Public Opinion & Sandbox Games

[Doorknob22]

Game developer here.

1. Some inexperienced developers consider sandbox games to be superior to normal Virtual Novels, so they decide to make one sticking to the form (map, time system, inventory etc) but add very little to the game infrastructure. The result is a VN masked as a sandbox game. Most of the time you only have one thing to do, one option to choose from, but due to the map and/or time elements you have to search it. Is Titty McBigboobs at school or at the park? Is she there in the morning or in the afternoon? You can't progress the plot without talking to Titty McBigboobs but you have to search for her all over the place. So: bad implementation of sandbox.

2. The other issue with sandbox games is that some player simply don't want them. They just want to to click "next", let their arousal grow and eventually see some good sex scenes. It's completely legit, not everyone has the patience to solve puzzles, increase experience points or (in my game) manage an empire. Some just want to chill and let the story move on its own with them having to push it. Some people don't game at all, other want to game with their pants on and are not happy about mixing fapping and gaming.

 

[anne O'nymous]

One last thought on sandbox and "sandbox-like" games, and that is the nature of how porn games tend to get released. Due to how most games on this site are put together (one updated at a time), players will eventually need to start a new save, possibly more than once. This is where I see a lot of issues with these navigation styles.

It's not an issue with the sandbox-like, or free-roaming, mechanism, but with the dev not knowing what he is doing. You used Summertime Saga as example, there never were a reason for it to need a restart ; this was due to the variables being wrongly handled and declared.

Liner VNs have similar replay fatigue problems with forced restarts (especially with branching), but it is not nearly as bad as a "sandbox" in terms of time.

What fallback to what Adabelitoo said, "Lastly, a lot of people just want to hit the Ctrl key to skip all the dialogue and get the sex scene so fast that you can't tell if they are playing a VN or speedruning 16 stars in Mario 64, and sandbox is an impediment for that". Therefore, once again it's not an issue due to the game mechanism, it's, this time, one due to the sole player.



This being said, the main issue, and it was addressed, but not really noticed, is that games tagged as "sandbox" are not sandbox, but free-roaming ones. You either move from location to location in order to advance in a particular route, or have one route by location, and there you just get a scripted scene.
But sandbox games aren't that. A sandbox game is a game like Super Powered, where, in each location, you can choose with who you'll interact, what this interaction will be, and repeat those interactions without much constraints or limits. You are in a sandbox and do whatever you want, in whatever order you want. By definition sandbox games either don't rely on a story, or rely on a story that evolve in (almost) total independence of the sandbox part.
Outside of flash games, there's really few real sandbox games on the scene, and almost none of the games used as example in this thread are ones.

Reported to regular games, the Fallout games are free-roaming, while the Saint Row ones are sandbox.

 

[Agent HK47]

Night Mirror I would argue that it was probably Big Brother which made sandbox popular, more than MC, but that's hard to say for sure. Agree with you on pretty much everything else.

"Power Vacuum" is a good example of a VN disguised as a sandbox. You can wander around as you please, but in order to unlock the next chapter, you HAVE to complete every single event, which means romancing every single character, no matter what. That ain't a sandbox, that's just a VN with a roundabout, in order to delay/confuse ppl, to make the game seem much more complex than it actually is.

 

[Adabelitoo]

As to Summertime Saga or Milfy City, I'm not sure the specific game matters. Milfy City is the first game I remember seeing the "sandbox-like" stuff in, but as both have been in production forever, it could have been either, or even a third different one. What I was pointing out is that the style got copied over and over and over without any real improvement.

Are those two games the only factors in popularizing "sandbox-like" games? No. Are they major influences, yeah, I think they had a huge impact. Mostly because I see the exact formula from those games used again and again. And while it worked there, it hasn't really been innovated on, just overused.

Some people think that incest is a thing here only because of Big Brother, as if incest wasn't popular before that. Sandbox and "sandbox-like" games are a thing since, I don't know, Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion?

Besides, it isn't like it needs a "real improvement". I get that it can feel tedious for some people but for some others that "sandbox" element works fine the way it is. The idea that the player is the one going from one place to another, that he is the one opening each door and deciding to talk to each girl instead of being dragged by the game, that "illusion of freedom" is enough to make people enjoy it.

