WildStar Wednesday: Sandbox vs. Theme Park

For the most recent edition of their “WildStar Wednesday” feature, Carbine Studios executive producer Jeremy Gaffney tackles the sandbox vs. theme park debate and why their sci-fi MMO falls into the hybrid category. An excerpt:

Developer-directed game play isn’t always at odds with the player-directed experience. There are ways of giving direction even in a sandbox-style environment, and hitting the “sweet spot” between the two is an art. Too much direction, and the game is on rails – and that sucks all the magic out of the game quickly. Too little direction and it doesn’t feel like the game is rewarding you for the creativity you put in as a player, and there’s no reward path that helps guide you to the really interesting area of the game.

As you know, we have a mantra: let gamers play how they want. You as a gamer know where you fall on the spectrum; our job as game designers is to let you do that – and not get in your way. If you want to play without a ton of direction and choose your focus, rock on. If you want clear goals and some guideposts to give some rewards and meaning to the variety of content we make, we’re cool with that too. Play how you want.

We look for the compelling elements of both. The appealing parts to us for sandbox style game play lie in having mechanics that combine together in interesting ways so that player creativity can become a factor. For instance, once you realize that prey mobs flee from you, you can scare the gazelles in the savannah into the jungle cats lying in ambush so that you can take advantage of the ensuing combat. We provide a bunch of simultaneous rewards – for completing combats skillfully, unlocking dynamic discoveries, following the goals of your path (exploration, scanning unusual creatures, etc.), or discovering found quests off the beaten path.

As a player, you get to choose what’s important to you – and if you’re skilled enough, you can try to tackle as many of these competing goals at once as you can handle – choosing how YOU want to deal with a rich and complex world.

But the first layer we add into each area is a compelling storyline. We know a lot of players love story, but often it’s buried in clickable books in a library somewhere. We try to tie it in to the main theme and quest line of each area (we call them “tracts”). This gives you that strong direction (if you want to follow it) that brings context to all the other layers of content in the area. This combination feels pretty compelling – certainly feedback at gamescom and PAX was very strong on the mix.