Defining Sandbox Part 3: What a Sandbox Isn’t

As I mentioned elsewhere, Part 3 was intended to pick up right where Part 2 left off, but in the meantime, I’ve stumbled onto some of the same misconceptions repeatedly.   I will come back to where that argument left off the next time I return to this idea.  Instead, I’m going to do a quick bullet list.

• A sandbox is not a game where everything is possible and players can do anything.  It’s still a game.  Sandboxes will provide a lot of options and freedom to choose between those options, but those options still exist in a frame built by the game designers.  There are a lot of choices a player can make in Eve, a lot of ways to increase income or power, but there are still limits.  Players can camp a gate, but they can’t destroy it, can’t disable it, can’t redirect it to make it useless or send people to a dangerous area they didn’t expect.

• Following from that, a sandbox does not require open PvP.   For one, there are sandboxes without combat of any sort (A Tale in the Desert, Glitch).  However, I can understand thinking that if there is combat players should be able to attack anyone they want or they do not have real freedom.  But it is still a fictional world created by the developer.  If the developers want their world to be one in which crime is non-existent and intelligent creatures have never attacked other intelligent creatures, then fair enough.  Create some explanation in the game world’s lore and the problem is solved.

• A sandbox is not a game with only player-driven content.  Glitch has quests and plans to include more that reveal the lore of their world.  Skyrim, while not an MMO, is full of stories and direction wherever someone turns.  While true that most sandbox MMOs lack story-driven content, such is a characteristic of those particular games and not virtual worlds in general.

• A sandbox is not more work than fun.  Grind is a rather subjective descriptor for MMOs: the less one enjoys the mechanics that are required to advance in a game, the more grindy it will feel.  A sandbox could easily be created in which tasks that currently feel monotonous in current offerings require more active participation and are more entertaining.  Again, the idea that a sandbox is work and not play might be a valid descriptor for some current sandbox offerings, but it is a characteristic of those games and not a necessary characteristic of the genre.

• A sandbox is not a game with no direction.  Even professional MMO writers seem to get this wrong.  Once again, just because current games offer little to no direction, does not make that a characteristic of a sandbox.  One has to look no farther than single player sandboxes to see that this is not true, just true of MMO sandboxes at this time.

I wanted a few more bullets, but these seem to be the most common objections to the idea of sandboxes that I see around the internet.  When I read these objections, I hear in my head: “I played a sandbox MMO or two where [insert misconception from above is true] and I am incapable of understanding that what has been done is not all that can be done.”

Once again, “anything is possible except staying static” is not an ending to the conversation, it’s the beginning.  The inability to understand that is an unfortunate flaw of many gamers, most of whom will likely jump on an innovative game that does things they claimed would never happen without ever becoming aware they’ve been proved wrong.

Defining Sandbox Part 2: Character Power Progression

When I last left off exploring this commonly used bit of mmo jargon, I had decided that “the difference between a sandbox and a theme park MMO seems related to choice, the nature of those choices, and the limitations placed on those choices.”  I had also implicated that it is not just any choice that distinguishes between these types of games but more the ends of those choices.  In theme parks, any choice in how and where to play inevitably leads to the same end: increasing character level and acquiring new gear.  On the other hand, sandbox goals could possibly all lead to progressing character power, but that a sandbox allows variability in the definition of character power, rather than defining the power of all players, regardless of play style, by their character’s level and gear.

In order to be perceived as a sandbox, MMOs must leave a lot of what defines success and power up to the player community.  This leads to another misunderstanding regarding the meaning of sandbox: I’ve seen it written in many comment sections, likely by players who have not enjoyed current or past sandbox offerings, that “sandbox is just another word for no content.”  While I can, and certainly will before this series is over, debate what counts as content, I believe most people making this statement refer to quests and other such content that provides story.  While many games thought of as sandboxes have lacked any dev-driven story-based missions, I do not believe this lack actually is necessary to remain a sandbox.  However, for the game to feel like a sandbox, this content should be at most of equal importance to player-driven content.

Of course, I’m left with the burden of explaining player-driven content in such a way that does not specify exactly what that type of content might be.  I’m going to tentatively claim that player-driven content that enables players to personally define what is meant by power progression generally consists of game mechanics that allow players to permanently affect the game world for all players.  This can be anything from player built towns to war over territory to obtaining and monopolizing a resource.  Other players should be able to see what you have done and be affected by it.

However, and this is a big however, player actions that have an effect on others does not, does not, does not require traditional combat PvP.   I simply mean that the passage of player A through the game world has the potential to change what player B will find or do when she wanders through the same areas later. The world is not static, nor is it phased — whatever I see, you see, he sees, and she sees.  Coming back to the metaphor of theme park versus sandbox, in an actual theme park I am free to enjoy the rides, but if I were to attempt to change or modify them in some way, I’m sure I’d be arrested for some sort of crime.  On the other hand, when we give our children sandboxes, we encourage them to change its initial state, a smooth plane of sand, into whatever catches their fancy.  When the streetlights come on, we will tell the child it is time to come inside, but otherwise, there is no point in which we say to the child “You’re done.  You’ve won the sandbox.  You’ve created all the castles you can create.”  Children outgrow sandboxes, but they do not “finish the sandbox.”  There is no defined end — success is defined by the child.  And such is also true of character power in a sandbox.  It will be defined differently by every individual depending on what segment of the game’s mechanics most interest the player.  It might be traditional combat power, but it can also be social, political, or financial.

