Game Design Origins - Game Design Essentials - page 5

FiGuRe 1.2 This screenshot from the sandbox game The Sims 2 shows elements designed
and placed by the player into the game world.
You can basically do the same in a game like Fable or Fallout 3 . Rather than
play the main story quest lines and go out and fight, you can focus on being a
businessperson, traveling from town to town buying and selling. The same emer-
gent gameplay can be found in Blizzard's World of Warcraft . There are people who
solely play the auction house in the game, buying and selling rare items, instead
of following quest lines. That wasn't the intended reason for putting the auction
house in the world, but people made it into a game.
Simulators tend to be all mechanic with no given goals. This puts them into a
more freeform type of gameplay. There are still game mechanic-related “rules,”
such as only being able to build things with the items that are provided and only
being able to build in a designated area.
Another good example of a game that is entirely mechanic is Minecraft .
Although you need to do some basic things to survive, the huge appeal is
constructing whatever you want, like a cow cannon or a complete replica of
the Enterprise. Entire servers of people are working together to build stuff
without any direction from the developers.