Defining 'Sandbox'

Sandbox games are more or less a new thing. Sure, a lot of games in the past have had sandbox features (like create your own character, create a level or whatever), but games which are entirely sandbox are relatively new. It might be useful to try and define what makes a game sandbox, and which games seem sandbox but really aren't.

Minecraft immediately comes to mind. Some other sandbox games come to mind, though. Does anyone remember RPG Maker?

I remember playing RPG Maker with my friend Travis. The game had a dizzying level of complexity (which wasn't really interfaced that well, making it pretty difficult to actually do anything). We had a lot of fun with the game (despite the fact that we never actually made anything close to an RPG [The only thing we made was a spell called the WrathOMoses because the game had inexplicably  provided a clip art of a burning star of David]). I remember really wanting to make a whole game from the ground up to give to my friends to play, only I just never got around to it. That, and I hated the Sony PlayStation.

Certainly there have been plenty of games with sandbox features. Let's be clear about what really makes a game sandbox by defining what sandbox isn't: changing your character's features like they were a Barbie doll doesn't make it sanbox. I remember the game Re-Volt had a pretty awesome track editor option, maybe one of the first games to do so with sufficient depth to make it actually usable.

I frequently hear Skyrim described as being a sandbox game. It isn't really, Skyrim is really just a massive theme park with sandbox elements. You may have a hundred choices as to what you want to do in Skyrim, but the bulk of the game lies in completing quests, killing enemies and levelling up. You can't, say, decide to build a castle somewhere, or explore beyond the limits of Skyrim - the game doesn't allow that. Fences define a theme park. Skyrim has fences all over the gaffe. I can't kill such-and-such a Jarl and usurp his throne because if I do I'll lose the ability to do this key quest at some point later in the game. Don't get me wrong, I love Skyrim. But is it sandbox? Not entirely.

Racing games by their nature offer a pretty limited scope of what you can do: with that said, Trials Evolution is probably about as sandbox as racing games will ever get. It's probably one of the most sandbox games of all time, when you look at it. But then to really embrace the game as sandbox, you need to spend hours on the track editor, which isn't the easiest thing to navigate (or I'm just a bit dense with editors).

So what's the point of all this? Clearly there's still a place for character driven games (i.e. Red Dead Redemption, or what have you), yet it seems to me we're entering into an age of complete customization. I find myself yearning for both - truly novelistic video games with fully developed characters, and sandbox games where I can do whatever the fuck I want.

K