Sideways expansion

 

So you have a video game and it has everything in it. I'm talking the Kitchen and Bathroom sink, spinning wheels, boiler plate- everything you're little heart could desire. But it's not enough. I mean it would be enough, but we live in the age of 'Live Services' wherein every game is as much of an investment as being hired to direct a CW series. You know the studio aren't going to let you leave until that ship hits an iceberg with you riding the wreck all the way down to the frigid depths, because there are no gracious exits in this business, no sir! What do you do? Well, you could go the route that everyone else does and put less and less effort into every subsequent update, never really thinking about where you intend to take things and just shrug when it all collides a few years down the line. (Thank you so much for the stellar example of that in motion, Destiny 2.) Or you could be clever with it.

I consider the topic of Sideways progression fascinating when it comes to the way that developers design content for game progression. Instead of going the stereotypical route of becoming stronger at the one thing you're good at, the game encourages the player to diversify and start afresh at something totally new. The way that Runescape adds skills instead of just bumping up the level caps of existing skills. (Albeit very rarely.) It's such a painfully difficult way to make a game because it requires clever integration with everything that exists in order to feel natural. That means every new addition needs devs to revisit finished code, pull apart working systems, and remodel them from the inside out. That's the kind of insanity you need passion to pursue- or a complex about going to the Nth degree like I'm mostly sure the Larian Team has. (Someone should make sure they're not killing themselves to make their next game already.)

But whenever I've brought up this kind of development topic before I've always thought about the way this would work during the design process of a game that one expects to have updates, like an MMO or a Live Service. How would such an ideal work for a finished and boxed game? DLC has a typical approach that isolates it's content from the majority of single player games for the sanctity of the developer's sanity, but what if some madman was to design an expansion which expanded on sideways progression paths instead of upwards ones? (The actual terms would refer to 'Vertical' and 'Horizontal', but I like my choices better.) And whatsmore, what kind of games have already created systems like that and how do they effect those games?

One famous game which has avoided sideways progression for eons is Grand Theft Auto V, although it's the online portion (now it's own separate application) which I want to highlight today. Every few months or so Grand Theft Auto Online throws a new bunch of cars into the game that it's online players are expected to grind over, then give up and spend real money to cheat the fund in order to purchase. But what if, here me out- they added those cars to the traffic spawning database instead? Imagine how that would change up the pedestrian makeup of Grand Theft Auto to see the style of vehicles across the region evolve over the decade! The game would mimic the real evolution of modern roads, albeit much more sped up, and it would expand upon one of the key pillars of the Grand Theft Auto experience- stealing and driving cool cars. That right there would be a perfect opportunity for sideways expansion!

Perhaps one of the most successful recent examples of a sideways expansion would have to be 'Phantom Liberty' for Cyberpunk 2077, even if it unfortunately ended up being the only expansion the game received. As it sits, much of what the Phantom Liberty upgrade offered slid alongside the game that was already there, rather than piling itself on top of the existing content. The entire perk tree was remade in order to accommodate new styles of play, level scaling was utterly gutted to facilitate a smoother experience, police systems were implemented across the whole city, car vendors were consolidated into terminals- CDPR went every distance they could in order to make Phantom Liberty an all-around expansion that slid neatly into the game that was there, such to the extent that even without the DLC the 2.0 update was enough to totally turn around opinions on the quality of Cyberpunk 2077.

You see, the way that expansions interact with the base game is I think what makes sideways expansions such an interesting prospect, kind of like the 'Fallout 76' approach of- fix the game that's there in hopes it raises the overall experience for all. And event though it probably took an obscene amount of time to redo the main questline of Fallout 76 in order to accommodate for the new NPCs that were ushered into the game circa The Wastelanders update- the results spoke for themselves. Positive headlines for Fallout 76 for the first and last time. What a world! And what a painfully large undertaking it is, which is probably why every subsequent update has detached itself from Appalachia and focused solely on vertical expansion.

The dangers of building atop yourself should be fairly obvious. Anyone who has played a game of Jenga in their life knows that the higher you stack you tower block, the easier it is for it to fall over onto itself. For MMOs that comes in the form of the endless 'race to the top' which is what makes all MMO's feel exactly the same these days. There's no 'simulated life' aspect to these games anymore, they're linear adventure tales chasing the current level cap and the single best set of gear which was revealed this expansion. Soon to be topped by the next best set the next expansion, or the next set of abilities and power levelling which totally invalidates everything before it. Such games end up feeling less like consequential adventures and more like step ladder journeys towards an unreachable destination. And if that's your kink, just get a job.

Horizontal expansion by it's very nature engenders creativity in the design room, and when you've got the designers thinking outside the box about how they can enrich the game, you're going to pass that excitement onto the player on the otherend. Just look at the kings of this style of development- Mojang. Even those who don't play Minecraft all that often pay a visit to the changelogs every now and then just to see what sort of crazy new direction Mojang have decided to commit to in their 'dart board' development style. That's the kind of spontaneity the game's industry could do with a bit more of if it really intends to commit to this 'Live Service' world like they certainly want to insist that they do. Onwards and upwards? Nah, Imma do my sideways thing.