{"id":224,"date":"2021-03-14T04:06:16","date_gmt":"2021-03-14T04:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/?p=224"},"modified":"2021-03-14T04:06:16","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T04:06:16","slug":"the-end-is-nigh-because-of-bleak-empty-open-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/14\/the-end-is-nigh-because-of-bleak-empty-open-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"The End is Nigh … because of bleak, empty, open worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This article originally ran under a different banner\/website in November of 2018 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, well, my followers; I can see you feel like you\u2019re lost in these open-world sandboxes you love so much.\u00a0 Staring at your map with no sense of direction in your eyes.\u00a0 You have the look of a gamer who just picks up the latest AAA open-world game because he is expecting it to be like the last one.\u00a0 Ironically, this is not far from the truth.\u00a0 Let me tell you why you are here.\u00a0 You are here because you know something.\u00a0 You\u2019ve felt it your entire life, that there\u2019s something wrong with numerous open-world games.\u00a0 You don\u2019t what it is.\u00a0 It\u2019s there, maybe it\u2019s the lack of content that is driving you mad.\u00a0 It is this feeling that brought you to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all open worlds are created equal.\u00a0 You can see it when you look at games on Steam.\u00a0 You can feel it when you play Metal Gear Survive<\/em> \u2026 when you play Sea of Thieves<\/em>\u2026 when you play Fallout 76<\/em>.\u00a0 It is these plaster lifeless worlds that pulled you in and have blinded you from the truth.\u00a0 That you are a slave to these cold plastic live services masquerading as games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is your last chance.\u00a0 After this, no turning back.\u00a0 You play Fallout 76<\/em> – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe that Fallout 76<\/em> will be better once they patch in content.\u00a0 You play Red Dead Redemption 2 <\/em>– you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the year 2018, we have seen a plethora of amazing open-world games including Divinity 2, Marvel\u2019s Spider-man, <\/em>and Red Dead Redemption 2.<\/em>\u00a0 Even with my distaste for the microtransaction system, I am willing to say Assassin\u2019s Creed Odyessus <\/em>pushes new ground in terms of open-world games.\u00a0 Even with it being three years old, The Witcher 3<\/em> has set a gold standard for open-world games.\u00a0 So it is a bit baffling to me, in the same year as Red Dead Redemption 2<\/em>, we get titles like Metal Gear Survive<\/em>, Sea of Thieves, Dynasty Warriors 9, <\/em>and finally Fallout 76<\/em>.\u00a0 With this widening gap in quality, I am here to show you what caused the differences in these titles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For starters, I must point out, that it seems the best open-world games seem to be primarily single-player games.\u00a0 While many publishers will boast that single-player games have gone the way of the dodo, we can add successful open-world games to the list of reasons that their belief is simply not true.\u00a0 Even on the opening weekend, Fallout 76 <\/em>was outsold by the Spyro Reignited Trilogy<\/em>, a remaster of a game from 1998.\u00a0 Again more proof that single-player games aren\u2019t dead.\u00a0 While I am sure many will point out that Divinity 2 <\/em>will allow up to three friends to join your game and Red Dead Redemption 2 <\/em>will probably have a GTA-online style multiplayer, I would argue none of this detracts from the single-player experience that Rockstar has spent years crafting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the flip side, many of the poorer open-world games are in their bare-bones states because they are multiplayer-only titles.\u00a0 Fallout 76 <\/em>has been called Fallout 4<\/em> with all the dynamic quests taken out.\u00a0 Metal Gear Survive <\/em>is a stripped-down version of Metal Gear V: The Phantom Pain<\/em>.\u00a0 Sea of Thieves <\/em>don\u2019t you mean puddle of thieves?\u00a0 No?\u00a0 My point is these games are bare-bones because of their publisher\u2019s plans to drip feed content over time.\u00a0 These aren\u2019t open-world games, these are live services.\u00a0 Live Services are many publisher\u2019s attempts to rake in World of Warcraft <\/em>money by getting players to return to their games and pay for new content.\u00a0 While they are making the new content, these publishers encourage you to run around the empty sandbox and just \u201cmess around with friends.\u201d\u00a0 A saying that doesn\u2019t put too much faith in your game.\u00a0 I remember having fun hanging out with friends in between classes, but the principal never demanded sixty dollars for hanging out in the halls.\u00a0 With that in mind, I don\u2019t really see the worth in purchasing a sixty-dollar skeleton of a game just hang out with friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So if publishers know their open-world games are lacking content upfront, why don\u2019t they wait until they have something that could really capture a player\u2019s attention?\u00a0 Well my naive friends, that certainly wouldn\u2019t please the shareholders.\u00a0 With all these empty open-world games and mobile spinoffs, I can only conclude AAA publishers are trying to spend the least amount of money on making games while allowing multiple ways to heist more money from players.\u00a0 I assume you all are familiar with the predatory ways mobile games try to squeeze more money from players, but open-world games cannot plead innocence either.\u00a0 Sea of Thieves <\/em>isn\u2019t too bad, only charging for cosmetic items, but I can\u2019t say that about the others.\u00a0 Dynasty Warriors 9 <\/em>stripped characters of their iconic weapons to sell them back as DLC, and Metal Gear Survive<\/em> charges players ten dollars for an additional save slot.\u00a0 Now, some of you might be crying Fallout 76 <\/em>doesn\u2019t have microtransactions, but I would air on the side of caution with Bethesda.\u00a0 Might I remind you, Bethesda tried to force players to pay for mods \u2026 TWICE!!!\u00a0 Do not be surprised if Bethesda starts selling card packs including those card perks the game uses.\u00a0 Mark my words: Microtransactions will come to Fallout 76<\/em>.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 The shareholders demand it of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My followers, the point of my proclamations is to not belittle you for liking some of these lackluster open-world games.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even mind if you don\u2019t like some of the popular open-world titles like The Witcher 3.<\/em>\u00a0 I am merely trying to point out how little effort is going into making fun exciting titles that don\u2019t shake you down for more money.\u00a0 The increasing number of mobile spinoffs and bleak empty sandboxes are massive red flags in my mind.\u00a0 The industry is moving towards cutting more corners while demanding more from the players in return.\u00a0 The industry is building itself around pleasing shareholders, not gamers.\u00a0 Just look at Activision, they made four billion dollars in microtransactions last year, while only releasing three games: Crash Bandicoot Remastered, Destiny 2, and Call of Duty: World War II.\u00a0 <\/em>I am only asking you to exercise caution when purchasing AAA games or the microtransactions in them.\u00a0 I, for one, passed on Assassin\u2019s Creed Odyssey<\/em>.\u00a0 Despite doing great things with their open-world formula, I did not want my purchase to say that I support having experience boosts in a game built around a leveling system.\u00a0 I believe it is too tempting to increase the number of time players will have to grind to make those experience boost more appealing.\u00a0 It was a choice I made.\u00a0 We, as gamers, must take greater consideration in our purchases, or else the end might be nigh for our favorite form of entertainment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article originally ran under a different banner\/website in November of 2018 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy. Well, well, my followers; I can see you feel like you\u2019re lost in these open-world sandboxes you love so much.\u00a0 Staring at your map with no sense of direction… Continue reading The End is Nigh … because of bleak, empty, open worlds<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-opinion","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gatecitygaming.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}