Playing GTA4 and thinking about how much a minimap can ruin this type of game. GTA and Red Dead 2 both become whole different games when you turn it off, in a weirdly instantly-refreshing way. In RDR multiplayer, I got a friend to turn it off as we were just riding our horses around, and not even 5 seconds later he went "holy shit".
I really hate playing a tiny game in the corner of the screen that has no graphics. I've gone from thinking of the minimap as an unfortunate necessity to seeing it as a genuine, serious flaw.
There is one purpose that it truly serves, and that is treating open-world games as a Content buffet, rather than a game. It simplifies the production process at the cost of everything else. It lets your company become a Content factory. And fuck that
As someone who has spent the past two years building a minimap (and other map screens) for an AAA game, I wholeheartedly agree. Minimaps are the most complicated piece of UI tech by far, which is fun for me1, but they're often used to paper over readability issues with the level design. Many games become impossible to play if you turn the minimap off.
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A minimap is on the HUD, which means it has to be optimized to run at 60 FPS at all times. However, it's also extremely dynamic, because icons constantly appear, disappear, and change states. Oh, and it needs to stream in map textures fast enough to maintain the illusion of an infinite-scrolling map. Good luck; have fun!
this makes me wonder at how much of the praise directed at BOTW came from the way they did at least a little design work around the minimap. (not least: it doesn't have a map in it til you've spent at least a little time in each area)
