The big city

First of all, I apologize for the brief lapse in new posts. Work was hectic last week and involved a trip to New York. It was my first time in New York, and I wasn't quite prepared for the scale of things or the sense of awe that a city so big commands. Upon leaving, I was struck by the urge to play SimCity, probably because the trip ended with a flight over the city on a clear night.

Where does the urge to build a city come from? Not sure, but I think it has something to do with the way cities seem to behave like organisms -- constant while constantly changing. It's not a new metaphor, but it is a brilliant dynamic to try to capture in a game.

Reflections like this leave me wondering about the relationship between story-based and open-ended games. SimCity doesn't have a pre-ordained story. Indeed, Will Wright (the creator of SimCity) and others would tell you that the narrative value of open-ended games like SimCity is in the communication of events after the fact, rather than in gameplay itself. Even more, he would likely say that the best games are ones that possess the most narrative potential without dealing with a specific narrative (in other words, games that encourage storytelling among players).

The Grand Theft Auto series, though, is a nice example of games that accommodate sandbox play along with a directed (though branching) storyline. Some might call the story optional, but really it's not. The size of your sandbox in GTA depends directly on completing at least some of the story.

Since I'm working on a story-based game, I feel compelled to address somehow the possibility of open-ended play in my game world. How I'll do that remains to be seen. A lot of games resort to side quests, the search for hidden items and hidden bosses, etc. These are good options, but they are once-and-done activities. At a certain point, you can accomplish everything. Maybe that's desirable, though. Stories always have a beginning and an end, so to some extent they can't coexist with purely open-ended gameplay. Maybe the best answer is something like GTA or Will Wright's upcoming game Spore, which I've heard him describe as goal-oriented gameplay designed to prepare you for the ultimate sandbox experience.

I can envision adaptive story-based games where the player's decisions truly affect the world and the characters, but they are still some years away (D&D-based games like Knights of the Old Republic don't quite cut it, in my opinion). In the meantime, I'll continue mulling the issue while I build a virtual city to rival Manhattan.