[wincy]

My kids begged for me to buy Tomodachi Life and Pokemon Pokopia and they’ve been absolute smash hits in the house. Pokemon got me hooked for a month or two until I mostly beat it, and the kids play Tomodachi Life every day and have funny little stories to tell. So many modern games just aren’t fun, it doesn’t matter what the graphics look like if the game is boring.

[thih9]

Sandboxes. Minecraft was one. Now it’s getting called a platform, at least in the submitted article. That’s good for engagement and monetization I guess, but sounds way less fun.

[Cthulhu_]

Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, MMOs, Second Life, there's heaps of sandbox games where people can just hang out and do their own thing. It's the metaverse that Facebook / zucc just completely misunderstood.

They could've just bought any one of these titles and they'd have a better metaverse than whatever it was they pumped billions into.

[philistine]

Pokopia and Tomodatchi only look like sandboxes at first glance. They are far more directed. They're not a perfect square with you in the middle. They're a star shape with you in the middle.

[dieselgate]

I genuinely don't understand the relevance of the square vs. star map layout - does that matter or is there an analogy I don't understand?

[philistine]

It’s not literally the map of the game: it’s about what the player can do.

A square means total freedom. A star means freedom to choose guarded experiences with internal choices.