Fallout co-creator Tim Cain says there's a difference between toys and games, but games "could benefit" from taking more features and elements from toys – something which some of "the best" out there, like Skyrim and Minecraft, already have.
Speaking in a new video on his YouTube channel (below), Cain goes through the differences between the two mediums. "A game is something that you play, but a toy is something you play with. That is my very high-level distinction between games and toys," he begins. "In particular what this means is games have rules and goals. And frequently, not always, but frequently, they have scores, they have a winner or a set of winners, and they have an ending."
Meanwhile, he continues, "Toys have none of those things. Toys have nothing. It's basically, 'here's this thing that you can play with.'" It might all sound obvious, but these are distinctions that become more far interesting when you realize how a game can function like a toy.
"Some games that are out there can be played as toys," Cain explains. "If you've played Minecraft, you have almost certainly played a game as a toy. And I think most of you play Minecraft the way I play Minecraft, which is as a toy. You go out there and you just build stuff and craft stuff, and you have no particular goal than survival. It is a game in the sense that you can lose, you can die, it's also a game in the sense that there is an end goal of you're supposed to be going after something. I don't think it's a spoiler if I tell people that. So, Minecraft is a game, but I would say the vast majority of people play Minecraft as a toy. A lot of games can be played that way."
He goes on to give the example of Skyrim, his personal comfort game and "macaroni and cheese of games." Sure, Bethesda's RPG might have a story to follow and plenty of quests to complete, but "sometimes I just install it, make a new character, and just go around the world," Cain says. "And this is what I want to stress here – I frequently play Skyrim as a toy. In other words, I make a character and I have no goal for that character."
The former Fallout lead continues, noting that many of us have probably also had the desire for more games with toy-like features, even if we haven't realized it. "Personally, I think the best games out there have toy elements in them, which I would consider freeform, goal-free playing, like [how] I play Skyrim. And I think many of you want that too, and you like it, but that's not what you call it. You say, 'I like games that have a lot of exploration off of the beaten path, or that isn't quest driven or achievement driven.' What you want, is you want a game with some toy features."
Whether it's yearning for an open world that you can explore without being "beholden to a story line or the linearity imposed by the designer," or for a "game to be endless" and playable long after completing all its quests and achievements, are all really desires for a game with toy elements, he says, and this apparently something he wishes he figured out sooner.
"If I could go back in time, if old Tim could go back to young Tim, he'd go, 'Hey, try to put more toy features in your game. Try to make more things that are goalless and endless,'" reflects old Tim.
Obviously, adding in these kinds of things requires money, which is a luxury developers don't always have. Even so, Cain concludes that "games especially could benefit from more toy-like features."
