So, let’s talk about GTA and sandboxes. GTA doesn’t simulate a world with rules that a player can break. The cops coming after a player is little more than a scripted event. The rule is essentially that performing certain actions results in police officers coming after the player, and those rules are clearly defined through play. This is the problem of sandbox games in general. Giving the player the freedom to “do anything” is essentially limiting the developer’s ability to create any meaningful experience.
Also, the player can’t really do anything. The player does things within the bounds of the rules the game has set. Were one to be caught in the congestion of a crowded city street, one would have to deal with many of the same consequences a player in GTA now faces. In relation to travel, GTA shares much in common with what we deal with on a daily basis. Most actions that people perform during travel are simple tasks, so much so that they really can be equated to essentially playing games. Thus, travel becomes a game. Not a fun game, as it is generally seen as time spent doing a certain task to arrive in a space.
Yet ironically, GTA turns even travel into a game in much the same way. The player has to do certain things to travel through the game, and these things are generally frustrating to some degree. Progressive actions are performed, however, with the intention of getting to something you do want. The real problem with GTA is that what you are getting from GTA is pretty specious. The game is effectively built on attacking stupid targets (stupid referring to the game’s classically poor AI) ad nauseam, until eventually the game finishes its variety of strange narrative arcs. If the narration is indeed rewarding, it could be a satisfying goal, but experimentation is actually what is rewarding about the game. Not the actual execution, because after jumping off that building, the player just finds out, disappointedly, that they splat onto the sidewalk. Effectively, what GTA offers players is expectation, not actual reward or even anything terribly enjoyable. The idea of being able to do anything is far more salient and what the user is ultimately looking for.
Because, in the real world, we can’t do “anything.” As much as one may want to drive a car into the back of somebody, we don’t take that risk. At least, not without knowledge that the consequences actually mean something. That too, is another point of the game. When a game has no real consequence, it’s quite easy (and in the case of GTA, encouraged) to do a lot of reckless things. The problem is that if there’s no consequence, there’s also no real impetus to do anything either. GTA is effective when pulling between the idea of no consequence actions, and the potential expectation of consequence from action. However, if the player realizes the interplay, the game simply becomes a bland series of set pieces, particularly because the game has no consequence. If the player dies, they just start over. There’s nothing ever really lost, aside from time. In some ways, time can motivate valid and important action, and even direct meaningful experience. But generally, a game is played because the player has free time, and thus time is of less consequence than other potentially available consequences.
Some of these consequences involve experiential consequence, such as what the game simulates and how the player can grow from or upon that experience. Other experiences include the more general moral, psychological, and sexual questions that one might grapple with on a day-to-day basis. How to approach a funeral respectably, or what happens when racism is allowed to run rampant, are two such questions. They are questions that are both provocative and dangerous. Dangerous because approaching them poorly in a game can guarantee future failure, provocative because they can also challenge a player by easing them into a space where they have to consider an uncomfortable reality. However, the consequence of experience is something not approached in games nearly enough. Sandboxes are among the worst offenders, because they make “choice” so important that the reason why making choices is important is lost. To make a better game, the developer must make choices meaningful–time can’t be the only thing at stake.