Another thing worth of mention would be that, if a dev does a well done sandbox and not a "sandbox" or "sandbox-like", a lot of people complain about the game being "too hard" or "too complicated" or "feels random". That isn't a problem exclusive to sandbox games. A lot of VN games with branches and/or where choices do matter have that same kind of complains.

 

[baloneysammich]

I get that it can feel tedious for some people but for some others that "sandbox" element works fine the way it is.

I wonder if there's a correlation between how much "experience" people have playing porn games (how long they've been familiar with them, how many they've played, how much of their porn consumption is games) and their attitudes towards sandbox-like games. I know I'm much less interested in (or maybe much more averse to) such games today than I was four years ago when I joined F95.

 

[TheCragger]

I enjoy sandbox games. Games where choices really matter and you can do whatever you want. But the reality is most sandbox games of this genre really only have 'sandbox' in terms of grind. And tons of grind at that. And people aren't playing these games for level grinding.

A good example of this is Monarch of Magic. It's a VN as you really don't have any meaningful choice but progressing along that linear path is 'gated' by having to grind boring encounters just to get to a point where you can get through a new grind gate.

I feel a lot of developers would learn a lot if they ran some TTRPGs before getting into designing and realize why you don't throw a random encounter at your party every time they do something if you actually want them to keep playing.

 

[Adabelitoo]

I wonder if there's a correlation between how much "experience" people have playing porn games (how long they've been familiar with them, how many they've played, how much of their porn consumption is games) and their attitudes towards sandbox-like games. I know I'm much less interested in (or maybe much more averse to) such games today than I was four years ago when I joined F95.

I guess there is. When I first played a RPGM game (which have all the "problems" that sandbox games have and are even worse at that) I was like "This is awesome! All games should be like this!!" and two weeks later I was like "Okay... I see the problem now...". I still like and play RPGM games but my "tedious" factor also grew up with my experience as a player.

I guess it's the same as the classic "milf 40yo old mom who looks like 20yo, older sister is a bitch, younger sister is a sweetheart" incest setup. People realises that it's the classic formula copy-pasted, once again, still that doesn't stop players from enjoying it.

 

[Jofur]

I wonder if there's a correlation between how much "experience" people have playing porn games (how long they've been familiar with them, how many they've played, how much of their porn consumption is games) and their attitudes towards sandbox-like games. I know I'm much less interested in (or maybe much more averse to) such games today than I was four years ago when I joined F95.

I've been playing porn games fairly regularly for almost a decade now and my tastes are pretty similar to how they always were. I still replay old games all the time. It took a while for me to get past the "creepy DAZ" factor for a while, but that was the biggest change that I've seen.

I think part of it is because to me half the enjoyment of porn games is the "edging" factor and having to work for it. If I just want to fap and be over with I'll watch porn(which is often far superior in visual quality). Setting aside an entire day just for playing, edging and fapping is such a treat. And my god the orgasms!

 

[baloneysammich]

I've been playing porn games fairly regularly for almost a decade now and my tastes are pretty similar to how they always were. I still replay old games all the time. It took a while for me to get past the "creepy DAZ" factor for a while, but that was the biggest change that I've seen.

I think part of it is because to me half the enjoyment of porn games is the "edging" factor and having to work for it. If I just want to fap and be over with I'll watch porn(which is often far superior in visual quality). Setting aside an entire day just for playing, edging and fapping is such a treat. And my god the orgasms!

Edit: Below I use "grind" as shorthand for "having to work for it".

To me there's a difference between "grind" which only services to draw out the game and "grind" which has fap value or at least narrative value. For example, take a game with any sort of point system (relationship/love/corruption/horniness/etc). If I have to repeat the same action/interaction over and over to collect points, and each time I see the same or similar text and image - nevermind anything less than that - I'm gonna lose interest. But if each time I'm presented with at least different text I'd stick with it.

 

[the_evil_baron]

It's been pointed out on this thread several times before, but I don't think I'm ever going to get over the fact that part of the problem here is that people in the lewd game community call the point-and-click adventure genre "sandbox games", when, in fact, those two kinds of games are almost complete opposites of one another.

In adventure games, the developer is telling the story to you, and wants you to guess the next part. In sandbox games, the developer is asking you to tell the story. The first leads to tighter narrative, but some (most?) people don't like playing hunt-the-verb or hunt-the-pixel. The second leads to looser, sometimes non-existent (aka "emergent") narrative, but gives room to the creativity of the player. I think that people who are like me, who enjoy both, are pretty rare, honestly, given how different they are. It's bad marketing to conflate them! (A similar problem is how ntr has come to mean EITHER netori or netorare while the venn diagram of the people that enjoy both has very little overlap.)

