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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."
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.
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
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