I’ve previously discussed the novelty of “Paper Trail,” a free batch of Infamous: Second Son DLC that engages players inside the game and out by way of browser-based investigative sessions. It’s a smart source of variety for the otherwise formulaic Second Son, but much more interesting is how it fits into the new trend of interacting with our games outside of the console. Companion apps, second screen functionality, and now browser/console interaction — each of these brings something new to console gaming, expanding the experience while adding new options and depth. I call it “gaming outside the box.”
Infamous Paper Trail takes players to their browser to enhance the main game.
Of course, this concept is still in its infancy, and certain attempts have achieved greater success than others. Paper Trail is a recent example, as is the companion app for Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes. With that app, players can view the game map, including marked targets, points of interest revealed through interrogation, and hotspots indicating locations of frequent player deaths and triggered alerts. Beyond that, players can also use the companion app to play audio logs, as well as a base-building minigame wherein player resources increase as they play Ground Zeroes on their console.
While Metal Gear Solid‘s approach to gaming outside the box is mostly to enhance the main game by almost completely reducing the need to pause gameplay, it also has the potential to occupy player attention away from the controller with its minigame component, and it’s exactly this potential that developers would do well to capitalize on when considering the implementation of similar programs. By engaging players in these ways, developers are finally taking advantage of the mobile smart devices that have grown progressively more integral to our daily lives. Utilized properly, gaming outside the box can extend the life of otherwise shorter games, and encourage players to involve themselves in these and other games more often. Not only that; these players can interact with the game wherever they go, not just in their living rooms. This versatility could spell great things for developers and players alike.
Imagine playing Watch Dogs with your buddies while you’re out getting coffee.
Players might reap the immediate benefits of gaming outside the box, but developers stand to gain a lot out of this deal too. If developers commit to creating successful new ways of approaching content, they could see a rise in game sales and customer loyalty. A time is coming when the ways with which we can interact with a game may constitute a large selling point for a given title. A few games on the horizon are already treading this territory to some degree. Tom Clancy’s The Division is crafting a persistent online New York City, which players can interact with via tablet, while Ubisoft is on a similar track with its upcoming Watch Dogs.
The Division has stunned the watchful masses with its visuals that push the bounds of graphics well into the next generation, but it’s also a deeply tactical online experience. Here’s where things get interesting — players can connect to the game via tablet, with which they’ll pilot a remote-control drone. This player can still communicate with his or her friends over the in-game radio, along with the ability to get an aerial view of a battle. From this vantage point, a drone pilot has a number of useful abilities, like marking enemies to be seen by all other group members. This effectively takes gaming outside the box to the next level by letting players play inside the full game, even while away from home.
One of the most promising companion apps coming up belongs to The Division.
Ubisoft’s ambitious hacker sandbox Watch Dogs approaches gaming outside the box in much the same way, allowing mobile players a birds-eye view of Chicago. Though this perspective is more a grid of the city’s roads and hackable systems, mobile players can manipulate the environment the same as any console player. What’s more, they can use this ability to help or hinder their friends. With Watch Dogs, Ubisoft has expressed its interest in keeping the game going for as long as ten years. Even considering how fun the mobile connectivity sounds for these games, it’s still hard to imagine one lasting ten years. That is, unless you also consider the example made by Infamous Paper Trail.
Whether or not Infamous: Second Son‘s developers arranged Paper Trail’s content to extend the life of a game they knew was short both in length and replay value, I couldn’t tell you, but it has been perfectly set up to do just that. It’s episodic, timed-release, and, most importantly, genuinely interesting. With six weeks of content, it easily extends the game’s overall life by five weeks. Now imagine similarly engaging content, in a game players already enjoy, but on a far larger timescale.
If done right, developers would do much more than keep us playing their product, they’d have us interacting with their product more regularly, and in more ways than one. By encouraging players to interact with a game inside their home and on the go, you’re also encouraging them to make it a larger part of their daily life. This will invariably forge a stronger, longer lasting connection between the player and game. We as players would be more likely to come back, seek out new content, and convince our friends to do the same. This strategy could reasonably lead to games like Watch Dogs becoming ten-year titles, and–even better–lead major publishers away from the tired trend of releasing annual titles that add little but charge full price.
It’s the little things that make this generation truly next-gen.
How this new trend plays out has yet to be seen, but it’s off to a decent start. Companion apps to current titles range from mediocre to great, and future offerings are on track to further improve the concept. Second screen and browser content is a no-brainer now that so many of us have smart devices and computers. There are still plenty of gamers who don’t have tablets or smart phones, and it’s because of this that developers would do well not to overemphasize gaming outside the box. The game itself should still be the central experience, but expanding to other devices is a nice bonus that really makes these games feel next-gen.
Have you tried gaming outside the box yet? Let us know your favorite examples in the comments.
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