Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> Take Myst, what the heck are you supposed to do yet it was a 
> massive sellout; was that despite its open nature or simply because it 
> looked so good that finding tasks naturally occurred as you looked around?

I think even sandbox type games need careful level design and planning of 
guidance.  Myst is an excellent example.

You can't get off the island, and that's obvious from the start. You know 
books have something to do with why you're there, but there's no real 
backstory you need to understand. The hints on how to proceed are in plain 
view (namely, the letter from Atrus and the pages next to the books in the 
library).

Once you figure out you need the other pages, it's clear you have to find 
the books, find a page in each age, and find your way back. The other books 
in the library give hints as well.

So Myst starts with a set of simple goals once you take more than a dozen 
steps, obvious limitations on where you can go and what you can do, with 
hints telling you how to solve the puzzles without them being obvious. In 
addition, the puzzles are logical within the game space, rather than just 
arbitrary "you find a locked door, go hunt down the key that won't be far 
away."  There's a reason for things to be locked, and a reason for the key 
to be available.

Riven is similar: A handful of clues, thrown into the fray to figure out 
what you're supposed to do beyond "catch Gehn, rescue Catherine, signal 
Atrus."  But as the game progresses and you explore more, there are more 
hints and story that come about, just as left-over artifacts from the 
civilization and all, that tell you what you're supposed to be doing and how 
to resolve the conflicts.

The individual levels of Thief also sometimes had a similar structure. You'd 
have a main goal or two, that may or may not change as the game progresses, 
but a big sprawling level with no hint as to which way to go, where the 
secrets are, or how to achieve the goals you've been set. Other than "steal 
lots of goodies", there weren't really any utterly arbitrary goals there either.

Black & White was probably a decent game of a type I'm not really into. I 
don't much like real-time resource management games, but it was open, 
sprawling, and had various goals you could solve or you could ignore. (And 
some you had to solve for the story to progress.) It was nice because you 
could solve stuff in lots of ways. I'm honestly not sure why I didn't really 
like it. Probably because there wasn't any real exploring going on. There 
was open, and everything was above-ground and evident before you started. 
Nowhere was closed off, and you could see everything, and it's just a 
question of setting off the quests you felt like doing. There was no 
discovery, but just plodding thru the game doing what it told you to do.

Most of the other "Myst-like" games that came right after myst completley 
abandoned the "open" format. There was even one called "lighthouse" where 
you start in a house maybe a quarter mile from the lighthouse in question. I 
spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get out of the first room 
before I realized you had to listen to the answering machine before the door 
would unlock (eh?). Then to get the front door to unlock, you had to pick up 
the umbrella in the stand.  Then you couldn't walk to the lighthouse - you 
had to find the car and drive there. Totally not what an adventure game is 
supposed to be like.

So, in short, an open world with no hidden bits to find and explore and 
challenge is just boring. There have to be places where it takes thinking to 
get to them. And it's best if the thinking is real-world logic. To say "this 
door is locked, let's find the key" is not nearly as interesting as "this 
door is locked, but it's made of wood, and there was an axe in the forest, 
let's see if I can open the door that way."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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