Is Crowdsourcing the Next Big Thing In Game Design?

An anonymous reader writes "We've all heard about user-generated content for games that have fixed toolsets — but this interesting piece on Develop has got me thinking about the idea of games production being opened to a community before development finishes. A new iPhone game (Aztec Odyssey) did that with its soundtrack; could someone do it with the game's art assets? Or level design? A great comment under the story says that LittleBigPlanet would have been more interesting if it was just shipped as a toolset with no pre-built levels. I'm inclined to agree!"

Comments

Potentially

[Sylos]

In certain circumstances, this could be an amazing and powerful tool for creating some truly genuine creativity. However, with all that power comes a metric ton of suck. This will take off like "player made" MMO's have taken off.

I hope not

[courseofhumanevents]

The problem with allowing the general public to make content for a game is that you get content the general public makes. If you really want to play in Penisworld, be my guest, but as for me, I prefer content with coherent design beyond the capabilities of Joe Nobody.

LittleBigPlanet

[somersault]

A great comment under the story says that LittleBigPlanet would have been more interesting if it was just shipped as a toolset with no pre-built levels. I'm inclined to agree!"

And I'm inclined to disagree. I enjoyed going through the pre-made content, more than any platform game I've ever played.