All of this is, of course, in addition to the group of people who don't really want any game content in their VNs, because they're just looking to get off as quickly as possible so they can get back on forums to bitch about "sandbox" games. (I jest.)

 

[baloneysammich]

the problem here is that people in the lewd game community call the point-and-click adventure genre "sandbox games"

On the contrary, I think the problem is that lots of people don't think that, but the F95 definition of the sandbox tag is "For Free-Roam type of games" which is ambiguous enough that it came to be applied to adventure-type games and a lot of other stuff where you're not strictly on rails.

https://f95zone.to/threads/tags-rules-and-list-updated-2021-05-02.10394/

 

[rk-47]

i like sandbox games, it makes it so the game isnt you mindlessly clicking through it and you have free choice to anywhere and see side content
summertime saga does this pretty well

 

[NotSure142018]

I agree with others that the biggest problem with Sandboxes is the chapter/update system of development that has become the norm. Patreon is, I think, a factor in encouraging this type of development model, as opposed to devs releasing finished games all at once. Playing through a "sandbox" game like Milfy City from the beginning is something I enjoy. Downloading a new update and having to look all over for the new content is not fun, nor is having to restart from the beginning.

 

[DuniX]

Just add some really fucking gameplay like combat to it and most problems of replayability are solved.

 

[dookie85]

It's been pointed out on this thread several times before, but I don't think I'm ever going to get over the fact that part of the problem here is that people in the lewd game community call the point-and-click adventure genre "sandbox games", when, in fact, those two kinds of games are almost complete opposites of one another.
...
All of this is, of course, in addition to the group of people who don't really want any game content in their VNs, because they're just looking to get off as quickly as possible so they can get back on forums to bitch about "sandbox" games. (I jest.)

I was just about to create another thread on this very subject until I found this one. I'm having a hard time finding sandbox games because the "sandbox" tag here is so loosely applied, it can mean almost anything. I don't mind these VNs and adventure games with the illusion of free-roaming gameplay, and I hate to argue about semantics nowadays, but this is totally out of hand. Like some here have already explained, it's totally the opposite of how players would describe a sandbox game in any other non-lewd genre.

Also, I agree with those who said there seems to be templates of development where the same formats gets used. People here tend to like VN-style games with little actual gameplay, and it might be a function of devs all using the same tools to create their games. Sometimes I see a game with the "sandbox" tag and no "visual novel" tag, and I assume it's something different, and it turns out to be the same type of game. I don't have a problem with VNs, and I even sometimes enjoy the games with misleading tags, but that's part of the problem because I'm not really looking for that type of gameplay, and it leads to more applications of the tag.

On the other hand, the flipside to this is that if devs didn't mass produce games with the same tools, then they might get bogged down in technical difficulties with super slow release schedules or lower overall quality. I've probably played nearly every brothel management game on this site, and I would like to see more devs create games with a very similar format, so I hope I'm not being hypocritical. I really don't mind the sheer number of these games. However, it's damn near impossible to figure out how to find an adventure game or RPG that is actually a sandbox. Due to the dev templates, the only thing to search is the "text-based" tag, but I'm not really looking for those at the moment either.

Now I'm looking at NSFW mods for non-lewd games on a different website, as it seem to be the only way to find some sort of expected gameplay. I don't have very high standards, so it's totally possible, even probable, that what I'm looking for is already posted here, but it's proving very difficult to find.

 

[SlLePER]

For me the reason why I mostly ignore sandbox-type games here is that I do not really agree with the definition of sandbox used by this site or at most these games are very bad at being sandbox. Instead of having systems that interact with each other and the gameworld, here there are mostly games that only use appearance of being a sandbox to add filler content. For me sandbox is something like cdda, factorio, Kerbal Space Program or No Mans Sky.

In most sandbox games here the sandbox portion does not really add anything for me and in my opinion the experience would be better without the sandbox parts.

