Getting rid of open world games would solve a lot of gaming’s problems

Like any gamer at the moment, I’m very concerned about the direction the video games industry is going in, and frustrated that Microsoft, and particularly, Sony don’t seem in the slightest bit interested in calming the situation down or explaining themselves. I’m particularly worried that the amount of time and money needed to make modern games is going to greatly restrict the types of games that are made, which is especially annoying as there’s one thing that you could get rid of and solve a lot of problems: open world games.

Open world games have been around since the 80s and while they’re not technically a genre, just a feature, when you say open world game everyone knows what you mean: something influenced by Ubisoft games like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, where you explore the whole of a massive world filled with dozens of repetitive side missions, a radar full of icons, and towers that have to be climbed to fill in your map.

Like anything, they were fun when they started but annoying once there was too many of them, with the problem being that publishers realised that they were the lucrative type of single-player game, because people felt they were getting lots of value for money for them and were usually quite receptive to DLC. But now they’re basically a plague on single-player games, responsible for squeezing out everything else and making bloat and padding, i.e. too much content, a serious problem.

Gears 5, Halo Infinite, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, Metal Gear Solid 5, Mass Effect Andromeda, even the recent Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. None of those games needed to be open world and neither do most others, it’s just added in because they think it’s a selling point and avoids any of that tricky level design that video games used to have to do.

The problem is that so many single-player games think they have to be open world, which is obviously much more expensive than making an ordinary level-based game, because there’s so much more ground to cover and then you have to fill it with things to do. That’s also more time-consuming and so you quickly begin to understand why games are having this problem where they’re taking too long to make and costing too much.

A lot of people have been saying publishers should go back to making AA games, but no one’s going to put up with purposefully worse graphics and systems. It’s just not what they’re used to, and publishers have basically trained us all to expect more at this point. But stop games being open world and it would instantly save a lot of money, and I think very few people would complain.

Naturally, I’m not saying getting rid of all them. Obviously, the Zelda games were a triumph, but that should be an exception to the rule. Just like when every game was shoehorning in a multiplayer mode in the Xbox 360 era, even though that’s not why people bought the games, now it seems publishers make games open world for no reason other than it’s kind of expected.

If games are going to cut their budgets, then they’re going to have to do it in a sensible way that’s actually a benefit to the game and I believe removing bloat and padding, and stopping everything from being a 60 hour long slog, is good for everyone involved.

By reader AgentRed