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.'"

Several Types of Mods

[pr0xie]

I think games are getting much better about the offerings of their mod(ding) tools. With many of the older games it was simple level editors, now with games like NWN2 you get access to much of the underlying engine allowing mods as simple as maps or as complex as adding whole new graphics, game rules and more. And it's much easier than most non-programmers would think.

Re:One idea...

[Falesh]

UFO:Extraterrestrials [ufo-extrat...trials.com] is a good example of this. It is a fan made (turned into a company along the way) sequel to the original X-COM games. It only came out very recently but already it has been heavily modded. It seems that practically the whole game can be modified extremely easily. It's good fun and also has potential to not only tinker with the original but to create a fan made sequel to the game.

I think ease of modding should definitely be high on any games priorities.

Re:Just...

[erroneus]

I don't know how often it has happened, but this story is fairly recent:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/03/student_co unterstrike_map_texasschool/ [theregister.co.uk]

Re:Reminds me of a Pakistani joke

[CaptainPatent]

I think the analogy you're trying to make is that if everyone makes their own mod they won't want to play everyone else's. There's a bit of a difference though. Sticking to the analogy: Firstly it would require all of the players to make their own balls, some are much less skilled at doing so than others, so those balls would never be finished. Then of the finished balls, some would be much more high quality than others and everyone who played with them would be able to rate them on overall quality and word would spread given this metric. Eventually the best few balls emerge to produce some of the fastest-paced and best games ever.

Never happen

[MeanMF]

It'll never happen. Allowing users to create their own content and distribute it to other players would completely destroy the ability of game companies like EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft to overcharge for half-assed map packs, expansion modules, downloadable songs, etc.

Re:SWG

[Taelron]

Yet second life is thriving...

SWG had many other issues that have kept it from really becoming a hit. The number of locations you could travel was much less than you were promised. It wasnt until like 2 paid for add-ons before you could get a space ship. Duh, shouldnt that have been something in the base game? And then they nerfed everything and at the one year mark suddenly made it easy as hell to get a force character, just make one... That was a major FU to the people that paid and played the first year and all that time in beta and still did not have a force capable charater or had only just gotten to that point. Suddenly that $15/month plus $30 to buy the game ($150 or more for a year) was wasted because some guy that waited a year pays the $30 into price and suddenly has a force character...

User Generated worlds do work, look at Second Life. Granted I dont play it, I did log in to check out all the hoopla and it wasnt my thing. I'm more a FPS and strategy player... Yet Second Life is doing so well that even the IRS now has accounts and has been working with the parent company to explore the world and determine if they want to start taxing peoples virtual accounts... There are tons of articles about people that have quit their real jobs to run businesses soley in second life and are making thousands of dollars a month...

SWG might have worked if they had actually given the users the baseline they promised pre-release and not the bastardized stripped down crap they actually launched with...