DICE Producer Thinks Sandbox Games are Boring

Article

DICE Producer Patrick Bach has just revealed that Battlefield 3's campaign will be more tightly-scripted rather than the sandbox ztyle their Bad Company games had.

In an interview with EDGE, Bach said "I don't see it as an absolute goal for all games to be sandbox games. We've been building sandbox games for quite some time and we've got pretty good at it, but I don't see that as the only way of building games, because then we wouldn't build campaigns at all" Bach continued, "In some cases they aren't, but in most cases sandbox games are hardcore, boring, hard to get into and they are not very popular."

While some people might automatically cite the Grand Theft Auto series as a prime contradiction of what Bach said, keep in mind that this is a different genre altogether. Come to think of it, do all games need the sandbox treatment? It makes sense for action and adventure games, but won't first-person shooters have a hard time building tension and displaying their set-pieces in a sandbox environment?

ehhh so? he's a gamer and thats his taste, i prefer open sandbox worlds. its all good

He should play Just Cause 2.

Does not matter...

I will play games until death separate me from life...

He should play Just Cause 2.

JLF1

What I was thinking.

For the most part they are. The best sandbox games still have linear missions. Name a GTA which gives you the ability to completely bypass mission objectives or use several methods to complete a single objective that don't involve killing everybody? You can't. Rockstar knows that pure sandbox gameplay is not good, it needs to be structured. In chase sequences the cars on the road are choreographed to make it more challenging and memorable. It works extremely well but it's far from sandbox.

If you were to make BF3 a sandbox it would involve you walking around base until you get a mission. THey could take the Far Cry 2 route, remember how that worked? The developers knew that driving from point a to point b throughout the entire game just to do really linear missions, like go here and kill that guy, would be a drag so they had to put those blasted checkpoints everywhere to keep the pace up.

Even ArmA 2, which is a pure open world, still relies upon mission to mission gameplay in a linear fasion. They do it very well, missions and objectives build upon each other and effect the next missions in the sequence. BF3 could have that, but this route is even more difficult to control the exact experiance that the player will have.

Sandbox gameplay is only good when the developer realizes that you need to mix linear missions with the free roam. Look at Minecraft. It's the most sandbox game ever. Many people love it, many people don't see the point. The community is far to polarized. Without clear objectives Minecraft can quickly become dull and repetitive for somebody who doesn't want to spend a lot of time coming up with their own things to do.

There is nothing wrong with a linear game, nothing wrong at all. He may find sandbox gameplay boring. Making BF3 a sandbox or open world like Crysis 1 or Far Cry would also be much more difficult in terms of design. Everybody complains at how glitchy the AI in Crysis 1 and 2 and how extremely OP they were in Far Cry. This was because the AI is actually programmed to act in an open world enviroment. As you can tell, this is not easy to do by design at all. It's far easier to go with linear levels where the AI really only needs to know how to beat the player, not search for them and act human.

tl;dr

Sandbox gameplay is overrated and is only good in certain situations by the right developers. Linear gameplay is absolutly fine as long as the gameplay value is there.

[QUOTE="JLF1"]

He should play Just Cause 2.

me_rock

What I was thinking.

Just Cause 2 is sandbox but it relies purely on its over-the-top approach to everything. The linear, scripted missions are the best part of the game as they are extremely fun and break up the monotony of going to a small village and wiping out all of the enemies, rinse and repeat. Remember, not all of us find endless entertainment killing civilians in crazy ways with all of the wacky stuff you can do in a game.

Many of them are. Mafia 2 and RDR come to mind. RPG sandboxy games (like Fallout 3/New Vegas) break the mold because exploration is actually rewarding to your character, instead of just giving you repetetive mission types and worthless collectibles. I see no need for sandboxy type FPS's.

Oh and the Bad Company campaigns were sandboxy??? What the hell

For the most part they are. The best sandbox games still have linear missions. Name a GTA which gives you the ability to completely bypass mission objectives or use several methods to complete a single objective that don't involve killing everybody? You can't. Rockstar knows that pure sandbox gameplay is not good, it needs to be structured. In chase sequences the cars on the road are choreographed to make it more challenging and memorable. It works extremely well but it's far from sandbox.

