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The Future Of MMOGs - You As Designer?
Thanks to GameSpy for their feature discussing user-created content as the future of massively multiplayer games. In one section, Will Harvey of There Inc. discusses potential problems with more exotic player-created features: "If third-party developers [A.K.A., gamers playing the game] write games for an MMPG, will the code for those games also run on the servers? What if it crashes?" Elsewhere, Will Wright talks about quality issues after players create content: "Once we have the ability to leverage the creative process, how do we move that content between players in the most efficient way? There's always some content that a small number of players create that will have the most appeal."
I'm currently writing a game which has an emphasis on user content. We are using C#/.NET (no flames please) and using a lot of bytecode analysis/verification/manipulation. This allows us to verify that we can constrain the cycles used by uploaded code by inserting new bytecode into the loop structures etc. We can also use DFA and a defined set of permissable interfaces to limit the capabilities of the uploaded code.
For an example of one of our bytecode manipulators which manages object persistence, look at the www.gotdotnet.com site and search for bytecode in the user samples.
Some other thoughts are that copyright, ownership, censorship are the main showstoppers, not technology.
Asmo
Another thing I've seen in a lot of the early wave of games that focus on user-created content is that the tools seem to be aimed at some specific skill level and type of creator. I think we need to see tools that support a broader range, where people with less skill, less experience, or simply less motivation can still create something a little bit interesting, and the people who really master the tools have a lot of power and flexibility to do really amazing things.
Anyway I do think this area will grow a lot, as better tools & games are developed. My comparison has always been to the free web-hosting services like Geocities, Angelfire, etc. that got really big based entirely on user created content. RPGs or virtual worlds built this way are, I think, particularly suited to encouraging socializing, as they often lack any combat or obsession-feeding goal structures, while they provide a never-ending source of new things to see and explore that provide potential conversation subjects.
Furcadia - A free online game with user created content, DragonSpeak scripting, & more.
Second Life is already there. All of the content is user-created. There is a scripting language that can be used to create complex behavoir. Houses, trams, amusement park rides, airplanes, sentry guns, alien ships, ghosts, even a recreation of the destruction of the world trade center towers.
Check out the archives of the "embedded journalist".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
From the article:
Will Harvey of There Inc. discusses potential problems with more exotic player-created features: "If third-party developers [A.K.A., gamers playing the game] write games for an MMPG, will the code for those games also run on the servers? What if it crashes?"
This is a simple matter of programming. Your MMOG is a platform, just like any computer, and you should be able to allow user-space code to run and crash without affecting the underlying system.
I worked on a mud in college that allowed user specific code. The head programmer had written a light VM that ran most of the actual mud code. It sandboxed the user land stuff and your code could do whatever you wanted within the context of the syntax and you weren't bringing the MUD down. However, the VM was very memory hungry and really needed to be re-written by someone who knows VM's. He made it all up as he went.
Like any other collaborative development initiative they will need to implement a Sandbox environment for trying out new things which can allow for official QA.
Especially if they allow code to run... virtual virus anyone? worms which run through avatars via their gear and send off info about their location or status to the creator? and the banal possibility of a server crash though I think that is the least fo their worries as it would be easily loggable and traceable because of it's dramatic impact.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
If you're looking for a SWEET User-created game, check out Odyssey Online. It's got that classic flair that we all miss from the NES and SNES days and the development tools are all up there. Unfortunately it's not open source, but an old version of the source can be found by asking around.
yea this game owns, loads of quests and many classes to choose between. I can recommend this game!
An interesting tidbit from the VP of there.com: he is wondering about hosting: does the original creator of the game run the third-party contentent (code)? A big problem with robustness, security and scalability there. And what will the technical architecture look like? I'm surprised that they haven't thought about these issues with There (or maybe they have but don't want to give them away).
Well, as one of the lead developers on the VOS project, I think it could look a bit like VOS of course! I'm inclined towards an open distributed architecture, with some standard authentication mechanism that lets you either pay to enter or use a sector of the world (or not pay, of course), or looks you up in a list of subscribers. Bitpass and PayPal can be used here. Maybe there is a central authority for a particular set of such sectors that can do billing and accounting more conveniently.
If broadband continues to become more popular (and ISPs stop blocking ports and restricting upload bandwidth!) then people can host their own segments of worlds on their home servers. Maybe some object replication would be useful as well.
Another interesting tidbit is offering many methods of access: special game client, web sites, on your mobile phone, etc. Is this a hard technical problem or not? Will it be affected by the architecture of the game/world/metaverse?
Obviously easy to use authoring tools (based on libraries of common objects and basic customizable building blocks) will be essential, though we shouldn't exclude those with more skill in more advanced modeling programs.
Finally, I wonder how much growth there can be in the standard MMORPG which requires a large investment of time and dedication of its players. Would a game/world that doesn't dominate your entire life be as much fun?
Also, has anyone had a chance to try out Second Life yet?
reedVOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org
I think the biggest issue, especially in MMORPGs, is the roleplaying aspect. The content that users create would have to be parallel to the world it's based in or otherwise it just throws everything out of context. So, another important issue would be censorship.
