Open Worlds, (Pt 1)

   Can you think of the biggest design trend in the last ten years?
If you’re a fan of Assassins Creed, Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row; you probably know already.
Aside from Call Of Duty (so far, anyway) just about every major AAA release has been some kind of open world game, or at the very least, had open world elements.

  As hardware capability increased, players started demanding larger play areas, and more things to do in them. Game developers have continually had to straddle a difficult line, designing a world that’s believably open but has restrictions isn’t an easy thing to do.

   We can look at Dead Island as an example. On top of being pretty shallow,
The game’s open world doesn’t even hardly exist to serve the mechanics that do work.
In Dead Island the player is given a tropical paradise that’s been razed by the existence of the undead,
yet despite having survival mechanics The World was hardly designed around them.

   Zombies, even in large groups, are hardly a threat because the player doesn’t take lasting damage and heals by drinking energy drinks. Eventually, combat far outpaces survival because the player can reach a point where making even some of the most dangerous weapons in the game isn't even difficult because every resource is eternally respawning.

That 'paints the walls' so to speak. The player (you) becomes cognizant of the walls that hold him in place, and suddenly the open world seems limiting.

   As the second example I'll give, Saints Row has always managed to hide the limitations of the world by distracting the player: It gives you enough things to do in a few different categories that by the time you get fatigued of something you can always move to the next mini-game or set of stunts. Each game in the Saints Row series has upped the amount of distractions to new levels. Saints Row IV is practically unprecedented in how little the game takes itself seriously; yet in not in trying to set itself as a believable reality the player never notices how limited the game world is.

   That's not the only way to make an open world game work; but generally the more ridiculous and videogame-y, the better. Even Grand Theft Auto has the elements of each title that exist as satire, either of our culture at large or of other videogames. The saying goes that if you try to make a world too real, players will see the seams easier - so you deliberately involve elements that are fantastical.

  
Out of the gate, I chose Sleeping Dogs because it tries to represent a fictional version of Hong Kong in a cinema-inspired open world, stripping out the usual elements of parody and satire that run through these games and going for a more down-to-earth approach.

We arrive, finally, at Sleeping Dogs, which I've decided as a new series of SATURDAY SKELETONS (we're gonna call it that now) is going to be my focus for the next few weeks.