Feature: Taking Apart Sandbox Storytelling

Author: by Staff

In Gamasutra's latest feature, Ernest Adams returns with a new Designer's Notebook column in which he looks at techniques for storytelling in a sandbox design, and explains why Grand Theft Auto doesn't truly tell a sandbox story. "The Grand Theft Auto games famously include sandbox play, but they don't do sandbox storytelling," Adams writes. "Instead, you get the usual linear chain of missions; complete one and you get another one, and so on. It just so happens that the missions take place in a large open world, and you can abandon the mission and just wander around wreaking mayhem (or driving a taxi) if you want to." In the article, Adams unpacks the concept of "sandbox storytelling" and offers up suggestions of scenarios that could lead to it -- designs in which the game world and gameplay interact to create a narrative. To achieve this, he suggests, designers should consider scenarios that don't require the player perform fixed tasks in a given order, where exploration plays a primary role, and where the size and diversity of the world itself plays into the story and task at hand. In one example, Adams conceives of a Sherlock Holmes scenario that would play well in a sandbox: "Root out the criminal gang," he describes. "Professor Moriarty's tentacles are everywhere. No matter where Sherlock Holmes goes in London, he encounters evidence of Moriarty's dastardly deeds. But where are Moriarty's senior lieutenants, where is his headquarters, and where is the man himself?" Games based around jobs or hobbies that routinely require travel work well too, Adams suggests, as navigating the world is automatically part of the personal story for a character that plays that kind of role. For example, hunters need to traverse, explore, read and hide within their environment -- but sometimes real-world scenarios present challenges. "Hunting doesn't ordinarily generate much of a story unless something unusual happens," Adams notes. That's where developer creativity and information from other narratives can come in: "As a kid I read two different stories in which wealthy (and therefore evil, apparently) big game hunters indulged a secret passion for hunting human beings -- specifically, the guides they had hired," he recalls. The full feature contains many more suggestions and a much expanded discussion of the overarching concept. The Designer's Notebook: Sandbox Storytelling is live today on Gamasutra.