If you were to make BF3 a sandbox it would involve you walking around base until you get a mission. THey could take the Far Cry 2 route, remember how that worked? The developers knew that driving from point a to point b throughout the entire game just to do really linear missions, like go here and kill that guy, would be a drag so they had to put those blasted checkpoints everywhere to keep the pace up.

Even ArmA 2, which is a pure open world, still relies upon mission to mission gameplay in a linear fasion. They do it very well, missions and objectives build upon each other and effect the next missions in the sequence. BF3 could have that, but this route is even more difficult to control the exact experiance that the player will have.

Sandbox gameplay is only good when the developer realizes that you need to mix linear missions with the free roam. Look at Minecraft. It's the most sandbox game ever. Many people love it, many people don't see the point. The community is far to polarized. Without clear objectives Minecraft can quickly become dull and repetitive for somebody who doesn't want to spend a lot of time coming up with their own things to do.

There is nothing wrong with a linear game, nothing wrong at all. He may find sandbox gameplay boring. Making BF3 a sandbox or open world like Crysis 1 or Far Cry would also be much more difficult in terms of design. Everybody complains at how glitchy the AI in Crysis 1 and 2 and how extremely OP they were in Far Cry. This was because the AI is actually programmed to act in an open world enviroment. As you can tell, this is not easy to do by design at all. It's far easier to go with linear levels where the AI really only needs to know how to beat the player, not search for them and act human.

tl;dr

Sandbox gameplay is overrated and is only good in certain situations by the right developers. Linear gameplay is absolutly fine as long as the gameplay value is there.

Wasdie

Many of them are. Mafia 2 and RDR come to mind. RPG sandboxy games (like Fallout 3/New Vegas) break the mold because exploration is actually rewarding to your character, instead of just giving you repetetive mission types and worthless collectibles. I see no need for sandboxy type FPS's.

Oh and the Bad Company campaigns were sandboxy??? What the hell

h575309

I agree they can be boring...so much time taking care of meaningless tasks and driving

It seens that he just complains that those kinds of games don't sell.

open worlds can be pretty boring at times .

BF3 consolized confirmed.

Does not matter...

I will play games until death separate me from life...

wisebandit

I agree. While it's nice to have a open world to roam and explore in, it's not fun for me to have to create my own entertainment; that's the developer's job.

For the most part they are. The best sandbox games still have linear missions. Name a GTA which gives you the ability to completely bypass mission objectives or use several methods to complete a single objective that don't involve killing everybody? You can't. Rockstar knows that pure sandbox gameplay is not good, it needs to be structured. In chase sequences the cars on the road are choreographed to make it more challenging and memorable. It works extremely well but it's far from sandbox.

Wasdie

The fun of GTA sandbox is that I can just drive around doing random stuff, do missions in any order, side missions, police, etc.

In Crysis you can cloak to infiltrate areas, destroy objectives from afar with a rocket launcher, etc.

I really don't see the benefit of smaller linear levels except tighter (easier) story telling and better graffix!

Badly designed sandbox games like the first BFBC are boring.

Bad guy with heavy accent confirmed.

tl;dr

Sandbox gameplay is overrated and is only good in certain situations by the right developers. Linear gameplay is absolutly fine as long as the gameplay value is there.

Wasdie

Right on!

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

For the most part they are. The best sandbox games still have linear missions. Name a GTA which gives you the ability to completely bypass mission objectives or use several methods to complete a single objective that don't involve killing everybody? You can't. Rockstar knows that pure sandbox gameplay is not good, it needs to be structured. In chase sequences the cars on the road are choreographed to make it more challenging and memorable. It works extremely well but it's far from sandbox.

SaltyMeatballs

The fun of GTA sandbox is that I can just drive around doing random stuff, do missions in any order, side missions, police, etc.

In Crysis you can cloak to infiltrate areas, destroy objectives from afar with a rocket launcher, etc.

I really don't see the benefit of smaller linear levels except tighter (easier) story telling and better graffix!

The problem with sandbox gameplay is that it doesn't make sense for a lot of situations, or would be far beyond the techincal limitations of any engine or developer to actually pull off. BF is a good example. It's supposed to be a constant war between the two sides. What you would need to do is somehow generate a massive dynamic world that is constantly changing so you can do whatever you want whenever you want it. You quickly reach technical limitations there.

