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Games Entertainment

Vendetta Online Lets Users Create New Game Content 54

Posted by Soulskill from the sounds-like-a-familiar-system dept.
Incarnate-VO writes "Multi-platform space MMO Vendetta Online is now allowing users to create missions and submit other content for use in the game via their new 'Player Contribution Corps' system. Any game subscriber can join the PCC and gain access to a web-based mission editor, permitting them to build and test new missions on Vendetta's test-server. Once the player believes the mission is ready for prime-time, they submit it to the greater PCC community for testing and feedback. The community may then sign off on the mission and push it up to the developer staff for final oversight and propagation into the game."
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Vendetta Online Lets Users Create New Game Content More

Vendetta Online Lets Users Create New Game Content

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  • Game developers harness the zealousness of their fans!
    • it's pretty awesome. I've made a few missions myself so far over the last few months when it was in beta.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      MMO's still have the problem that the developers cannot keep up with the players. Players consume content at a rate MUCH MUCH higher than any development team can hope to match in terms of creation.

      This has been a problem for EverQuest for the last 8 years, and for WoW to a lesser degree. Hard-core players simply devour content and no amount of development staff on payroll can hope to stay ahead. This change will really help to alleviate the issue, and give MMO's a greater amount of potential.

      Speaking fr

      • I think the idea is 'who cares about the super hard core players?' - why cater to a small minority. Besides, they will find something to do, like PvP, that needs no dev content.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      But posting news about a game on Slashdot will only draw the ire of the Linux and Mac fanboys because they can't run it. Oh wait... they can natively. [vendetta-online.com] Just wait until the Amiga fanatics get wind of this. All five of them.
    • As an FYI to the person who said we'll draw the ire of Linux and Mac fanboys.. the game is available for Windows, MacOS Universal, Linux/32 and Linux/64. See our site's front page [vendetta-online.com]. We were also multi-platform since launch, as our 2004 retail box art [vendetta-online.com] shows.

      I actually included the supported platform list as the final sentence in my slashdot post, for this specific reason, but it seems to have been edited out. Oh well, hopefully people will gather that from the "multi-platform" mention at the beginning.
      • "But posting news about a game on Slashdot will only draw the ire of the Linux and Mac fanboys because they can't run it. Oh wait... they can natively. [vendetta-online.com] Just wait until the Amiga fanatics get wind of this. All five of them." He was employing sarcasm there I think :)
        • Woops, I missed the rest of his post :).

          And no, we have no plans for an Amiga port, heheh (although, odd fact, there was actually a native BeOS client at one point, back in the R4/4.5 era. It was also built on Irix at a few points in the late 90s). We currently maintain about as many ports as we can sanely manage.

          http://www.vendetta-online.com [vendetta-online.com]

      • I tried getting into vendetta but I just found it difficult.

        Maybe because I don't like flight sims enough, or perhaps there was too much reading to do when I first entered the game with tutorial and all I wanted to do was start flying, at which point I didn't really know what to do because I skipped the boring tutorial.

        Anyway this is just a heads up to tell you why I didn't stay with the game after 15 minutes of bored flying not knowing what to do.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Yevoc ( 1389497 )
      Game Devs not listening to their player base has to be the biggest downfall for the current overall stagnation in gameplay. I may not like Vendetta's play-style, but I'm definitely trying it now that it's obvious their devs care about their playerbase. They deserve that much support.

  • So how many subscribers they have again? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SupremoMan ( 912191 ) on Sunday October 19, 2008 @01:54PM (#25432517)
    Seriously, cause when I tried the game there was maybe 20 people online. Only a game with a very small fan base can do this. Imagine if WoW tried something like this.... Not only would they get crazy amount of submissions, but people would end up getting angry their submissions were not accepted.
    • Consider it a way for the small development team to shift some of the burden of content creation to the fan base, leaving them with more time for further development. A great way to eventually increase player base by offering more content, if you ask me (which, I'm sure, you don't).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by theM_xl ( 760570 )

      Actually, City of Heroes has something similar in the works... It might not be the biggest MMO out there, but there's roughly 150k subscribers there.

    • Sounds like CoH (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MortimerV ( 896247 )

      City of Heroes/Villains is going to try something like this out. They've delayed it because it's proven to be a bigger project than they anticipated, though. http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/archives/2008/08/letter_from_pos_1.html [cityofheroes.com]

      The angry players isn't something I thought about before, but even if your map isn't approved for general distribution, you can still play on it yourself or with friends, so I don't think it'll be a big issue.

    • I would play, but for the lack of available single-stick joysticks that don't suck (and don't cost $200).

      Give me a reliable, comfortable, GOOD stick with yaw and throttle, HAT, and a normal compliment of buttons and I will be happy.

      Yes, you can play with keyboard or keyboard/mouse, but I don't like to do so.

      • I happen to have one. Are you interested in buying it?

