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Where did the term 'Themepark' come from?
redcloud16
Member UncommonPosts: 221
Of all of the things to call them, why was 'themepark' chosen as the nickname for non-sandbox-y MMOs?
Where did it come from, or who first coined it?
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First usage I dont know, but it was chooses due to the real live similarity, were sandbox stood for open plains , theme parks in real live are closed off, usually have a theme and closed off by fences and strict walking paths from attraction to attraction.
SWG had theme parks, they were named for above reasons, the game itself was a sandbox but had a few ..well theme park quest lines.
I think it is post-wow and wow related.
It is the idea that in a themepark, you get in a line and slowly make your way to a fun ride. After the ride, you get in a line again, and do the same.
In WoW, and WoW-like games, you perform a set of linear tasks (get in a line) which generally progresses to something fun, like a dungeon or boss or uber item, etc; these are the rides. Then you rinse and repeat just like going to different rides in an amusement park.
Anyway, it is a pretty apt term, and I have never really seen it as a total negative. I happen to like Disneyland. But I also like building sandcastles.
its mean the game is on rails. eg, a roller coaster at a theme park. you cant go off the rails the path is already predetermined. WoW really brought it to light.
The term came from SWG use of content that was scripted like Jabba's Palace. Later on, like all other terms twisted and misused by the general populace. It came to determine the difference between open ended content: sandbox. And scripted stuff: themepark.
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You would have to go back to the days before you were born, back during the creation of UO they were talking in Magazines about "themepark vs sandbox".
Themepark was the idea that players consumer content and are granted character power. The more content the player consumes when playing the character the more power that character should be.
Sandbox was the idea that time played should not be equal to power granted but instead keep players more level wiih each other...like in a sandbox. Doesnt matter how long you have been playing in it, someone entering can jump right in and play along.
It wasnt until EverCrap and Asherons Call came out that they started to change the meanings to its current form.
The reason for using those terms is due to their being fairly close to real life terms.
In a Themepark, the more you do the more fun you have.
In a sandbox, the fun is open to what you want to do and anyone can basically join in right from the moment they get into the box.
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@OP: I only first heard the term being used when WoW had been launched. Before that, never encountered the term on any forums I frequented.
I've read that "themepark" was first used, along with "sandbox", back in the days before MMOrs in the text based games of the time. Text based games had the same thing going on, Mudd=Sandbox and DIKU=Themepark, generally speaking. It was always a loose definition, no specific list of bullet points. Generally, Sandbox=freedom and Themepark="on rails", as someone already posted.
The terms came about in MMO's when comparing Ultima Online to EverQuest, while EQ was being made.
WoW clone is a general term usually used to say a game is a Themepark.
WoW used to be called a EQ Clone (because they were both Themeaprks), just like DAoC and Asheron's Call were. I don't know if AC really fits, never played it myself.
It was "EQ clone" when EQ was the biggest, then "WoW clone" when WoW became the biggest.
Different people have different meanings when you get into the specifics of the meanings. But they generally are loosely similar.
Themepark generally means that controlled aspect of going from one "zone" to another (it's a ride). Where Sandbox generally means the freedom to go anywhere. But then there's all kinds of tangents and related material depending on the individual. I, for example, tend to think of Sandbax games as being "worldly" (realistic, world interaction with objects, a simulation), but I guess they don't have to be, and moreover that's not all I want in a Sandbox game. But when I use the term, I tend to think along those lines where a reader might not catch on to what exactly I mean.
Some people want to put specific meaning to these terms. I think that loses the generality that they were meant to have. For example, does a Themepark game have to have a ticket booth at each ride? (An NPC quest giver/pez dispenser for each quest). Obsolutely not. So I think the terms should stay general, as an overall description of how a game plays.
Let's see....I have another 142 pages, but I think I'll stop here.
Edit. Typo king, damn!
Once upon a time....
lol the term was around a long time before swg.
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Thanks for all the replies.
I know what it stands for now, but I wasn't aware of the pre-EverQuest usage. Also how SWG had that sort of dual sandbox+themepark, I thought that was interesting, I didn't play that game long enough to get to that sort of content.
I also curious because I had never heard the term pre-WoW, and also never as a positive.
I think the problem isn't necessarily that it's a 'themepark,' but that everyone is copying each other. Which is a different discussion entirely. XD
My laptop died while at work, so i couldn't respond swiftly, so I spent the day on WikiPedia reading up on the old school MMOs like Meridian (i don't rmember the number at the end haha), EverQuest, Asheron's Call and DAoC. I've tried EQ a few times, and I found AC at Half-Price Books for like 4 bucks, so I'm going to giveb that a try. :P
No, in my mind the problem is exactly because it is themepark, not so much exact copies. But that's not to say that everything in a themepark game is bad and shouldn't be used.
Here's what players are tired of....the themepark way of conrolling you through the game. It's that simple.
Now, many seem to be confused because they look at one aspect of that control and that's where they are stuck in the blame. For example, quests. Quests are how many themeparks direct you around their control. So many gamers just blame the quests. But the reality is that a themepark without quests has no means of showing you where to go next for your controlled experience. But it's not really the quests, it's the controlled experience.