Burnout Paradise also tried using an open world for everything. While it was great exploring and whatnot, if I actually wanted to get races done it was difficult. An open world mode in addition to the races would have been paced better and relieved many frustrations.

Also the biggest offender of this was Brutal Legend. There was no reason why that game had to be open world at all, it did nothing more than get in the way.

With people pushing for open world gameplay, more and more games are going to be like Burnout Paradise and Brutal Legend, needlessly putting open world in games where it isn't needed. I'm happy to hear that they are going to a linear single player for Battlefield 3 as an open world mode would be needlessly difficult to pull off and would distract from the multiplayer, where the true open world gameplay is found.

The campaign is going to be a COD clone thentomarlyn

[QUOTE="tomarlyn"]The campaign is going to be a COD clone thenGeneralShowzer

So it's going to be horrible right?

I always thought people loved CoD, CoD UO, CoD 2, and CoD 4...

Or do you want them to not make a modern military shooter?

[QUOTE="GeneralShowzer"][QUOTE="tomarlyn"]The campaign is going to be a COD clone thenWasdie

So it's going to be horrible right?

I always thought people loved CoD, CoD UO, CoD 2, and CoD 4...

Or do you want them to not make a modern military shooter?

It needs more dual-wielding double barrel shotguns and hollywood moments.

No really, open world + realistic/modern military =/= work, at least in the common practical way of having freedom to do whatever and whenever.

[QUOTE="GeneralShowzer"][QUOTE="tomarlyn"]The campaign is going to be a COD clone thenWasdie

So it's going to be horrible right?

I always thought people loved CoD, CoD UO, CoD 2, and CoD 4...

Homefront, Medal of Honor, I'm pretty sure the new Ghost Recon is going to be the same.

Enough is enough, i don't want another squad mate to open the door for me ever again, or another scripted explosion while i grab a pole and i save myself at the last moment or whatever.

Bad Company campaign was amazing, what's wrong with that?

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

[QUOTE="GeneralShowzer"] Pretty much.GeneralShowzer

So it's going to be horrible right?

I always thought people loved CoD, CoD UO, CoD 2, and CoD 4...

Homefront, Medal of Honor, I'm pretty sure the new Ghost Recon is going to be the same.

Enough is enough, i don't want another squad mate to open the door for me ever again, or another scripted explosion while i grab a pole and i save myself at the last moment or whatever.

Bad Company campaign was amazing, what's wrong with that?

Bad Company's campaign was fun but far from amazing, you can tell they focused on it more than multiplayer because bad company's multiplayer was really iffy. BC2 you saw a shift in focus from singleplayer to multiplayer, the single player was really linear but the multiplayer was fantastic.

They've doubled the size of the team for BF3. We've seen some very large enviroments in leaked tech demos and in the gameplay and we haven't even seen multiplayer, which they said was going to be more BF2 than BC2.

[QUOTE="GeneralShowzer"]

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

So it's going to be horrible right?

I always thought people loved CoD, CoD UO, CoD 2, and CoD 4...

Wasdie

Homefront, Medal of Honor, I'm pretty sure the new Ghost Recon is going to be the same.

Enough is enough, i don't want another squad mate to open the door for me ever again, or another scripted explosion while i grab a pole and i save myself at the last moment or whatever.

Bad Company campaign was amazing, what's wrong with that?

Bad Company's campaign was fun but far from amazing, you can tell they focused on it more than multiplayer because bad company's multiplayer was really iffy. BC2 you saw a shift in focus from singleplayer to multiplayer, the single player was really linear but the multiplayer was fantastic.

They've doubled the size of the team for BF3. We've seen some very large enviroments in leaked tech demos and in the gameplay and we haven't even seen multiplayer, which they said was going to be more BF2 than BC2.

That is his view, but I thought that 5 hours of Mirror's Edge had more boring moments than a well-designed sandbox game such as Crysis or STALKER: Call of Pripyat.

[QUOTE="GeneralShowzer"]

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

So it's going to be horrible right?

I always thought people loved CoD, CoD UO, CoD 2, and CoD 4...

Wasdie

Homefront, Medal of Honor, I'm pretty sure the new Ghost Recon is going to be the same.

