Sandbox Games — The Escape from our boring Reality
Video games have long been conceptualized as an escape from our current reality. They take us away to a world where life is no longer boring. Where we can drive through a sand dunes at a hundred miles per hour and listen to the soothing sound of our tires sifting through the sand.
With games we’re no longer restricted to our boring existence in a continuous cycle of lack of excitement. We can now experience flying through pandora a dreamlike planet filled with so much visual beauty that you fall asleep dreaming that you are there in an attempt to avoid facing the fact that you are not actually there.
We can explore a new frontiers and build vehicles in strange and satisfying ways that remind us of the reality we wish existed.
The idea is incredibly captivating. Many thought it finally came when Palmer Lucky released his VR headset — the Oculus Rift — that could “transport you to an another reality.”
In a big way we are still so far away from that dream reality. Most lack the technical ability to write software that drives massive open worlds with hundreds of players. The games we dream of existed only in books written by authors whom also wanted to see their dream game world come to life…
…but lacked the technical ability to architect such worlds with the algorithmic beauty of something like Ready Player 1. Ready Player 1 showed us a glimpse of this dream game world and what it could look like. I still find myself dreaming about it every time I watch the movie.
In order to achieve such a reality, we need a way to create big. open. worlds. That can be designed by players, where the level of creativity is powered by an in-game desire to create and win.
These games are called sandbox games.
Yet, good sandbox games are far and few between. The few that do exist require immense computational power and expensive PC configurations.
And information on how to make sandbox games is even more sparse. The best most of us can do is try to find tutorials on how to make Minecraft.
But replicating Minecraft’s sandbox mechanics is just the start, not our true end goal.
The reason most of us start with Minecraft is that anything more and our brains wouldn’t be able to handle the programmatic and architectural complexity of designing an alternate reality sandbox.
Not only powered by sheer creativity but filled with a purpose and challenge to be overcome. A reason to wake up and join the game and dream on and build our empire, not in the sense of a top down clash of clans…
but a sprawling empire made by us and our community of players.
This reality will only be made possible by sandbox games that can give us a purpose to fight and build and dominate.
That is why I spend hours writing line after line of code, and making architectural software write-ups.
Because I hope that, one day, anyone will be able to learn to architect these worlds and make the future of sandbox games possible.
I will never give up on this dream. I will always strive to make this reality possible. A world where anyone can learn to code a reality of their own. I don’t ask for anything more than you allowing me to give you the resources to build this future.
And I’ll leave you with this hopefully inspiring youtube video showcasing one reality that, hopefully, someday, you yourself will be able to code.
And if you wish to continue the journey into the unknown world of architecting the game world of the future you can continue reading in my next post linked below
