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User Created Content is Key for New Games
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that recently Valve Software's Doug Lombardi has stated his strong belief that user created content is a very important part of games in the near future. "'I would argue that it's the biggest component those guys have to get over if they want online to matter.' 'Half-Life 1 was okay as a multiplayer game and Team Fortress Classic was really good, but Counter-Strike kicked both their asses no question. And that came from a kid going to college in Canada and another kid going to high school in New Jersey, who had our code and thought it would be cool to play our game.'"
Don't make a map of your school. Apparently that makes you a threat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuoOosTdFiY
Absolutely amazing graphics, still remember the shock other people had when Sony unveiled this game at GDC. There were a hell of a lot of developers who went back home after GDC and realized how far behind their level editing tools and rendering engines were.
Can't wait for this to be released later this year.
What I would like to know:
If Valve wants user input so badly, when why didn't they listen to their users of CS 1.6 then? Valve was retarded and decided to put in-game ads into CS 1.6, and they don't fully support it any longer.
It sounds like they want the users to give them the good ideas to build the game off of so they can sell more copies. I don't think that most users want to give their work away to Valve for nothing. They'd rather give it to the gaming community as a whole for use. Maybe Valve should truly accecpt input from users and have a set price they pay out to those who submit ideas that are actually used. Wait, nevermind... they could change the ideas just enough to claim originality and then not pay.
Sounds like the user-created aftermarket is still the best alternative.
Every day I am amazed at how well console system do especially now that they cost as much as a decent laptop. When I was a kid they were great but as I got older I wanted more involved games especially MMO's. Consoles did not offer this and even now it is only sub-par. The controls are preset barely customizable and the lack of hotkeys drives me nuts. I did not own my first PC until 95 (Was actually a PPC) which I used for playing MUDS/Mtrek mainly which were significantly more complex than any console I had played before. Actually learning how to write scripts in TinTin++ was a blast.
As the cost of computers came down more and more people have bought computers and we constantly see quotes concerning the increase of households that have 1+ computers I have no idea if the original Nintendo had more market penetration than lets say Play Station 2. Has the console market grown or shrunk over the last 20 years? I assume it has grown but is its rate exponentially larger than the PC market, about the same or far smaller? Are the amount of game titles being released increasing or decreasing? Basically there has really been nothing in the console market to hold my interest in its welfare with the exception of "God of War" but I am not going to pay hundreds of dollars to play just one title.
The customization available in PC games IMHO makes them a much better and barely more expensive platform. In addition you can actually use your computer for other important stuff "Like surfing Porn".
If each player modifies a multiplayer game so much who else will be able to play with them? Or would want to?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I've said for years that the feature that made the original Doom so popular wasn't the 3d graphics or deathmatch, but rather the fact that people could easily make their own levels.
The industry focused on the graphics (which were remarkable for the day), and the format (FPS) thinking that those were the keys to popularity, and neglected customizability.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
The ability of users to create custom content (in addition to the three-platform releases) was a huge key to Neverwinter Nights's success.
While the official campaigns were great, all the longtime NWN players I know have spent countless hours playing on user-created and -hosted persistent worlds and user-created campaigns from places like The Vault. I can't think of many other games that are still being bought and played this long after their releases, and the ones that are probably fall into this category as well.
Whirled seems to go exactly in that direction, where the content created by its players is the king. Some games have meaning by themselves, but if your game is essentially what you and other players adds to it, possibilities are endless.
http://www.google.com/search?q=lugormod+jk3&ie=UTF -8&oe=UTF-8
Lugormod, a serverside mod for Jedi Academy allows admins to put any ingame content in "real time", without even a need for reloading the map. And that doesn't mean just adding bots or spawning npcs, but placing all kinds of models, triggers, tricky entities, spawners, vehicles, designing whole new worlds using good old Q3 enigne. Practically it turns server op into game dev.
Lugormod is IMO one of the best mods for any game ever made. And it's 99% serverside (a clientside plugin adds a few weapon models and cvars). Shame on LucasArts they discontinued the JK series.