 

[KekWGgWP]

There are some reasons why personally, i'm not a fan of this kind of games and this are:
1.Most of the sandbox games are repetitive because of the grinding, you do the same thing over and over again to advance and breaks the immersion completely and it's very boring which makes you lose interest.
2.Some are poorly made, for example, you play a sandbox game where you need to do quests in order to advance in the story but the game doesn't give you any clues about how can you do this quests or the hints the game gives are too vague and you need to waste a huge amount of time clicking around the game to find out yourself which makes it frustrating.
3.Usually, most of the sandbox games have implemented this status system, like STRENGTH, AGILLITY, INTELLIGENCE etc. and you need to increase your status to advance and most of this games, implement this system completely without any reason and doesn't make any sense to be in the respective games, it's just there to make those games look more complex like "oh look, this game has status system, very cool"

Of course despite all this reasons, i do play some sandbox games that i truly enjoy like Summertime Saga and The Man of The House because they are different from most of the sandbox games.

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

TLDR most sandbox games aren't properly filled with content and devs introduce grind to fill that empty space. This is especially true of Korean MMO RPGS. Some games avoid this, like Skyrim, but have big development budgets. Games like Corruption of Champions 2 can get really grindy and repetitive because there isn't true narrative to fill all the world they have made.

If you want a good sandbox, you need to spend a lot of time(money) filling it with content. Otherwise they are bad.

 

[dookie85]

TLDR most sandbox games aren't properly filled with content and devs introduce grind to fill that empty space. This is especially true of Korean MMO RPGS. Some games avoid this, like Skyrim, but have big development budgets. Games like Corruption of Champions 2 can get really grindy and repetitive because there isn't true narrative to fill all the world they have made.

If you want a good sandbox, you need to spend a lot of time(money) filling it with content. Otherwise they are bad.

I hate to argue semantics, but most Korean MMORPGS are not sandbox games and sometimes do have big budgets. It's arguable whether Skyrim is truly a sandbox game or not; personally, I think it's an open-world adventure game with RPG elements. I don't agree with this assessment about the need for a high budget since many actual sandbox games are made by small indie devs. For example, Rimworld and Terraria are sandbox games made by very few devs on a low budget. 7 Days to Die originally had a small budget too. The sandbox games I'm looking for don't need a huge budget, at least at the beginning, unlike AAA 3D realistic FPS or a MMO.

CoC2 is probably a good example of a sandbox RPG, but its setting didn't draw me in, so I don't really know. I may try again later, but I'm not looking for a text-based RPG at the moment.

Again, the whole problem with "sandbox" games on this site is that they're mislabeled so people have no idea about the gameplay. More often than not, it's the exact opposite of sandbox, with a very linear story and no procedural or user generated content. If you're looking for "content" like in plot-driven game, then we're not talking about the same type of "sandbox" where the content is emergent and structured differently.

For me the reason why I mostly ignore sandbox-type games here is that I do not really agree with the definition of sandbox used by this site or at most these games are very bad at being sandbox. Instead of having systems that interact with each other and the gameworld, here there are mostly games that only use appearance of being a sandbox to add filler content. For me sandbox is something like cdda, factorio, Kerbal Space Program or No Mans Sky.

Yeah, that's the main problem. It's great that you actually named some real sandbox games. Perhaps someone can explain this to me, but it seems like it wouldn't be much harder to create some of the "text-based" open RPGs with basic graphics like in CDDA. I think it stems from the development by template issue where most open-ended RPGs on this site are made in a similar format with the same dev tools like HTML sugarcube and interfaces like that. Like I said earlier, this is both good and bad since it helps minimize technical problems but also leads to many games playing the exact same way even if their setting and stories are very different. Matter of fact, I like some of these games, so I have no issue with developing this way; it's just hard to find gameplay that isn't like this.

I'm pretty sure the type of games I'm looking for are already somewhere on this site, but I keep finding games with very linear paths. I really think it's an issue with the "sandbox" tag rather than development being inherently more difficult or costly. Furthermore, I don't think people dislike sandbox games in general, it's just some players dislike the common development template that gets labeled as "sandbox" on this site.

 

[lemonfreak]

Why does the majority of this community dislike sandbox games? Personally, I wish there were more of them.

Speaking for myself I like sandbox games when there are lots of things to do outside of the main story, eg. Skyrim

Most adult devs, being amateurs working alone or as part of a small team can't acchieve that so their games end up being a fairly linear one with lots of places to visit, nothing to do in most of them and little to no indication as to which locations are relevant at any given time