Not entirely sure of a viable way to keep this under control though.
- shazow
Since MMORPGs (or MMPGs or MMOGs or whatever over-long acronym is in style now) are at heart just graphical extensions of the old text-based MUD model, why not extend the MUD model of player-created content?
MMOGs seem to want either all or nothing: the whole system is centered around player-created content, or the system is locked down with only the company's own developers creating new content. The closest one seems to get to a middle-of-the-road are things like Star Wars: Galaxies 'player cities' and the ubiquitous crafting skills. While nice, these things were relatively standard faire on MUDs for players and the nothing-but-player-content of There or Second Life are approximately mirrored by the old talker-type MOOs and MUSHes.
What seems to be missing, in my opinion anyway, is the ability for players to become content creators in a fixed world. In the MUD system there was generally the possibility that a dedicated player who showed some interest and aptitude could become part of the world's development staff. Usually this required some basic pre-requisites (time online, a level reached, a % of the game world explored, some sort of 'builder test', etc). Provided that they were fulfilled, one could attain a staff-member status on the MUD and go on to create the fixed or semi-fixed world in which the players moved.
For those not familiar with the concept, consider Everquest. When the developers wished to add a new area to the world, an expansion pack was generally released. The content of these expansions was created by game developers in an office complex somewhere and generally was only basically based on player desires and expectations (this can obviously be argued one way or another, but is not the point). Player houses and the like could be created without the release of an expansion pack as they were just a fixture within the larger fixed-world format of the game.
Within the MUD system model, designated players could create the sort of content that would normally be deigned to an expansion release. New dungeons, new cities, etc. Because the average player doesn't know how to program and has little or no 3d graphics skills, their toolset would be obviously limited. On MUDs, builder characters were generally limited to a menu-based on-line creation system or some basic scripting language that accomplished the task with no knowledge of the underlying code. For graphics MMPGs, similar could be accomplished using toolsets, scripting languages and pre-defined graphic object sets created for the purpose.
The obvious problems with such a system, intellectual property rights and consistency of quality, are fairly easily addressed. One agrees at the outset that created works are the property of the parent company, waiving rights to content created this way. To maintain quality across the board, either enact a content review system by company staffed teams, allow a wider set of so-flagged characters to 'beta test' the new content, or a mixture of both. Content created by players would thus not be accessable to the populace at large until it was verified not only to be of good quality, but to fit into the larger world-theme of the game.
Of course, you could look at it as un-paid labor to do the job that the game producers should be doing themselves. The same could be said of MUDs, though. I built and coded for a mud for years with no form of compensation besides player gratitude. I did it because I enjoyed the game and wanted to provide new challenges and places to explore for my fellow players. Given the hardcore-ness of a lot of the MMPGers out there and their dedication to the game, I've often wondered why no game has set up a system like this. MUDs have existed for so long despite being text-only for a reason. The opportunity to take part in the game's development is a great draw that can, for a lot of people, myself included, even outstrip the lure of playing the game itself. Imagine the popularity of an already popular game like Everquest or FF XI if the
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
Gee, it sounds like they've finally realised what was obvious ten years ago, when LambdaMOO was developed.
MUDs get boring after a while, because you run out of things to do. So, MUDs where everyone can develop content (using an OO programming language) were thought up, and hence the MOO was born.
If they can manage to make it so that end-users can create content without having to have any formal programming experience, then this will be successful, although we can expect to see one half-finished chess implementation for every five players.
I've coded for Second Life in the past, so I don't want to dis There, but that Will Harvey quote honestly baffles me. Even the extended quote in the article seems out of touch. If you use SL, you'll see a scripting language that doesn't seem to have any of those problems (and no, I didn't work on that part).
The real problem with user scripting is that once you have the equivalent of magic in the world, you can really piss people off. And that's hard to sandbox or detect algorithmically. For example, it's difficult to tell the difference between user code that helps a friend levitate and one that keeps a victim pinned in place.
The real problem with user content in general is similar: you want to somehow reward and retain beneficial content and discourage the retention of crap. Let people build all the crap they want, but please take it down at the end of the day, okay?
Second Life has some interesting approches, including taxation and community rating. But, frankly, the crappy content problem is not solved in the real world either.
I'm just glad for anything that turns non-designers into even modest designers--in any world. For me, it was legos and computer graphics that got me thinking about aesthetics. The more ways, the better.
What seems to be missing, in my opinion anyway, is the ability for players to become content creators in a fixed world. In the MUD system there was generally the possibility that a dedicated player who showed some interest and aptitude could become part of the world's development staff. Usually this required some basic pre-requisites (time online, a level reached, a % of the game world explored, some sort of 'builder test', etc). Provided that they were fulfilled, one could attain a staff-member status on the MUD and go on to create the fixed or semi-fixed world in which the players moved.
This can be easily achieved for MMORPGs. It's just a case of building the tools (and a system) to allow a player to do this.
Any issues of IP can be waivered on an agreement (e.g.by use of these tools and use of our MMORPG game, you agree that all IP created on our servers using our tools based on our themes are ours) or similarly drafted legal document. That's really not a big issue.