There’s a fine line between freedom and fun. Games should
allow you to experience a certain level of freedom but enough constraint to
offer a challenge to overcome. It’s often the case that non-linearity leads to
non-urgency, if a game gives you too much freedom the natural reaction without
the constraint of consequence is to abuse that freedom.
A story should sweep you along but often I find myself just
wasting time because I've been given the option to. In a lot of open world
games the emphasis is taken off the story content and focused more on the
freedom and the mini games so it becomes less like a sandbox and more like a toy-box. Rather than driven by a plot towards the inevitable goal you’re given the
option to essentially go around in circles fulfilling minor goals for meagre
rewards. It’s like filler for a game it adds to the overall goal of completing
the games plot but doesn't add to said plot, it's just padding.
Anomie; is a principle theorized by French
sociologist Emile Durkheim and put plainly it is a state where norms
(expectations on behaviours are confused, unclear or not present. In your everyday cross section of modern life even the most asocial
of people can share a common goal with a passer-by even if it’s just the basic
goal of survival. We understand that every man woman and child wants to live
and we are aware as a social norm that human life has value and that taking it
is expressly forbidden. On the other hand in the world of games they make their
own norms. So one day you can be a cop and another you can be a criminal with
two opposed set of norms.
For instance if you
play a crime a game and you’re given an entire city to explore why wouldn't you
commit criminal acts? The perfect example of this idea of ‘normlessness’ is Postal 2; The game is the ultimate
example of too much freedom causing deviance. The game is even named after this
idea of ‘going postal’ referring to spree killing carried out by postal workers
in America.
Postal 2 has a vague structure of missions that are intended to be
everyday like ‘buy milk’ and then the rest is up to you. So there are outlines
of missions to carry out but you’re given so much freedom and weapons of course
I found myself spending most of my time going on killing sprees with virtual
people running and screaming as I doused them in petrol.
It’s only natural
that given an open world without consequence and without norms and tongue
firmly in cheek that you create chaos because you don’t care about what
happens, you can create chaos because it doesn't matter. There is a big ‘but’
here; this type of game-play has no longevity, I found myself getting very bored very quickly. It
had no meaning, no purpose, no driving force, no overarching goal, it was just
instant gratification. Freedom is what attracts us to games but structure is what
sustains us.
For our actions in a game to have meaning we have to have norms
and structure to base them on. So killing sprees are fun in Postal 2 (or any other game for that matter) because
they have no consequence but get boring for the same reason. To feel a part of
a game we have to feel like our actions have some sort of consequence, so that
we’re drawn into that world and we care about the characters.
This idea of pleasure without consequence is fun but it’s a
hollow feeling that has no lasting sense of satisfaction. Nothing is gained or learned, it's like chewing gum as opposed to eating a meal. We need structure in games because it distracts us from the fact we're playing a game. We need that realistic framework to make our ridiculousness in the game seem more consequential, rules and norms are important in games so that we can have a blast breaking them.
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