There’s quite a bit for me to chew on here, never mind anyone reading along, so again I will stop and let it stew.  Apparently, I am locking down my thoughts on the topic as I write them, so I will likely put all of these posts together in a more refined, united article with its own tab, eventually.  Next time I will go back to freedom of choice and oppose it to another ill-defined bit of gaming jargon: “linearity.”   That next entry  will likely spend more time defining “linear” games than sandboxes.

But someday I will get to a final definition of some kind, I swear.

Defining Sandbox: Part 1

Words are hard.  Here I am, a person who communicates continuously via the written word and is paid to craft words for others, and I know that despite my “expertise,” most of what I’ve written in my lifetime, if not all of it, can be misunderstood or interpreted from angles I did not imagine while writing.  Jargon is both a boon and a bane: although it allows people from the same fields to quickly communicate complicated ideas, people from different fields may use the same word to mean different things.  But the worst jargon comes in young fields, such as gaming criticism, where it seems assumed that “everyone knows” what it means without any discussion.

So have I justified talking about the meaning of the word “sandbox” in gaming and in the growing lexicon of mmo jargon?  Since I’m already writing this, I’ll go with the answer most convenient for me: yes.   So how do we define sandbox?  How is it being used out there?

Searching google for “define sandbox mmo,” the first relevant hit I come across is this hub page. The author, Tahamtan, equates sandbox games with freedom of choice.  He goes on to more details, including the claim that the players make the rules rather than developers, and specifics such as classless skill systems and customizable appearances, some of which I agree with and some seem optional at best and otherwise completely arbitrary.   I strongly agree with the freedom of choice bit, but I don’t think that’s enough detail to eliminate games that are commonly called theme parks.  I found a second blog post attempting to explain a personal definition of sandbox, but he focuses even more on the details than this first author.  And most of those details are lifted straight from UO.  UO is certainly a sandbox, at least everyone who has played it seems to think so, but I’m more interested in creating a definition of sandbox that includes any MMO generally agreed to be a sandbox (Ultima Online, SWG pre-NGE, Eve, Darkfall, Wurm Online, and such) while excluding any games generally agreed to be theme parks (WoW, Rift, Warhammer, etc.)

Sandbox games can certainly be said to depend on freedom of choice, but to what extent is freedom of choice limited in a theme park?   There’s a common argument about WoW that claims WoW offers choice despite generally being considered a theme park by most mmo bloggers and reviewers.  And it is certainly true that there are options available in WoW.  Although the most common path is to follow quests, players can choose to ignore the quests and grind mobs.  Players could also put together a regular group to crawl instances or exclusively use the dungeon finder and complete instances with PUGs.  At a certain point, though I cannot recall when, PvP becomes another viable option.

Similarly, WoW does allow for players to choose the zones they visit.  Once getting out of your racial start zone, there are frequently multiple options about where to go next.  There is not a single clear path that forces everyone to be in the same zone for the same level like there is in Forsaken World.  So with all these choices, why does the general consensus firmly place WoW in the theme park column?

Because all of these choices come with obvious limitations.  Although there are options about how to play, all of those options reach the same end: leveling your character and acquiring better equipment.  No matter how someone plays WoW, the goal remains the same.  Even when I imagine a player that gets joy primarily from exploration, visiting every in-game location still requires leveling up and getting new equipment.  Locations are designed for certain level ranges, and while there may not be something stopping a player from visiting higher level zones, players are not able to explore and survive unless they are in the right range for that zone.  The choice of where and how to level is governed by the character’s level throughout the game.  No matter what a player focuses on, leveling and new equipment will either be the end result or a necessary step along the way.

When I look at a sandbox, I find it more difficult to generalize all the goals with a single end as I have with WoW.  Although I have heard it said that the goal is still more power, the difference is in the definition of power.  In WoW, power will nearly always refer to character level and gearscore.  Some might describe power as the amount of gold they possess, but again this goal is governed by character level (higher levels acquire more gold and more valuable crafting materials) and just like character level, there is even a cap that forces players to cease pursuing gold as a game goal.

So far the difference between a sandbox and a theme park MMO seems related to choice, the nature of those choices, and the limitations placed on those choices.  This is far from the complete definition I’m searching for that clearly defines sandbox while excluding theme parks.  But this blog is the longest I’ve written so far, and if anyone is still reading I’m amazed and impressed.  Next, I will take a closer look at how “gaining power” is not a sufficient generalization for goals in a sandbox, or at the very least, how many different ways one can define “gaining power,” all while continuing to work toward a meaningful definition of sandbox.

No promises as to when, I still have a draft of WoW Hate Explained Pt. 1 to finish, and I started thinking about that months ago.