A few good selling open world games (e.g. Skyrim, GTA) made everyone aware that there is a lot of consumer interest in those.
Open world idea is beyond terms such as “good selling”. Sandbox is more like state of mind, or life style, not based on capitalistic commercialism.
We see that capitalistic systems doesn’t work, in real world, on this planet, with such big number of population, so not everyone likes to be associated with just “consumers”. They are more like brothers of idea.
