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Why User Generated Content Has Failed to Change The Face of Gaming
Written by: Scott Sharkey(1up)
"User Generated Content" is a phrase I've heard repeated so many times over the last few years that it has become damn near meaningless. It doesn't help that titles like Spore and Little Big Planet hyped the idea to impossible stratospheric heights and then arrived with about as much impact as a shotgun full of feathers. There really wasn't any chance of realizing the paradigm shift we were promised, and that's probably more the fault of marketing and the press than the concept itself.
Creativity is hard. Creating something that's going to be judged and given star ratings by other people is even harder. Sure, it's not the most daunting prospect in the world. Rating intimidation on a scale of one to ten, where "one" represents a sleeping kitten that has been securely restrained and "ten" is a swarm of killer bees erupting from the butt of a grizzly bear that's pissed off and also on fire, making a level in a videogame probably comes in somewhere around a "two". Things are, however, a little different in the context of play. Most players come to their console with the intention of removing themselves from the pressures of reality, and being expected to create content and subject it to the scrutiny of strangers is a far cry from just shooting a bunch of zombies. These players aren't necessarily uncreative; they're just here to play.
Take, for example, the number of copies of Halo 3 that have been sold against the number of maps users have created in Forge. At the moment there are about 20,000 custom maps online. It seems like an awful lot, but bear in mind that this is a game that has sold over 8 million copies. That's one map made for every 400 copies of the game floating around out there. Even disregarding the fact that most of the users who make any maps at all will tend to make more than one, it's clear that only a fraction of one percent of the people who've bought the game are bothering with the level editor.
Which is fine. In fact, that's great. That's 20,000 maps out there that can be played by millions of people. It's free content that extends the life of the game, and just incidentally, allows a creative outlet for that tiny fraction of players who want it.
What this doesn't imply, however, is that it would in any way be a good idea to create a videogame that caters specifically to the very small percentage of players who want to build levels. User Generated Content is one of those things that can be a brilliant supplement to a game that would be brilliant on its own, but like a cake made entirely out of frosting, it tends toward disaster when it becomes the whole of the product.
While we're at it, the ocean is kind of wet in places. There's a clear place for User Generated Content, and it's in games that already have an established player base out of which will emerge that small portion who want to make their mark. The very presence of the mod communities centered around games like Oblivion and Half-Life shows that even if there aren't any easy tools lying around, enthusiastic gamers will take it upon themselves to make content anyway. It was a forgone conclusion that Halo 3 would have a large population of players, and it could only benefit from throwing in user-friendly creation tools.
Little Big Planet became the poster child for user generated content, and the hype for the game succeeded mostly at making people aware of a feature they didn't particularly want. At least, not in the way it was presented. In the case of LBP there actually is a nice little platformer in there. Better yet, once the delivery and presentation of the user levels was cleaned up, it became a game with a constant supply of free content to toy with. The game's marketing, however, coupled with the enthusiasm of the press, made so much of the ability to build custom levels that it actually came as a surprise to some players that it featured a complete single-player game out of the box. Hell, half of us here were surprised when we saw that MyCheats was working on a guide for it.
Yes, I'm admitting that the misperception of the game was, at least in part, our own damn fault. People who play games for a living are disproportionately nuts about them, and most are particularly keen on messing around with their inner workings. We wouldn't have so many former co-workers moving on to jobs in game design if that wasn't the case. Between Sony and the press, LBP became "that game where you make your own levels," when it might have done better if it had been pitched to consumers as "that game that never runs out of levels."
Little Big Planet became the poster child for user generated content, and the hype for the game succeeded mostly at making people aware of a feature they didn't particularly want. At least, not in the way it was presented. In the case of LBP there actually is a nice little platformer in there. Better yet, once the delivery and presentation of the user levels was cleaned up, it became a game with a constant supply of free content to toy with. The game's marketing, however, coupled with the enthusiasm of the press, made so much of the ability to build custom levels that it actually came as a surprise to some players that it featured a complete single-player game out of the box. Hell, half of us here were surprised when we saw that MyCheats was working on a guide for it.
Yes, I'm admitting that the misperception of the game was, at least in part, our own damn fault. People who play games for a living are disproportionately nuts about them, and most are particularly keen on messing around with their inner workings. We wouldn't have so many former co-workers moving on to jobs in game design if that wasn't the case. Between Sony and the press, LBP became "that game where you make your own levels," when it might have done better if it had been pitched to consumers as "that game that never runs out of levels."
Which brings me to something more current. If there's a game genre that suffers when it runs out of content, it has to be MMORPGs. The absolute dearth of late-game content has all but doomed Age of Conan, which shipped 700,000 copies at launch and now has less than a tenth that number of active subscribers. In the world of MMOs, the list of the dead runs long, and for most of them the cause of death has been boredom.
It's tragic, given that few games have larger or more driven populations of players. Getting into an MMO is less like playing a game and more like buying a summer home, given the amount of time spent with them. If there's a playerbase with an interest in making a mark and adding to a world, you'll find them in an MMO.
Learning that City of Heroes is planning on allowing players to build their own quests and enemies to add to the game has been, for me, like finding out that my best friend just inherited a machine gun that shoots money, and doesn't mind if I come over to play with it. It's a great frigging idea, and something I've wanted in this kind of game for years.
And, you know, there are probably a lot of players who aren't personally interested in spending hours crafting a lengthy story arc about crazed "companion" robots who have killed their lonely, pathetic owners and must be stopped from destroying the city with their unbridled, radioactive love. But I'll bet there are a lot who would like to play through it, and the thousands of other ludicrous things the enterprising few are going to put together over the next few months.
