9 Crippling Problems With The Video Game Industry (And How To Fix Them)

5. Everything Is Open-World (Even Games That Shouldn't Be)

The Problem: Even the great Hideo Kojima said "Once you've gone open world, you can never go back", and it's testament to how pretty much every major video game genre still works in this template, that scores of developers have rejigged their creations to suit.

Metal Gear Solid V, The Legend of Zelda, The Witcher 3, Shadow of Mordor, Horizon Zero Dawn - even Uncharted 4's levels were made far more open-ended than ever, simply to account for this nebulous sense of "See that? You can go there!"

The Solution: Some games work an absolute treat in an open-world, providing an unparalleled sense of exploration, tone-setting and placement of missions. Others - like L.A. Noire, Need for Speed Rivals and Mafia III - simply space out all their objectives, and leave you driving or running for hours in between checkpoints.

The realisation here, is that not everything has to be open-world, period.

As Nioh proved, taking something as prolific as Dark Souls and making it mission-based can work very well, and a game like Assassin's Creed would surely benefit from Ubisoft taking a page out of the new Hitman's book, rather than being open-world because it's a bankable genre to slap on your marketing materials.

Let the purest sense of level design dictate the genre, not the other way around.