So there I was, enjoying a nice gaming session of Red Dead Redemption, when I stumbled upon a Generalissimo seeking my help killing people and burning a town. Since killing people and destroying towns are the two main reasons I love playing video games, I gladly accepted. I went through the town killing people and horses and setting buildings on fire. (Setting horses on fire was not as impressive as I expected it to be.) The Generalissimo rewarded me with a new gun and a few dollars, and the Nosalida Complete screen appeared. “Cool,” I thought, “another mission under my belt.” Â And off I went, to hunt raccoons and whatnot. So imagine my surprise when another mission sent me back to Nosalida where, once again, the Generalissimo was all like, “Hey amigo, we need your help!” It was as if the mission I completed earlier had never happened. Nosalidas Complete was a lie.
One of the major selling points of a game like Red Dead Redemption is the open-ended, or sandbox, nature of the game. Yes, there’s a story-based main quest line, but there are also a variety of side quests that a player can explore and discover on his own. But really, as my faux Nosalidas Complete incident shows, a game like Red Dead Redemption is just as linear and programmer-dictated as any other. My open-ended exploring caused me to complete a mission before I was supposed to, so I had to do it again, all so the throwaway bit of dialogue mentioning problem in Nosalidas would make sense. Rather than calling Red Dead Redemption a sandbox game, I propose it and other games of its ilk be called quagmire games.
A sandbox game suggests a child-like joy in creative play. That is not what games like Red Dead Redemption are. A quagmire game suggests a nebulous and misguided time-suck, where the objectives are never what they seem to be. After all, what is the point of playing Red Dead Redemption? Is it to complete the main story quest? Of course not. The point of such games is not the stupid main quest, but the side quests and exploration. But what are the side quests? Delivery packages, picking flowers, hunting skunks, and a variety of other simplistically repetitive tasks. Such activities don’t deserved to be compared to the creative freedom of a sandbox. Such activities are closer to a maze for lab rats than a sandbox. Pick flowers, get a pellet. Shoot skunks, get a pellet. And so on.
Video games used to about challenges. Metal Gear was hard. Bubble Bubble was hard. Battletoads was, well don’t even get me started on Battletoads. The games were linear, all about getting from point A to point B, but there was a challenge in doing that. Now games are quagmires, not about getting from point A to point B, but pressing A when the little pop-up on the screen tells you to or pressing B when the little pop-up on the screen tells you to. Naturally, this isn’t true about all games. When I blew up Megaton in Fallout 3, it stayed blowed up. A game like Civilization is about far more than following on-screen tutorials. But too many of the super popular games, the games that dictate what the sequel and derivative obsessed game studios will continue to make, reward repetitive behaviour, rather than creativity or imagination. Even if I liked the Call of Duty games, I couldn’t play them, because I don’t have the time to memorize levels and do all the other rat-running-a-maze tasks that online play rewards. Video games have become anti-intellectual time wasters, the very distractions video game opponents used to claim they were. Games are mislabeled as open-ended, or free-roaming, or sandbox, when really you’re just doing the same three tasks over and over and over again. When it comes to games like Red Dead Redemption, the game is a lie.
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