Playing with Social Sandboxes (Like a Designer)

Out of the games suggested in the list of Social Sandbox games, I played (briefly) Homescape, Farmville, and a game on Roblox called Backpacker. I struggled from almost my first encounter with these games to view them from a designer’s perspective: asking what I could learn from them, rather than from a player’s perspective: they bore me.

Experience of Social Sandboxes as a Player:

Sandbox games have become less and less appealing to me as I have become more and more adept at creative activities such as drawing and modeling in Sketchup. If I want to design a house or farm, I can draw or model it myself, with more elegant and customizable results. I have never really engaged with the social part of a social sandbox: mostly due to my reluctance to connect to Facebook when I don’t have to, and because my friends and I tend to play text-based storytelling games which I think satisfy our desire for fellowship and expression-based fun. When I have engaged with these types of games for an extended period of time (mostly a few weeks tops before I uninstall them) it’s usually because my sister and/or mom is playing it and I want to be able to discuss it with them. Mostly, I lose interest in these games very quickly without the “social” element to keep me engaged, and with the “sandbox” element never feeling as customizable as I would like.

Experience of Social Sandboxes as a Designer:

Trying to play these games as a designer, I took note of when I was most excited or engaged. In Housescapes, this came when I was choosing furniture for the rooms, in Farmville when I got to choose where to place a windmill, in Backpacker, when I got to do something as small as choose the color of my tent and camper. The common aspect between these moments of high engagement seemed to be choice: so, the times when expression and fantasy-based fun were most highlighted. I also enjoyed the explorative nature of open world games (specifically Backpacker among the games I played) and discovering both new mechanics and new features of the world. I found this type of fun to be a balance between my enjoyment of exploring and my exasperation with my inability to move quickly around the world. I was left thinking that some sort of game in which you are able to construct a high-level map, and then zoom in to experience specific aspects as you desired would cater to this type of fun.