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Player-Made Content Is The Future

Posted by Zonk on from the build-your-own-dang-game dept.

ZDNet reports from The Entertainment Gathering conference last week, giving out some perspective on the future of games as it's seen by Will Wright and J. Allard. From their points of view, player-made content will be king in the coming years. With the expense of making games primarily due to the cost of content, allowing players to build the game they want to play will be popular ... both with designers and players. From the article: "Players' eagerness to go beyond the conventional boundaries has been seen in almost every online game. In the first major massively multiplayer game, Ultima Online, developers saw their swords-and-sorcery stories expanded by players who opened taverns to host online friends and create theater groups to perform 'A Christmas Carol' inside the game. That behavior helps create new content for the game and gives players a stake in the game to keep their interest piqued longer--a critical thing for online games in which players pay a subscription fee every month. "

17 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. So in essence... by Channard · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. Produce a basic MMORPG framework. 2. Get players to crank out the meat of the game for free, yet still get charged subscription fees 3. Profit.

    1. Re:So in essence... by Nos. · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Aside from the monetary aspect, this has been going on for years. Look at the mod community for most of the FPS. Heck, I remember user created content on a bunch of MUDs at least 10 years ago.

    2. Re:So in essence... by ThePolkapunk · · Score: 3, Informative

      This MMORPG already exists. It's called Second Life. Almost all content in Second Life is player created.

      --
      Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
    3. Re:So in essence... by jchenx · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Obviously consoles are going to be a lot more locked down than PCs. You can't easily hack into the filesystem (or expect your users to), so any mods are going to have to use whatever tools the game developer makes available. Additionally, using a controller is a lot more annoying than using a mouse to manipulate things.

      As for PC games, I agree that they're becoming really very complex. (See Neverwinter Nights for example) Most gamers, with full-time jobs, just aren't going to have the time to dive into mods. So either the tools have to be ridiculously dumbed down, or you just have to hope that there are enough hardcore individuals willing to mod your game, despite how complicated the tools may be.

      I think that modding games is quickly becoming one of the best ways to get into the games industry. Heck, a lot of the times, the mod engine/script is developed first and is what the developers use to make the actual game content (so the game is essentially just one huge mod itself). So by modding the game, you're essentially working on it as well. There are certainly lots of examples with the Half-Life engine (Counter-Strike, etc.), where modders got full-time jobs for their efforts.

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      -- jchenx
    4. Re:So in essence... by MilenCent · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Sounds simple, but it's really very hard to come up with a workable system for players to create *all* content, and have them be rewarded for it, in a way that's not vulnerable to abuse or technical issues. Second Life's the best we've seen, but even there it's possible for one player to bring down an entire server.

      You understate the situation as well. Non-trivial player-made content would require a lot more than a basic MMORPG framework to make workable (it'd require a user-visible scripting language), you'd still have to front the sizable server, storage and bandwidth costs, and you'd have to hire people to teach people how to use the scripting language and create good software, and also kill damaging user-spawned processes (imagine sysadmining a system with thousands of simultaneous users).

      Yet, ultimately, player-created content is the only MMORPGs can evolve. Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar learned that lesson way back in Habitat (http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html):

      The first goal-directed event planned for Habitat was a rather involved treasure hunt called the "D'nalsi Island Adventure". It took us hours to design, weeks to build (including a 100-region island), and days to coordinate the actors involved. It was designed much like the puzzles in an adventure game. We thought it would occupy our players for days. In fact, the puzzle was solved in about 8 hours by a person who had figured out the critical clue in the first 15 minutes. Many of the players hadn't even had a chance to get into the game. The result was that one person had had a wonderful experience, dozens of others were left bewildered, and a huge investment in design and setup time had been consumed in an eyeblink. We expected that there would be a wide range of "adventuring" skills in the Habitat audience. What wasn't so obvious until afterward was that this meant that most people didn't have a very good time, if for no other reason than that they never really got to participate. It would clearly be foolish and impractical for us to do things like this on a regular basis.

      A little further:

      Propelled by these experiences, we shifted into a style of operations in which we let the players themselves drive the direction of the design. This proved far more effective. Instead of trying to push the community in the direction we thought it should go, an exercise rather like herding mice, we tried to observe what people were doing and aid them in it. We became facilitators as much as designers and implementors. This often meant adding new features and new regions to the system at a frantic pace, but almost all of what we added was used and appreciated, since it was well matched to people's needs and desires. As the experts on how the system worked, we could often suggest new activities for people to try or ways of doing things that people might not have thought of. In this way we were able to have considerable influence on the system's development in spite of the fact that we didn't really hold the steering wheel -- more influence, in fact, than we had had when we were operating under the delusion that we controlled everything.

