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Lt. Commander
Join Date: Dec 2007
Posts: 120
# 2
12-04-2011, 08:41 AM
I'm pretty staunchly opposed to sandbox games and someone who LOVES novel grinds and theme park games.

Sandbox games are to MMO snobs what French art films are to film snobs or amazingly pungent foods are to foodies.

There's always this concession in there that sandbox games are less popular with Joe Blow and this assumption that if people ONLY KNEW and UNDERSTOOD what the sandbox enthusiast knows, they would jump ship on their theme park games.

It's just not true.

I think a lot of people are aware of the theme park's hamster wheel/skinner box with light, CRAFTED narrative. If they play it at all at endgame, they are aware of it. And they LIKE it, they just want that endgame to be balanced RIGHT to their tastes and aesthetics and are looking for the game that does that.

But they aren't going to be satisfied with a sandbox.

That's like taking a bus load of costumed Juggalos to a baby shower.

The theme park is always free to borrow ideas from the sandbox but the sandbox game is absolutely NOT more desirable to most people.

There's an inherent fallacy. The number one choice of high culture connoisseur's is almost always wrong for the masses. If you are a high culture/high art connoisseur, your tastes are skewed and you need to be able to put them aside.

A large sized combo from McDonald's with an Apple Pie will cost you as much as a 3 course lunch at a 3.5-4 star restaurant, minus tip. But people buy it? Because they're in a hurry? Some of them are. Many of them like it just as much or better.

Don't try to Eliza Doolittle the general public.