        Also: VO is just awesome. Only game I ever bought on a monthly basis.

        • Right now I can't, and when I could I'll probably end up forgetting ;)

          Thanks for the offer though!

          (as an aside, lack of joystick is good for me at the moment. I need to stop spending so much)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ilgaz ( 86384 )

        I got a fairly cheap "Logitech Wingman Force 3D" which has features you want and has force feedback which even works on OS X without drivers.

        You better look for it. BTW if you are a Mac/Linux user, excuse the junk logo flood (Vista etc) written on packaging. It may seem like Windows only device to you but it is not. You won't have OS X drivers because Apple already includes them since 10.2 days.

        • I've had bad luck with logitech sticks - stick centering going to crap, fussy buttons etc.

          My last stick (the one they have in stores now, not the cordless though) sat on a shelf for a month (nothing pressing on it etc) and when I plugged it in again, there was no resistance for 1cm around the X axis (as if the spring had relaxed) and the yaw axis was freaking out (erratic +/- 10 (of 127) around the center, as if it was reading noise).

          My all-time favorite was an old MS Sidewinder Precision Pro. Next to that,

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I used to play Vendetta, but the monthly subscription is not good for anyone who isn't regular gamer. I have asked on their forum whether they are going to support pay-per-hour system (so I won't loose money if I happen to play just one day in a month or so), but it seems that they aren't interested in that.

  • Ok. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 )

    Lets see...

    You create the content.
    THEY approve the content.
    You and your friends play the content.

    They only have to wait for YOU to create it.

    So you're paying to PLAY your game.

    Smart.

  • I used to have a MUD (Multi User Dungeon) back 1993-1996...

    A that was the drill..

    Play, become coder, generate content...

    User generated content was the next step...

    Of course the parent company will need to charge. The game I used to have, was time consuming... at the end, I ended the game for 2 reasons, I needed to get an income, and it was very hard to maintain... this must be covered by the users...

    When I was on the "top" the game got listed in mud clients, there was over 100 coders, and like 2k players.

    Ye

    • The thing that strikes me as different from the old (e.g. Diku) muds and present day MMORPGs is the lack of community. Any social aspect of WoW is either within your guild or friends you already knew. There are 2 barriers to this that I can see in WoW: the size (big playerbase, lots of trolls) and the lack of a real global off topic chat channel. In the old days, we had fun with a lousy text base game because we all knew each other and we could chat while grinding mobs. My 2c.

      • To be honest, I really felt like games like Everquest still embodied this sense of community. It was so often that people would get together in the popular zones and chat up a storm -- especially so in the trading hubs. Perhaps because the game was modeled off of popular MUDs at the time. I'm sure UO and others were much the same way.

        As time went on, I certainly didn't feel this in Everquest II, or WoW, or WAR. Community is dead.

        • There are still bank sitters in UO. 11 years after the fact.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Reapy ( 688651 )

          Community is a double edged sword.

          The first thing is that now that games are so popular, the community is HUGE. You don't really see the same faces that often online gaming. A small mud, or any small online game, you see the same faces, and bump into each other more often, which creates the community you know.

          EQ maintained some of that because of the forced grouping aspect. When I leveled it was like Oasis, then to the kunark area to the uh lake area (forget zone) then eventually on to dreadlands and so fo

  • I commend to you Evan Prodromou on crowdsourcing [wikiangela.com].
  • im wondering when will someone make such a game. so we can send all the lolplayers and ubergamers and whatnot there and they can lol the hell out of each other

  • Um... so? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by OpenYourEyes ( 563714 )

    Am I missing the point? Granted, I don't play Vendetta, but it seems to me that any modern game where the users aren't creating the real interesting content is... um... lame.

    I mean... even the late VMK allowed (even encouraged) its players to create quests, many of which were better than the quests provided by staff and the developers. There were player created games for prizes since the beginning of VMK.

    So... can someone actually explain what the big deal here is?

    • The big deal is that Vendetta is a MMORPG/Space Sim. I'm not aware of any other MMORPG allowing the players to create content. You?

      • Depends what sorts of content.

        As I noted in my initial post, VMK (a social MMORPG that Disney used to run) allowed its players to create and run quests out of "quest generators". These quests had the same features as the quests provided by the game designers - although they were limited to prizes bought by the quest owner and run out of the players room.

        Were these amazingly complex tasks? No. But they were pretty basic tasks that covered most of what you could do in the game, and it was fairly easy

  • I've been playing VO for some time, and I probably would have gotten bored long ago. But seeing as I love space, and EVE is just way too boring and slow imho, I've stuck with VO for over 2 years now.

    Part of the reason I'm around is because of the player content creation, it's more then just missions btw. The community also has access to create client plugins (using lua, much as in WOW). Additionally, the PCC has access to additional interface lua code and player changes to this code have been accepted

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