The Future Of MMOGs - You As Designer? 24
Thanks to GameSpy for their feature discussing user-created content as the future of massively multiplayer games. In one section, Will Harvey of There Inc. discusses potential problems with more exotic player-created features: "If third-party developers [A.K.A., gamers playing the game] write games for an MMPG, will the code for those games also run on the servers? What if it crashes?" Elsewhere, Will Wright talks about quality issues after players create content: "Once we have the ability to leverage the creative process, how do we move that content between players in the most efficient way? There's always some content that a small number of players create that will have the most appeal."
Some thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
For an example of one of our bytecode manipulators which manages object persistence, look at the www.gotdotnet.com site and search for bytecode in the user samples.
Some other thoughts are that copyright, ownership, censorship are the main showstoppers, not technology.
Asmo
Re:Some thoughts (Score:1)
Re:Some thoughts (Score:2)
reed
Re:Some thoughts (Score:2)
We also need to ensure that we can sensibly bound the CPU usage and bytecode mods seem to be the best way of doing that.
Asmo
What it takes (Score:5, Interesting)
Another thing I've seen in a lot of the early wave of games that focus on user-created content is that the tools seem to be aimed at some specific skill level and type of creator. I think we need to see tools that support a broader range, where people with less skill, less experience, or simply less motivation can still create something a little bit interesting, and the people who really master the tools have a lot of power and flexibility to do really amazing things.
Anyway I do think this area will grow a lot, as better tools & games are developed. My comparison has always been to the free web-hosting services like Geocities, Angelfire, etc. that got really big based entirely on user created content. RPGs or virtual worlds built this way are, I think, particularly suited to encouraging socializing, as they often lack any combat or obsession-feeding goal structures, while they provide a never-ending source of new things to see and explore that provide potential conversation subjects.
Re:What it takes (Score:2)
Interestingly enough this is a key part of my game system. New users can build ships from pre-constructed parts, experienced users can build entirely new designs, including their own hull geometry. Intermediate users
Second Life (Score:5, Interesting)
Check out the archives of the "embedded journalist" [secondlife.com].
Re:Second Life (Score:2)
The client is a pretty amazing piece of code. There's all kinds of information you can get on every object in the world, and there's something like a half doze
He does what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Will Harvey of There Inc. discusses potential problems with more exotic player-created features: "If third-party developers [A.K.A., gamers playing the game] write games for an MMPG, will the code for those games also run on the servers? What if it crashes?"
This is a simple matter of programming. Your MMOG is a platform, just like any computer, and you should be able to allow user-space code to run and crash without affecting the underlying system.
I worked on a mud in college that allowed user specific code. The head programmer had written a light VM that ran most of the actual mud code. It sandboxed the user land stuff and your code could do whatever you wanted within the context of the syntax and you weren't bringing the MUD down. However, the VM was very memory hungry and really needed to be re-written by someone who knows VM's. He made it all up as he went.
Re:He does what? (Score:2)
Asmo
Re:He does what? (Score:2)
Sounds a lot like MOO... MOO is really quite nice, but it's definitely an ageing creature
Sandbox (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially if they allow code to run... virtual virus anyone? worms which run through avatars via their gear and send off info about their location or status to the creator? and the banal possibility of a server crash though I think that is the least fo their worries as it would be easily loggable and traceable because of it's dramatic impact.
some thoughts (Score:2)
An interesting tidbit from the VP of there.com: he is wondering about hosting: does the original creator of the game run the third-party contentent (code)? A big problem with robustness, security and scalability there. And what will the technical architecture look like? I'm surprised that they haven't thought about these issues with There (or maybe they have but don't want to give them away).
Well, as one of the lead developers on the VOS project [interreality.org], I think it could look a bit like VOS of course! I'm
Will the content fit? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not entirely sure of a viable way to keep this under control though.
- shazow
Why not just use the MUD model? (Score:3, Insightful)
MMOGs seem to want either all or nothing: the whole system is centered around player-created content, or the system is locked down with only the company's own developers creating new content. The closest one seems to get to a middle-of-the-road are things like Star Wars: Galaxies 'player cities' and the ubiquitous crafting skills. While nice, these things were relatively standard faire on MUDs for players and the nothing-but-player-content of There or Second Life are approximately mirrored by the old talker-type MOOs and MUSHes.
What seems to be missing, in my opinion anyway, is the ability for players to become content creators in a fixed world. In the MUD system there was generally the possibility that a dedicated player who showed some interest and aptitude could become part of the world's development staff. Usually this required some basic pre-requisites (time online, a level reached, a % of the game world explored, some sort of 'builder test', etc). Provided that they were fulfilled, one could attain a staff-member status on the MUD and go on to create the fixed or semi-fixed world in which the players moved.
For those not familiar with the concept, consider Everquest. When the developers wished to add a new area to the world, an expansion pack was generally released. The content of these expansions was created by game developers in an office complex somewhere and generally was only basically based on player desires and expectations (this can obviously be argued one way or another, but is not the point). Player houses and the like could be created without the release of an expansion pack as they were just a fixture within the larger fixed-world format of the game.
Within the MUD system model, designated players could create the sort of content that would normally be deigned to an expansion release. New dungeons, new cities, etc. Because the average player doesn't know how to program and has little or no 3d graphics skills, their toolset would be obviously limited. On MUDs, builder characters were generally limited to a menu-based on-line creation system or some basic scripting language that accomplished the task with no knowledge of the underlying code. For graphics MMPGs, similar could be accomplished using toolsets, scripting languages and pre-defined graphic object sets created for the purpose.
The obvious problems with such a system, intellectual property rights and consistency of quality, are fairly easily addressed. One agrees at the outset that created works are the property of the parent company, waiving rights to content created this way. To maintain quality across the board, either enact a content review system by company staffed teams, allow a wider set of so-flagged characters to 'beta test' the new content, or a mixture of both. Content created by players would thus not be accessable to the populace at large until it was verified not only to be of good quality, but to fit into the larger world-theme of the game.
Of course, you could look at it as un-paid labor to do the job that the game producers should be doing themselves. The same could be said of MUDs, though. I built and coded for a mud for years with no form of compensation besides player gratitude. I did it because I enjoyed the game and wanted to provide new challenges and places to explore for my fellow players. Given the hardcore-ness of a lot of the MMPGers out there and their dedication to the game, I've often wondered why no game has set up a system like this. MUDs have existed for so long despite being text-only for a reason. The opportunity to take part in the game's development is a great draw that can, for a lot of people, myself included, even outstrip the lure of playing the game itself. Imagine the popularity of an already popular game like Everquest or FF XI if the
This is a shame... (Score:1)
Sandboxing (Score:3, Interesting)
The real problem with user scripting is that once you have the equivalent of magic in the world, you can really piss people off. And that's hard to sandbox or detect algorithmically. For example, it's difficult to tell the difference between user code that helps a friend levitate and one that keeps a victim pinned in place.
The real problem with user content in general is similar: you want to somehow reward and retain beneficial content and discourage the retention of crap. Let people build all the crap they want, but please take it down at the end of the day, okay?
Second Life has some interesting approches, including taxation and community rating. But, frankly, the crappy content problem is not solved in the real world either.
I'm just glad for anything that turns non-designers into even modest designers--in any world. For me, it was legos and computer graphics that got me thinking about aesthetics. The more ways, the better.
Re:Sandboxing (Score:1)
SecondLife has a pretty decent solution to this. The scripts are treated as part of the world and can do no more or less than the avatar that owns them.
You can't do arbitrary things to arbitrary avatars or objects from a script.
What you CAN do is build a script that does what you want, that communicate with other script