Hi everyone,

What do you think is better, a game where you can do whatever you want like Simcity, Civilization or the Sims or games where you have set goals and levels to complete?

It depends on what sort of game I feel like playing (the result of my mood).
or
It depends on if either type of game happen to catch my attention (the result of the game's marketing on me).

If you're looking for an answer to help you decide what sort of game to make, my suggestion is that you go for whichever you happen to have a greater interest in developing.

First, some background for my comments: some people use the presence or absence of goals to define something as a game or a toy: games are activities with goals to be achieved, while toys are simply objects to be played with. By that definition, SimCity, Minecraft, and the like are toys, not games. A ball is a toy to be played with; basketball is a game to be won.

I find this perspective useful in describing my own attraction to and interaction with computer games (using the general definition of digital entertainment media rather than the specific definition above). I love the idea of toys like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress. But I find these toys don't keep my attention very well. Games that provide some kind of goal hold me attention much better, even when the goal no longer holds any challenge (as attested to by my countless replays of Metroid games.) Interestingly, the game that held my attention the most consistently is Terraria, which kind of blends the two approaches by having an open world along side a steady progression of equipment, abilities, and difficulty.

From a development standpoint, they both have difficulties. For a game, you need a defined way to evaluate success or failure. In many cases it's as simple as reaching the end of the level or having a higher score when the timer reaches 0. Toys can be just as simple or many times more complex: compare the simplicity of Minecraft's creative mode to the incredible complexity of Dwarf Fortress.

I find the core to games like Sim City and Minecraft is the player will establish their own goals ... build a thriving working city in Sim City ... or build a not so thriving city in Minecraft a block at a time. I think rather than goals there perhaps needs to be progression ... either you progress through the story, mission objectives or you progress on your own personal project.

There no "this is better than that" and there will never be. It depends on the whole set. As Suspense said you need an objective to be a game, it can be imposed by the system o created by yourself. To keep people playing you need at least one goal, or allow the player to set their own.

In my opinion, providing a progression system is also a goal. Unlock items, be better, more efficient...

I generally prefer goals. Games like The Sims seem great in concept, but I always end up quitting them before I have seen all the content because I don't get any feedback or recognition on my self-chosen goals, or I discover I have self-chosen a goal which is actually impossible within the program, and I just don't have ant reason to care about exploring the remaining content, nor any efficient path to see what I haven't seen yet.

I've been thinking a lot lately about this idea of consuming content and what it means to game developers. Is a game not "finished" until the player has consumed all its content? Is a game "finished" as soon as the player has consumed it all? To what degree does content consumption equate to finishing? Is it when the player completes the game's primary goal?

I'll use my own experience as an example of what these questions mean. I played WoW during its closed beta and continued to play for a few years after its release. I took a break for a couple years, then I eventually came back and played through the first expansion. But then an interesting thing happened. I felt done. I had completed the game, consumed all its content. I knew there was still fun to be had and progress to be made through PvP, battlegrounds, raids, etc. But I had no drive to do those things. I had completed my goal for the game, which I only then realized I had set for myself: to see the Warcraft world and explore it. When I recognized that goal and that I had achieved it, I left the game and never went back. Since then, no MMO has been able to hold my attention for more than a few months.