Don't get me wrong. Some players want that controlled experience because they can get the hand crafted quality that comes with it. That's something I think a great Sandbox can give them too, without the controlled direction or quests, but they've never seen that in an MMO that's Sandbox, because there's never been a true Sandbox made with AAA money.
The fact that SWG didn't do great, I think, is exactly because of the themepark elements they had in it. It's not the elements, it was the controlled aspect again.
But it goes beyond that control I've talked about so much here. Ya see, these are MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER. People expect a social thing, with all those other players. And this control in themeparks, it removes that. By dividing players into content by levels. Even SWG had this. Yes, there's problems when you get into a massively social sphere, because some people are just jerks. But instead of confronting those issues, the industry has removed it. Now you play as a group, instancing is widely used, etc. They've removed the massively social.
Furthermore, because themepark designs have this control, and because they've removed the Massively Social, and because they've added instances and group buttons, they have also removed more and more "world". They just don't need it in this controlled game play. So you get DDO and SWTOR. That was a mistake that some have seen now. So we'll see ArcheAge where they are adding "world" back in, and in spades. This is a real boost. However, it's still going to be a themepark. And even they will still control your experience. How that pans out, we have yet to see. I'm especially curious how it works in the Asian markets. I think it's going to blow everything else out of the water. But in the West, I think it'll only do somewhat better than recent games, because it's still that controlled environment.
Once upon a time....
You have great points. I agree with a lot of them.
I'm going to bring somwething up that might get me flamed but, I want to bring up WoW and some of the recent 'AAA' titles.
In WoW you have, what, 11 races now? And there are 11 starting areas (and even back in Classic there were 3 per side, adding new ones as they went until all the races had their own starting area).
In the new game syou have RIFT where you have one starting area per side. And then you have one controlled experience, as you say. TERA, where there is ONE STARTING AREA, and I'm guessing one controlled levelling (PvE) experience as far as I can tell so far. SWTOR, which has 4 starting areas for 8 classes, which then melt into one controlled eperience. Every new character you make will experience the same game over and over again.
But in WoW, if you got bored of this level 30 area, you could choose from among at least 2-4 other zones and go level there instead. If I wanted to I could leave the Blood Elf starting area at level 5 and go play with my friend in the Tauren starting area instead. Sure it's a long journey, but that's part of the fun. When the Burning Crusade came out, I made a new human character and ran to the Dark Portal and died at least 15 times on the way. I was so sad when I had to be lv 55 to even pass through, but the journey there was so fun. I ended up just kept going on, till I made it to the Night Elf starting area and levelled her from there. You could make several characters and technically not experience the same zone progression or quest advancement.
I know WoW isn't the best example, but it had *some choice* as opposed to the treadmills we're on now.
But in the new games, there's not that anymore and I see it being a trend. I just hope that people learn from the last title, but the next title always makes the same mistakes.
I find myself trying the older games, perhaps for nostalgia or perhaps because the open freedom of them. /shrug.
Themeparks usually have rides now days. Rides have a guided path, aka the rail, that you go from one part to the next part, on and on, to the end of the ride.In other words, the developers choose which way and how the rails bend and turn, not the rider. This is the THEMEPARK. Developers choose how you play, while you the player, plays on their rides.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
I had never heard the term 'themepark' used to describe an MMO until WoW and EQ2 launched the themepark style.
EQ was not a themepark, nor was it a sandbox. Games dont have to be one or the other.
How do people even think Original EQ was a themepark ? You could start in a dozen different starting citys play as over 10 races/classes and there was no linear quest line to follow you could go from 1-5 in freeport and 5-10 near qeynos or 5-10 in east commons and 10-15 in the oasis. Themepark is rift you follow a strict path and cannot choose to go anywhere else.
Themeparks are centered on having dedicated rides in dedicated places.
Kind of an obvious and fitting analogy I think. Also to a greater extent where most rl themeparks have linear routes of progression throughout the park
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Yup, I agree. But EQ is not a sandbox. Its kind of amazing that WoW and EQ2 both launched the formula within weeks of each other. not sure if any games prior used it but they were the first 2 prominent ones.
The first time i ever heard it was when SWG was being developed. People were using it to describe how they thought the areas from the movies that could be visited would make them feel like they were in some sort of theme park. Funny how it turned out that is one of the go to MMO when talking about sand box games these days.
Lines aren't really part of it. Lines in MMORPG terms are like travel -- a mandatory empty timesink required to enjoy the ride.
Linearity also isn't part of it. In a real themepark you aren't forced to linearly proceed through the rides, you can ride whatever you want. The same is true in a good themepark MMORPG.
Themepark vs. Sandbox is all about who authors the experience. In themeparks players don't make the rides. But in a sandbox the player is the author of what gets created.
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If you use these features to define EQ as not-themepark then WoW would also have to be classified as not-themepark since it is structured the same. Since people want to call WoW a themepark, EQ is called one as well no matter what you want to think yourself.
Correct. EQ and WOW are certainly themeparks, they're just not as rigid and linear as the current crop of the themeparks. But a less rigid themepark is still a themepark.
I believe we're seeing a trend that people when hearing "themepark" automatically think of the very rigid and linear ones. They forget that it's just how current themeparks are while in the past we also had less rigid and less linear parks like for example EQ.
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Except WoW had Quests and Quest Lines. Something EQ1 didnt have.
IMO, both are Themeparks. WoW just added more rides
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