Eve online is a space-based sandbox MMORPG. The game is renowned for its scale and complexity with regards to player interactions – in its single, shared game world, players engage in economic competition, warfare, and political schemes with other players.

 

What makes eve online so special is that it has completely different design from most other MMORPGs(WOW、FF14、Guild Wars) today, which is, the concept of sandbox MMO. Here I would like to discuss my understanding of sandbox MMO design, including its concept, pros and cons.

 

What is Sandbox MMO

1. Social, goal-driven and emergent

Matthew Woodward, senior game designer of CCP games, offered three design pillars of sandbox MMO: social, goal driven and emergent.

 

He expressed that social interaction is not just making friends in the game, but all the interactions with other people, which makes people realize that a character in the game is a person, not an NPC. In my view, social in sandbox MMO is an important part that includes interaction with others into the core gameplay. That means, social is not only to serve cooperative PvE and competitive PvP in a narrow sense, but also to become the game content that runs through players' long-term goal.

 

Goal-driven means that he wants players to give their own long-term goals as their motivation, which makes the retention more stable for business reason. My understanding is that the concept of goal-driven comes in comparison with the content-driven of themepark MMO. Themepark MMOs needs to constantly produce new content to keep players consuming them. This will be elaborated in the "appearances" section below.

 

Emergent gameplay refers to complex situations that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics. Therefore, in my view, the designs of systems and elements in sandbox should not be too independent. The designer needs them to influence each other as much as possible to produce game content.

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2. "Appearances" of Sandbox MMO

The three pillars of Matthew Woodward are more like the design goals in development. In my opinion, from another perspective, the "appearances" to define the sandbox genre are mainly two: "player define goal" and "player create content".

 

"Player define goals" means that basically developers do not control the specific gameplay by missions or instances, but let players define their own goals and generate motivation through their exploration and experience of the game mechanics and ecosystem.

 

"Player create content" means that developers only design game mechanics and systems according to the principle of emergent gameplay, but do not make specific game content by them. Game content is generated by players' gameplay process, that is, the influence produced by players in their gameplay can become new game content for themselves or other players.

 

Pros

1. Player community can produce limitless content with enough freedom

As mentioned above, emergent gameplay is a cheap way to generate a lot of game content. Therefore, because sandbox MMOs give players enough freedom and space, players can generate diverse game content through their gameplay activities. In this way, game designers don't have to be busy making game content, such as level design. Moreover, when the player community is strong enough, there is no need to worry about the exhaustion and update of game content.

 

2. Relationship of players is diverse and integrated into gameplay

"Social" of sandbox makes the interaction between players a part of the core gameplay, thus the relationship between players will be more diversified, which makes the game experience different from the simple player relationship in themepark games. In addition, the relationship between players is also the source of game content in sandbox MMOs.

 

Cons

1. Sandbox is naturally uncontrollable

The result of sandbox game relying on players to create content is that the generated content is not controlled by developers, which may deviate from the experience that developers want to bring to players. And it can even make unpredictable consequences to the stability of game ecosystem.

 

In addition, the prosperity of sandbox game has positive feedback. The game content is created by the players, and the motivation for the players to play the game comes from the content that attracts them. Therefore, on the contrary, when the game starts to lose players due to any problem, the game content as well as its attraction to the players will also start to reduce, and the loss of players will accelerate and be unstoppable.

 

2. Sandbox MMO is too hard-core

MMO combined with emergent gameplay of sandbox will give the game a very high complexity, which will make it very difficult for players to get started and adapt to the game ecosystem. Or in another word, the learning curve of game will be very steep. Meanwhile, the inevitable lack of guidance in the principle of sandbox design, which has to give players high freedom, will make new players lack of learning path and direction.

 

For the players who have already started, the complexity of sandbox game ecosystem usually makes their goals, which defined by players, more abstract and complex. These goals make players need to experience more game content in the process of achieving goals, and also cause players to have a long reward cycle in the game, that is, they need long-term time investment.

 

These make the audience of sandbox MMO very niche.