How to Fail at Open Worlds

You know it's your dream game, and you are different and will actually be able to do it. So might as well learn how to be bad at...

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Doh De Oh by Kevin MacLeod

[Artindi]

So I mostly talked about open worlds for RPG's or other similar games, but can you think of any games that are not these but still have an open world?

[DataPotato]

"Some of them are turned 90 degrees"

Yes definitely on purpose to give the game variety

[lardenfriund]

Don’t forget- as a indie dev, it is VERY, VERY achievable for you to create a vast open world like BOTW. Immediately set your sights on that- anything else is just pixelart garbage.

[griff]

1. create 2 giant-ass continents wired together by a tiny strip of land. you may not even care about naming them creatively, let it be "North ..." and "South ...".
2. Make a spawn point for your main game class in the center of the map, and make it entirely empty. Like, who even cares about starter content? Fill it with sand and it'll be fine.
3. Make a continent to the north of it, and make some parts of your lore claim it's actually 2 continents, so it contradicts itself. Don't forget to add too many peninsulas for fun.
4. Don't reward the player for getting to the northernmost and southernmost parts of the map. Come up with a stupid reason so players don't go there, like, "it's too cold to live" or something. You can also save processing power like that - just cover that land in white so you don't have to texture it.

[shrbert]

Can’t wait for the npcs to give one sentence quests! This won’t make the world feel shallow and insincere at all!

[ligstig]

Also! Don't forget to just have some random invisible walls to instead of a interesting realistic border to the world! Just like some random force field will do just fine!

[BrickThought]

Probably the easiest genre to fail in my opinion.

[vaimast]

How to fail at picking a game engine is an underrated concept, how many times an idea fails because of the engine

[maltardraco]

How to succeed:
1) Make it a small world so players never ask for fast travel. Also decreases overall work so you can finish it.
2) Pack that small world to the brim with activities as if it were a theme park.
3) Randomly place the activities to actually encourage exploration. EG: This cave has an iron rock in it but it's in a different place every single time.

How to still fail after that:
1) Just add fast travel.
2) Trivialise all activities the player can do by just making it so the player can buy anything with gold, who needs to do fishing when you can just buy fish.
3) Have a boss that drops a ludicrous quantity of gold so the game becomes stale and repetitive.

[generalrubbish]

Make sure to fill the world with NPCs that do nothing all day except sit around and give the player side quests. This hunter needs 50 bear asses! Could he simply go and get them himself, 'cause he's a hunter and all? No. This farmer wants you to watch his sheep! Could he just do it himself, since that's literally what his occupation entails? No. This lady wants you to get her a basket of apples from the market! Could she literally just get off her lazy arse and WALK to the market herself because it's literally RIGHT THERE?! No. There's simply nothing better for immersion than making the player question how the hell this society manages to function without a legendary hero around to wash everyone's dishes and walk their dogs.

[KlausWulfenbach]

My best advice: You really can't make a Skyrim as an Indie. But with today's tools it's totally possible to make an Ultima, Wizardry, Might & Magic, Bard's Tale, Dragon Quest, Legend of Zelda, Legacy of the Wizard, and so on, all by yourself.

[RedstoNeman]

I hope someone makes a game jam where you have to follow as much of your videos as possible someday

[magistiko]

Don't forget to add base building mechanics, bonus points for tying them to 1 location or a few more. Saves processing power not having to render the rest of the world you crafted!

[dixievfd]

If you set your game in space, make sure every planet has one biome.

[artman]

Some other tips on how to fail:
1. Oh...while you're at it, add an inventory but make sure it doesn't add immersion and is more of a gameplay inconvenience than actual challenge.
2. Don't forget crafting system! Make the crafting system as cumbersome as possible!
3. Early access! Is it going to be out of early access eventually? Who knows.
4. Remember: You can't make an indoors open world game.

[nico_]

if it was possible to actually fail on Open Worlds, Ubisoft would've gone bankrupt by now

[bonbon]

Don't forget about invisible walls everywhere, we need plenty of those too!!!!

[cantsay]

Brb, starting work on my 100% science-based dragon open world MMO!

[plebisMaximus]

First minute could be easily countered by mentioning Daggerfall lol. It did the realistic scale impeccably for the time. You can definitely make a big empty world only realistically traversable by fast travel, just have to make the gameplay loop revolve around it.

[banoko]

My favorite open world mechanic is level based combat system! Basically every enemy is the same from start to finish but they get more levels per region. Also you can't damage an enemy 5 levels above you while it always one shots you. (gotta keep it balanced)