Pressing Up Isn't Gameplay: The Open World Problem

Billy Givens says, "Did you pay $60 for a 60-hour game or $60 for a 10 hour game with empty space between to trick you into believing you’re getting more game for your money? You may also love paying $35 for crab legs and having to spend 90% of the meal prying a tiny bit of meat from a shell."

[DrierofLeaves]

Disagree, open world games are among the best ones ever. I'm glad linear games exist too, since those are fantastic as well (loved God of War and TLOU!). But open world games are incredible.

[SegaGamer]

SOME open world games are incredible, but a lot of them are pointless too. Sometimes I look at open world games and wonder why they made them that way to begin with. A lot of them have been filled with nothing or they have you doing repetitive tasks.

[nowitzki2004]

SOME Open world games are great..... same can be said for every single genre. Not every linear game is great.

[born2live]

Anyone who wants to have this conversation should take some time to look at Jim Sterling's take on open world games: https://www.youtube.com/wat...
It's an old debate... Open world/map size does not necessarily equal great content.

[bigmalky]

Final Fantasy XV is one of the most bland AAA games I have played this generation, worse than most AAA linear games.

[Segata]

I don't even look at FFXV as open world since it's not that open and parts have to be unlocked through progression plus the last half of the game is linear. I look at the world as an overworld like older RPGs but they tried to sell it as an open world. If they were more clear it's an overworld not an open world might have been looked at slightly better. FFXV still has a lot of problems tho.

[bigmalky]

If it was an overworld, there would be no seamless interaction. Overworlds served a purpose for random encounters and access to towns and dungeons... FFXV is an open world where you can explore, fight, do side quests and enter and exit towns and such without loads.

Sorry, but it's not an overworld in any sense of the description.

[rainslacker]

Ultimately, open world is only as good as what content there is to do in that world.

[rainslacker]

Pressing up is a input command which is typically used to move the character forward. Moving forward is just an element of game play in every game I know. Game play is a pretty wide reaching term which refers to all the mechanical interactions which are determined by numerous inputs or actions performed by the player based on other interactions which exist in the game to cause something to happen within said game.

I know it's not the actual premise of the article, but I thought it'd be worth noting that the author doesn't seem to discern the difference between game play and game scope or presentation, as well as be able to use the term to properly express the intent of the articles thesis.

[TekoIie]

Well that's how you distinguish a good open world game from a bad one. What are you looking at as you travel the world? What discoveries are you getting sidetracked by? What creatures are you encountering?

It makes it so you're not just pressing up but continually encountering something even if it's as simple as scenery.

[dillydadally]

Exactly. I feel like he chose a really poor game as an example. I've never played an open world game as good at putting new and interesting things throughout the world as Zelda:BotW. Everywhere you went there was random challenges, unique world elements, mazes, new discoveries, and just tons of stuff to pull you off course. It was a blast just wandering around discovering stuff. Sounds like this guy was just pressing up to try to get to the next story bit and passing by everything and ignoring everything around him. Then he blames the game?

[isarai]

Mashing a button is not gameplay either, you can say the same about any controller input when dumbed down that far. Yes i agree that open world games are becoming an over saturated genre much like the FPS genre was last gen. That doesn't mean open world is inherently bad, and if you ran out of things to experiment with in BoTW after 2 hrs then you weren't trying to do creative things AT ALL. Honestly in terms of the modern open world trend, BoTW was among the examples of doing it oh so right. if you're only exploring areas that just require you to hold forward you're missing like 80% of that game. Plus where are you "pressing up" towards? that's the point, and in BoTW it was always something new for the first 50hrs at least.

[blawren4]

Agreed. When you dumb it down and overgeneralize things. platformers are just jumping simulators or collectathons, racing is just going forward or left in some cases. walking simulators, Mario games, endless runners. There are many details that make a game good or great. Really?! open world games denigrated to pressing up to win. Hell a simple 3d maze crawler is more than that.

[PiNkFaIrYbOi]

Eeeee, for the most part open world is over rated and wish game developers would dial it back some. Not all games need to be open world.

