Brave New Worlds

Common sense. It's not as if studios can round up sign touting vagrants with "will code for hot showers" and whip them into creating new content that you and several other people think the game must have and was foolish not to include. It doesn't work like that. Darlings die bloody deaths. A studio doesn't function like a mad man's imaginarium fuelled on Red Bull and smiles. It just doesn't. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was a recent sad reality faced by the developers. While the game sold over a million copies, and had EA as its publisher, it didn't save the Providence-based 38 Studio. Open world games can't afford to skirt the cold, hard bottom line, they have to vault over it. It's a genre where only the strong survive.

However, it's not always so bleak. The first Assassin's Creed, while somewhat flawed in its repetitiveness, showed that the genre was very much alive and at home on then-next-gen consoles. It's since become a powerhouse or dead horse depending on which side you're on. But based on the recent Black Flag offering, AC is very much arrr-live. Similarly, Crytek's Far Cry blew gamers out of the water upon its release from a relatively unknown company.

Then, we have games that tread the water such as Two Worlds: 2, the little game that could. I loved it. I loved its ridiculous open world made on a budget that pales in comparison to the giants in the industry. It had faults, but I felt as if I was going on a big, dumb open world adventure. Within half an hour, I was wailing on a rhino while dual-wielding swords, then being stalked by a cheetah, only to end up in a small fishing village taken over by lizard men. Thought had gone into a creative magic system, weapon crafting, and item crafting - the devs threw everything they had at the game, and while never perfect, was stupidly enjoyable.

There's a quote in literature that goes something along the lines of "A finished work will never be as perfect or realised as the initial premise." These games, while perfect on a drawing board, with the myriad of cool options, features, landmasses, will never make it into the game because of the constraints of time and money, which will only worsen. Is it perhaps, then, that open world is dying?

No. Of course, not. Well, not for big developers, at least. Assassin's Creed, GTA, Fallout, Oblivion, Just Cause, Red Dead Redemption, Far Cry - they make great returns and are always GOTY contenders. It's simply that with the cost that comes with the genre it's increasingly difficult to create open world games. The best chance in the near future is with new consoles where new IPs are waiting to be gambled on, so it's not too farfetched to imagine the next series giant is just around the corner. However, we'll see a decrease in the number smaller studios releasing these games for next generation based purely on cost and expected returns.

Looking at the prospective line up for the Xbox One and PS4, we're still getting our open world fix, however, the likes of Mad Max, Sunset Overdrive, and Sleeping Dogs sequel being the leading new IPs from well known studios. The closest from relatively unknown studios will be Team Bondi's Whore of the Orient and Reach Studio's Project: Heart and Soul, which will be the biggest gambles for the genre on next generation consoles.

But in time, our notion of open world needs to be tempered. Games on such a large scale will take longer, they'll cost more money, there'll be more features left on the cutting room floor because of the nature of the industry. We want games quick. Company execs want games quick. And with big hits taken to several new IPs this console cycle it doesn't work in favour of smaller studios. Perhaps in the future, like with Team Bondi's L.A. Noire, big studios will delegate larger projects to smaller studios in the hopes of taking a chance and allowing these studios to "test drive" their ability to develop new games. However, it's the developers that ultimately pay the price and have to struggle to produce a game for an audience that sometimes loses focus (or is ignorant) of the process. But the future won't be so bleak, there's still worlds out there just waiting to be discovered.