First off, a happy Labor Day to everyone out there, and I hope you had a pleasant weekend of it. It may not surprise you to note that a large portion of my Labor Day weekend was spent in gaming, and with one game in particular. Yet while I was playing this game, I had a bit of insight: there's one big problem with open world gaming, and it goes by the innocuous yet disastrous name of "Time."
The game in question that occupied the lion's share of my Labor Day weekend was none other than "Saints Row IV," a massive open-world gangster comic thriller that was one part "Mass Effect," one part "They Live," one part "Grand Theft Auto" and one part "The Matrix" all in one convenient, often hilarious, package. But by like token, it represented a serious problem, because by the end of the long weekend, I had still not managed to beat the main game. There's still some time, and that may well prove false before the weekend's actually over, but still...this is a pretty big game. And this surfeit of gaming is actually something of a problem.
I'm fond of open world games. I love the freedom to go where I like and do what I like, and when the main game gets dull, to have a variety of side games around to get my head back in it. I love being able to make my own fun, and my own challenges (Bet you can't make an entire fortress out of pillows! Oh YEAH??) and "Saints Row IV" obliged. Man, did it ever. But still, I put a good chunk of three days into this and still had not finished. I love open world and all, but the problem is, there's not much time for this sort of thing. And that makes me wonder if open world may get shut down before it can really get started.
Of course, there's always the bite-sized approach. Taking things a little bit at a time, coming back later, and generally enjoying it over a longer period of time. Worked for "State of Decay," after all, and would likely work elsewhere too. Surely I can enjoy "Saints Row IV" in small chunks!
Yet that may be its undoing. We've seen a lot of new open-world stuff poised to come out soon, and most don't have more time now for gaming than they did before the new games were arrived. This in turn may well reduce sales of open world games as people look for games that can better fit in the available spans of time.
Naturally, this is all conjectural. It's going to take the actual release of the open world titles in order to figure out what impact they'll have on the overall market. But it may well pose a lesson to game makers: games that can be played in short bursts, be they casual or hardcore, may have the best chances at finding an audience. Open world can do that job, but need to be properly prepared for such circumstances.