[Imalwaysright]

I agree 100%. Many open world games just give you an illusion of being open and offering freedom. Many of them are nothing but icon filled maps and all you have to do is going to where mission A starts, do the mission and then go to where the next mission starts. This sort of design severely diminishes the open world aspect of any game because it gives next to no incentive to explore the world on your own. The world is not the focus of these kinds of games so what exactly is the point of making them "open world"? Just a waste of resources and time.

[Segata]

LA Noire would have been a far better game without the open world so I agree. In fact, No More Heroes 2 improved on the first by removing it entirely.

[Rimeskeem]

Tbf, linear games are a lot like that just, linear.

[SR38813]

I'm bored of "open world" everyone is doing it now and it's huge environments with nothing in then and all these crappy side missions... What happens to games that had a set path and were way better?

[JackBNimble]

With it's limited replay value

[rainslacker]

People have been saying that since last gen....when there was an apparent open world craze. Yet it seems that there are quite a few good open world games to choose from now. not that there aren't some duds in there, but I've found myself enjoying more of the offerings which have come out more recently, compared to last gen, where I wasn't really too enthralled with more than a couple.

[nommers]

Hub games and semi open world are usually the sweet spot.

[BrettAwesome]

What a stupid opinion piece.
I do question his talent as a journalist, but that's because I actually slogged through this incredibibly narrow minded, purposefully tailored, glorified blog post.
Opinions are not journalism. This is not gaming news, and not particularly thought provoking or enlightening. There are good and bad games of all genres. Comparing so many open world games to Zelda is just stupid, and clearly done for the sake of argument.
You don't like open world games? Don't play them. But do you really believe that any fan of open world games are gonna read this, and go "wait a minute, what the hell am I doing? These games suck"?

Feeling a need to educate people on what's good or bad game design, based on personal preference, simply comes across as insecurity.
Having to defend a viewpoint no one is attacking?
Weak

[kythlyn]

My opinion is that your opinion about the writer's opinion is generally mean and says more about you than the writer. It may have been a bit long winded, but the writer made some points that I've pondered over the years, especially as I get older. I think gamers with 30+ years of experience like myself are more likely to consider the value of their time when choosing what games to invest in, and open world games are often particularly wasteful in that regard. The cost of playing a game is more than just currency, and a game filled with bloat becomes incredibly expensive if the time spent is not spent well.

Also, c'mon, at least give the writer for the crab legs bit...

[BrettAwesome]

No.
I think it's stupid and insecure that the writer of the article tries to convince the reader to share his opinion. I don't share his opinion, no matter what his arguments (or yours) are, simply because I enjoy a lot of open world games. If you don't, play something different. There's plenty to chose from. But if you think that whining about the fact that you don't have time for big open worlds, make them objectively bad, well...you're wrong :)

[Psychotica]

What is the constant need for something to do or some grand purpose to exploring an open world? Is real life like that? People go hiking, climbing etc just because of the exploration and visual beauty of the landscape. I love how big Assassin's Creed Origin's was with it's vast desert and mountain ranges. I loved climbing to the top of the huge rock pillars then stand up there and watch the sun go down. For me that beats the games that have the linear paths and constant story dialog. Some of those games they talk so much I could go to the kitchen and pour myself a drink while they blabbed away. I mean if you want to just sit there and listen to a story and not actually play, then watch tv instead and save your money.

[Sirk7x]

To make a good open world game and not have it become a repetitive experience, you have to do ALOT of things right. Even then, it's subjective. You could nail the art style, story, battle system and world building and people could still hate it. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is probably one of the best open world games and jrpgs of the last ten years, but I understand how many might not be drawn to it. I've dropped more open world games than I've finished though. Once you stop caring about the story or it begins to feel redundant, it's over.

[-Gespenst-]

Well you're not just "pressing up" are you. There's a beautiful world unfolding before your eyes. This is what makes the minimal interaction worth it. It wouldn't be worth it if you were just playing as a white square on a black background. But, the writer of this article acknowledges this. What they're actually complaining about is the way that trekking across an open world becomes a chore very late in the game, when you've seen and done almost everything there is to see and to do. I get that, but then, that's wen fast travel comes in handy. Final Fantasy XV's world is cool, but about maybe 120 hours in, I got kind of tired of driving because I was seeing all the same sights for the dozenth time, so I just started fast travelling everywhere. This didn't really bother me, because I'd had my fill of the open world.

[Zeldafan64]

I have played BotW for over 800 hours.