      That strikes me as a lot more interesting, in the long run, than World of Warcraft, despite its strengths. Even computer-generated content, which drives most MMORPGs these days, has the disadvantage in that it tends to stop being interesting after a short period. (I DON'T think it's necessarily bad, but developers will have to loosen their stranglehold on game design and invent something almost Roguelike in nature, I believe, to make it work best.)

  2. Source by Ramble · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We're already seeing this with the Source engine, half the fun is Half-Life 2, the other half is the mods made for it. It's basically an open-source development model ported to games, and this can only be good.

    --
    "Oh boy"
  3. Player-made contact back around 1980 by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I remember when I was one of the players in an Australian game system run on one of their mainframes in Melbourne A.C.T., called Galaxy and it's sequel Galaxy II.

    At the time I lived in Canada and had a double-hyphenated last name - me and some Kiwis from New Zealand spent a lot of time creating civilizations, species, and bizarre things (like my Ford Corporation, run by Ford Prefect, which sold high-tech (level 15) robot-assisted spaceships, orbital spaceports, and plug-in robotic pilots/gunners/navigators/etc - which happened to have a minor malfunction where they wouldn't shoot my player civilization in a large-scale battle - naturally, the attacking player would rip them out and go manual, but in the ten minutes it took to fully remove them, my side usually won with it's high-G kamikaze neutron bomb ships that crashed into the enemies large ships and made them suitable only for scrap ...).

    I think Will's right about this, and when I ran my play-by-mail RPG (yes, by postal mail, 110 players) much of the time was spent by players doing the same thing and then other players piggybacking off of them.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  4. I doubt it by Kohath · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Player-made content is always going to be buried in a sea of vandalism and coyright violations unless it's policed and all content is pre-approved.

    Games can't allow you to violate copyrights, because the game companies will be the ones who get sued. By the same token it'll be next to impossible for any game with lots of player-made content to have an ESRB rating other than AO (adults only).

    1. Re:I doubt it by AaronBaker2000 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I think that the 100,000 Second Life players would probably disagree with you. Second Life is made up entirely of user created content. None of it has to be pre-approved and it is rarely policed. The policy of Linden Labs is that player created-content is owned by the player. Not only does this keep players happy, but it shields Linden Labs from copyright lawsuits.

      Also, all online games come with a warning from the ESRB: "Experience may change during online play."

      -Aaron

      --

      My Blog Sucks.

  5. Re:Unsurprising by DorkusMasterus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What you say, you say in anger, but the truth is that more often than not, they're acting with their pocketbooks, rather than actual desire to produce banal product.

    The truth is that it's costly to develop a revolutionary idea in gaming, especially when this idea must be implemented in a MMORPG or something. Therefore, player-created-content is extremely valuable to a publisher, as this gets the more radical ideas/quests/items/etc. out there, without having to waste developer time on ideas that would not be successful.

    Not to mention, if you put some "special license" info in the EULA of the game, players would know that any content created within the context of the game would become property of the publisher, and therefore releaseable in further versions as standard (much like many objects in "The Sims").

    This allows for expansion packs or downright upgrades to be made at literally zero cost to developers (excepting testing, perhaps).

    Point being, they can see what works in a very realistic sandbox environment, without investing much, if any, capital for that research. It's brilliant, really.

    While it doesn't excuse companies from making generic content, it ushers in a new era of "open-source" gaming that while is indeed more work for players who want to create: it finally gives you the freedom to make that game or scenario you always wanted to see, or play, but that you know the developers/publishers would NEVER risk putting out. I think it's cool. And if it works with Blogs (You mean I have to write my OWN news and commentary?) and other Web 2.0 stuff, you can definitely believe that people will be excited about bringing that level of depth and involvement to their own emotionally-invested gaming experience.

  6. It's Natural by airship · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is really just natural evolution. As online games become more popular and realistic, they become more like the real world, where all content is developed by the 'players' every day.

