discussion Short Story Arcs vs The Sandbox

[Dragonmede]

A thought came to mind that Sandbox games are in a lot of ways a disorganized grouping of short story arcs. Why couldn't an existing Sandbox game be reorganized into short story formats like Zeno's Anthology?
It seems that all the needed components are there already; dialog, renders, etc.. and the stories do not need to be in any particular order.
Wouldn't this breath new life into a rather unpopular style of game?
Thoughts?

 

[TrainMan]

most sandbox games have an overarching story that progresses with certain flags though

 

[AlBetGam]

A thought came to mind that Sandbox games are in a lot of ways a disorganized grouping of short story arcs.

I wouldn't really say that's what they are. The main feature of a sandbox is that you're put in an 'open' (to varying degrees) world, and have to interact with it to progress the story. You could use a sandbox as a delivery mechanism for a bunch of short story arcs, but most of them aren't necessarily doing that; they have a larger story told in pieces.

(I'd also argue a sandbox game needs to be very well organized, to keep those story pieces in a coherent and accessible structure; when it's disorganized you get a bad game. Which, granted, there are plenty of.)

Why couldn't an existing Sandbox game be reorganized into short story formats like Zeno's Anthology?
It seems that all the needed components are there already; dialog, renders, etc.. and the stories do not need to be in any particular order.
Wouldn't this breath new life into a rather unpopular style of game?
Thoughts?

At least two big problems with this.

1. Zeno's Anthology is, well, an anthology. Multiple small stories with no real connection to each other. Order doesn't matter because the laundry room story doesn't connect to e.g. the nighttime car ride story. In most sandboxes there is at least some connection between different character's stories and picking a random one to go through will cause a lot of them to not make any sense.

2. It wouldn't be a sandbox. Which doesn't sound like a bad thing if you just hate sandbox games, but they keep getting made because a lot of people do like them, or at least like them in theory. Cutting the sandbox part out doesn't improve the game for the people who were most interested in it to begin with.

 

[aillz]

I'd retort that some of my and I would guess some portion of sandbox game enjoyers reason for picking those games is disinterest in certain characters or themes and the option to interact with the world in the way you like. For instance games like Corruption (old game ik) don't have a particular story, but tons of content as each LI has their own personal corruption arc. You get to choose who when and even if each LI gets involved. But if the topic is just already dying sandbox vns, ig it would be worth a try for a few.

 

[kemad]

sandbox games are really hard to get into for me. there's too much "freedom" (read: miss-able or time-locked content) and it almost universally detracts from whatever story the dev is trying to tell. there are, of course, games that do it well; but they are few and far between.

 

[bdogvn25]

My favorite type of game is a well done sandbox. It gives me another level of immersion. My least favorite is a poorly done sandbox... cause they just suck hard. I would imagine open world/ sandbox games are multiple levels of complexity harder to create. Props to thosw devs who do it well.

 

[malvius]

My favorite type of game is a well done sandbox. It gives me another level of immersion. My least favorite is a poorly done sandbox... cause they just suck hard. I would imagine open world/ sandbox games are multiple levels of complexity harder to create. Props to thosw devs who do it well.

fully agree, sandboxes IMO have the wildest curve between good and bad, the good ones phenomenal and the bad ones utter slog fests. Though that does make it feel like the good ones stand out far better to me.

 

[Dean Wincester]

The problem with sandbox games is their seems to be 2 reasons why devs create them. On one hand you have the dev's that try to make a engaging sandbox, that gives you the freedom to tailor your experience to how you would most enjoy the game. These sort of games can be enjoyable and each sandbox can create a short story, however its not so easy to get that balance perfect.
The other type of sandbox is there purely to make you click a button more times and repeat the same action a set amount of times to progress to the next stage. This type of sandbox has no other purpose than to drag out what little content is available, in the hopes that you will feel there's move value from their game than there actually is.
A good sandbox game can be great, there's a few I would consider among my favourite games on this site. Unfortunately though there are twice as many poorly created sandbox games.

 

[Raodos455]

i like some sandbox when the triggers are well explained and each location has scenes

 

[Naugus]

I feel the sandbox form is a more enjoyable way of presenting short stories, but it has the issue of being a pain to code and cuts into development times.

 

[Johngawn61]

The problem with sandboxes is that they usually aren't used to divide up a story into content the player can choose to engage with based on their preferences. It usually just ends up being an annoying map with a bunch of extra required button clicks to continue a story that would be better off being linear.

 

[Kenjiro]

A good sandbox game is very hard to make. But when it's achieved, IMHO, it's far superior than a linear novel