game though, I need some reason to explore (from an "experiencing the landscape aspect") behind an out-of-game "looking at something because it's pretty" reason. Exploring to observe things could be given a purpose in-game, possibly. Maybe looking at a mountain gives you some experience, and maybe the game takes note that you saw that mountain. Maybe then you go and see a few other mountains, and now the number of mountains you've seen has increased by a lot, and it seems (to the game) that the player likes to look at mountains. So maybe the game designs the next mountain to be more than just a mountain. Maybe this mountain is in a snowy area, and maybe when the player sees this mountain, part of it suddenly explodes in a large avalanche. Now the player learns that other mountains may contain other surprises. Now there's a reason to go explore beyond merely looking.

That's what I'd like to see just from one aspect of an exploration game. A reason to want to explore the landscape, and a reason to feel like it's not all "pointless background fluff." Then when the exploration game adds possible interaction with other "living" beings, objects to interact with, and whatever else, I'll still care about the landscape that it all inhabits.

[jethrolarson]

Does Geocaching count as a world exploration game?