    --
    Serving your airship needs since 1995.
  7. Just look at Neverwinter Nights by PIPBoy3000 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Neverwinter Nights was very much geared towards player-created content and has done quite well over the last few years. Thousands of player created modules have been made and there's a number of persistent worlds still running years after the game came out.

    These last few years I worked on a few campaigns that were well-received, and am working on a new a new campaign for Neverwinter Nights 2.

    I think player created content works well for certain genres, and requires an almost mystical process to attract the right community. I got tons of value out of UT2004 and the original Half-Life. Other games like Doom 3 and Morrowind didn't quite pan out as much as I would have liked. I think it requires the game developer to actively encourage the community, as well as having a solid core game, wide install base, and easy-to-use tools. Tricky business.

  8. SimCity 4 learned this two years ago by Jurph · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you head over to Simtropolis, you'll see a thriving community of user-made buildings, most of them "growable". That means that in your SimCity, you can have Starbuck's and McDonald's and Home Depot "grow up" naturally into your city layout. You can have an apartment complex that looks just like where you live; you can have less-famous (but still striking) landmarks that may or may not exist. There are architecture styles, like Baltimore Rowhouse, that the original game never included, but which look fantastic and add realism to the city.

    If the developers had tried to put a Starbuck's in the game, they'd have to license the logo and the trademarked architecture; if they tried to make all the thousands of obscure local landmarks in mid-sized American and Asian cities, the production costs would have tripled and the game would never have been released. As it is, Starbuck's gets free advertising and the game gets a realistic facelift.

    There are also functional content upgrades, like Ground Light Rail (the original game only has subway, el train, and heavy rail) and retaining walls that block traffic noise from freeways. I wouldn't play the game without these upgrades, but I'd absolutely buy another SimCity title knowing that the mod community will polish it and make it shine.

    Simtropolis' bandwidth isn't free, and I've PayPalled them donations to keep their server up; in this way, my donations have essentially turned user-created content (from which I can pick and choose) into a second, self-directed expansion pack for the game.

  9. The Good And the Bad by mikeisme77 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    While I think it'd be great if developers/publishers opened up the games even MORE to the player community to allow them to personalize the game more... I also think it'd be EXTREMELY BAD for any game to rely primarily on player generated content. Why should I shill out $50-60 for a game where I have to create the actual meat of it (or other players)? I already spend my work time programming, and my hobby writing stories, why would I spend my leisure/relaxing/fun time making content for a game when I won't even own the content due to the restrictive EULA of most games? I just want to sit down and enjoy a game, preferrably with an immersive storyline. Maybe they should just save their budget by not trying to make THE MOST REALISTIC GRAPHICS POSSIBLE--just "realistic enough" or "not an eyesore" is good enough for me. Katamari doesn't have the best graphics, but that's an INCREDIBLE game. Graphics don't make the game, CONTENT makes the game. If they ship games with little to no content (just pretty graphics and tools to create the game of your choosing), why bother buying it? I really don't get it...

    --
    Read my blog posts on usability.
  10. I have a new policy... by ivan256 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm officially ignoring anybody that says some single thing is "the future".

    Player made content is in the past (Late '70s, early '80s), in the present, and will be in the future. It's a niche. It will exist. Just because some guy can't figure out how to make content for a huge game in an economical way doen't mean it's the 'one true future'.

    Yes, player made content is the future. Pre-made content, randomly generated content, and content free games are the future too. They'll all exist in the proportions they've always existed in, and people said the exact same crap about the first 3D consoles as they're saying about the latest thing to be called "next-gen".

  11. Books in MMORPGs by Kawolski · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One of the best things I remember from Ultima Online was the ability to be able to buy blank books, write in them, and make copies to sell to other players. I'm disappointed that this hasn't been implemented in other games.

  12. Morrowind - Ashes of the Apocalypse by chigun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I bought Morrowind for my PC solely so I could try out the mod Ashes of Apocalyps (http://mods.moddb.com/4379/Ashes-of-Apocalypse/). I was really excited because the mod description made it out to be like an updated Fallout. In many respects, it was and I was pleased with it. Eventually though, I tired of it and played just regular ol' Morrowind. Since that glorious day I have bought all expansion packs for it and eagerly anticipate Oblivion. In my case, the mod scene truly drove sales on multiple levels for Bethesda. p.s. I heard Bethesda is working on the next installment of Fallout. If it's anything like Morrowind (except in post-nuclear setting), I expect great things.

    --
    swanker than you