Written by: Scott Sharkey(1up)
"User Generated Content" is a phrase I've heard repeated so many times over the last few years that it has become damn near meaningless. It doesn't help that titles like Spore and Little Big Planet hyped the idea to impossible stratospheric heights and then arrived with about as much impact as a shotgun full of feathers. There really wasn't any chance of realizing the paradigm shift we were promised, and that's probably more the fault of marketing and the press than the concept itself.
Creativity is hard. Creating something that's going to be judged and given star ratings by other people is even harder. Sure, it's not the most daunting prospect in the world. Rating intimidation on a scale of one to ten, where "one" represents a sleeping kitten that has been securely restrained and "ten" is a swarm of killer bees erupting from the butt of a grizzly bear that's pissed off and also on fire, making a level in a videogame probably comes in somewhere around a "two". Things are, however, a little different in the context of play. Most players come to their console with the intention of removing themselves from the pressures of reality, and being expected to create content and subject it to the scrutiny of strangers is a far cry from just shooting a bunch of zombies. These players aren't necessarily uncreative; they're just here to play.
Take, for example, the number of copies of Halo 3 that have been sold against the number of maps users have created in Forge. At the moment there are about 20,000 custom maps online. It seems like an awful lot, but bear in mind that this is a game that has sold over 8 million copies. That's one map made for every 400 copies of the game floating around out there. Even disregarding the fact that most of the users who make any maps at all will tend to make more than one, it's clear that only a fraction of one percent of the people who've bought the game are bothering with the level editor.
Which is fine. In fact, that's great. That's 20,000 maps out there that can be played by millions of people. It's free content that extends the life of the game, and just incidentally, allows a creative outlet for that tiny fraction of players who want it.
What this doesn't imply, however, is that it would in any way be a good idea to create a videogame that caters specifically to the very small percentage of players who want to build levels. User Generated Content is one of those things that can be a brilliant supplement to a game that would be brilliant on its own, but like a cake made entirely out of frosting, it tends toward disaster when it becomes the whole of the product.
While we're at it, the ocean is kind of wet in places. There's a clear place for User Generated Content, and it's in games that already have an established player base out of which will emerge that small portion who want to make their mark. The very presence of the mod communities centered around games like Oblivion and Half-Life shows that even if there aren't any easy tools lying around, enthusiastic gamers will take it upon themselves to make content anyway. It was a forgone conclusion that Halo 3 would have a large population of players, and it could only benefit from throwing in user-friendly creation tools.
Little Big Planet became the poster child for user generated content, and the hype for the game succeeded mostly at making people aware of a feature they didn't particularly want. At least, not in the way it was presented. In the case of LBP there actually is a nice little platformer in there. Better yet, once the delivery and presentation of the user levels was cleaned up, it became a game with a constant supply of free content to toy with. The game's marketing, however, coupled with the enthusiasm of the press, made so much of the ability to build custom levels that it actually came as a surprise to some players that it featured a complete single-player game out of the box. Hell, half of us here were surprised when we saw that MyCheats was working on a guide for it.
Yes, I'm admitting that the misperception of the game was, at least in part, our own damn fault. People who play games for a living are disproportionately nuts about them, and most are particularly keen on messing around with their inner workings. We wouldn't have so many former co-workers moving on to jobs in game design if that wasn't the case. Between Sony and the press, LBP became "that game where you make your own levels," when it might have done better if it had been pitched to consumers as "that game that never runs out of levels."
Little Big Planet became the poster child for user generated content, and the hype for the game succeeded mostly at making people aware of a feature they didn't particularly want. At least, not in the way it was presented. In the case of LBP there actually is a nice little platformer in there. Better yet, once the delivery and presentation of the user levels was cleaned up, it became a game with a constant supply of free content to toy with. The game's marketing, however, coupled with the enthusiasm of the press, made so much of the ability to build custom levels that it actually came as a surprise to some players that it featured a complete single-player game out of the box. Hell, half of us here were surprised when we saw that MyCheats was working on a guide for it.
Yes, I'm admitting that the misperception of the game was, at least in part, our own damn fault. People who play games for a living are disproportionately nuts about them, and most are particularly keen on messing around with their inner workings. We wouldn't have so many former co-workers moving on to jobs in game design if that wasn't the case. Between Sony and the press, LBP became "that game where you make your own levels," when it might have done better if it had been pitched to consumers as "that game that never runs out of levels."
Which brings me to something more current. If there's a game genre that suffers when it runs out of content, it has to be MMORPGs. The absolute dearth of late-game content has all but doomed Age of Conan, which shipped 700,000 copies at launch and now has less than a tenth that number of active subscribers. In the world of MMOs, the list of the dead runs long, and for most of them the cause of death has been boredom.
It's tragic, given that few games have larger or more driven populations of players. Getting into an MMO is less like playing a game and more like buying a summer home, given the amount of time spent with them. If there's a playerbase with an interest in making a mark and adding to a world, you'll find them in an MMO.
Learning that City of Heroes is planning on allowing players to build their own quests and enemies to add to the game has been, for me, like finding out that my best friend just inherited a machine gun that shoots money, and doesn't mind if I come over to play with it. It's a great frigging idea, and something I've wanted in this kind of game for years.
And, you know, there are probably a lot of players who aren't personally interested in spending hours crafting a lengthy story arc about crazed "companion" robots who have killed their lonely, pathetic owners and must be stopped from destroying the city with their unbridled, radioactive love. But I'll bet there are a lot who would like to play through it, and the thousands of other ludicrous things the enterprising few are going to put together over the next few months.