Enough is enough, i don't want another squad mate to open the door for me ever again, or another scripted explosion while i grab a pole and i save myself at the last moment or whatever.

Bad Company campaign was amazing, what's wrong with that?

Bad Company's campaign was fun but far from amazing, you can tell they focused on it more than multiplayer because bad company's multiplayer was really iffy. BC2 you saw a shift in focus from singleplayer to multiplayer, the single player was really linear but the multiplayer was fantastic.

They've doubled the size of the team for BF3. We've seen some very large enviroments in leaked tech demos and in the gameplay and we haven't even seen multiplayer, which they said was going to be more BF2 than BC2.

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

[QUOTE="GeneralShowzer"] It's not going to be horrible. But it's really tiresome now...

Homefront, Medal of Honor, I'm pretty sure the new Ghost Recon is going to be the same.

Enough is enough, i don't want another squad mate to open the door for me ever again, or another scripted explosion while i grab a pole and i save myself at the last moment or whatever.

Bad Company campaign was amazing, what's wrong with that?

SaltyMeatballs

Bad Company's campaign was fun but far from amazing, you can tell they focused on it more than multiplayer because bad company's multiplayer was really iffy. BC2 you saw a shift in focus from singleplayer to multiplayer, the single player was really linear but the multiplayer was fantastic.

They've doubled the size of the team for BF3. We've seen some very large enviroments in leaked tech demos and in the gameplay and we haven't even seen multiplayer, which they said was going to be more BF2 than BC2.

Here ya go.

I think they are too. One of the most enjoyable singleplayer experiences I've had this generation was Batman: Arkham Asylum. A very linear and scripted experience. I've never found a single sandbox game that was enjoyable more so than a more linear version of it.

I think they are too. One of the most enjoyable singleplayer experiences I've had this generation was Batman: Arkham Asylum. A very linear and scripted experience. I've never found a single sandbox game that was enjoyable more so than a more linear version of it.

foxhound_fox

There were these entire areas which were open, and you were free to use them how they want.

Climb on gargoyles, be stealthy, take them all out. You also had tons of tools you could use to dispatch your enemies, you could move everywhere, you could explore.

What i really hate is COD style scripting, where you can't even open doors, and you can't stray an inch from the linear path it kills you right away..

[QUOTE="foxhound_fox"]

I think they are too. One of the most enjoyable singleplayer experiences I've had this generation was Batman: Arkham Asylum. A very linear and scripted experience. I've never found a single sandbox game that was enjoyable more so than a more linear version of it.

GeneralShowzer

There were these entire areas which were open, and you were free to use them how they want.

Climb on gargoyles, be stealthy, take them all out. You also had tons of tools you could use to dispatch your enemies, you could move everywhere, you could explore.

What i really hate is COD style scripting, where you can't even open doors, and you can't stray an inch from the linear path it kills you right away..

It's looking like there will be pretty large battle spaces in BF3 based upon what we have seen.

ehhh so? he's a gamer and thats his taste, i prefer open sandbox worlds. its all good

Chris_Williams

Article

DICE Producer Patrick Bach has just revealed that Battlefield 3's campaign will be more tightly-scripted rather than the sandbox ztyle their Bad Company games had.

In an interview with EDGE, Bach said "I don't see it as an absolute goal for all games to be sandbox games. We've been building sandbox games for quite some time and we've got pretty good at it, but I don't see that as the only way of building games, because then we wouldn't build campaigns at all" Bach continued, "In some cases they aren't, but in most cases sandbox games are hardcore, boring, hard to get into and they are not very popular."

While some people might automatically cite the Grand Theft Auto series as a prime contradiction of what Bach said, keep in mind that this is a different genre altogether. Come to think of it, do all games need the sandbox treatment? It makes sense for action and adventure games, but won't first-person shooters have a hard time building tension and displaying their set-pieces in a sandbox environment?

fusionhunter

[QUOTE="GeneralShowzer"][QUOTE="tomarlyn"]The campaign is going to be a COD clone thenWasdie

So it's going to be horrible right?

I always thought people loved CoD, CoD UO, CoD 2, and CoD 4...

Or do you want them to not make a modern military shooter?