Google has announced that at the end of this year it is to cease running its Second Life copy – Lively. Lively, a virtual world with user-generated avatars and content, rather cleverly allowed you to import content from other Google applications – pictures from Picasa, video etc. But that hasn’t stopped it from the chop because Google wants to “prioritize resources and focus more on core search, ads and apps business.” And that got us thinking – about how much I hate most user-generated content in gaming. Here’s five reasons why you shouldn’t make content for their games:
1. What’s the story?
User-generated content, sandbox gaming, multi-player gaming – the rise of these forms of gaming have come as many companies have realised that they’re just not very good at telling great interactive stories. So instead of getting better, the games industry has often abdicated responsibility for actually gripping gamers and carrying them through a believable, interactive, challenging game. So instead of plot, or enemy AI, everything’s solved by going online. Now, some online games are great. And so are some sandbox games. But too often, letting the player do their own thing comes at the expense of making what they do really exciting.
2. It’s not your content, it’s theirs.
You create the content, but you don’t own it. So when Google decided to shut Lively, it’s answer was to suggest “taking videos and screenshots of your rooms”. In other words, when the game shuts down, you lose your content. And of course, they get to decide whether your content is acceptable in their games. Unlike the mod scene, which could throw up interesting, arty, political and controversial new levels/game designs, user-generated content is kept strictly family-friendly and middle-of-the-road. Those Sporn stars soon disappeared!
3. It’s just stuff.
In the old days, user-generated content was about making levels for games. Out of the mod scene came levels and mods that bettered the efforts of the original game programmers. And this opened up a path for many to move from bedroom coding to a job in the games industry. Now, if you make a jacket in Second Life, it’s just a jacket. And the only career path it’ll lead you to is likely selling your jackets to other Second Life users. User-generated content has become more tightly-controlled, more commodified. It’s just stuff you’re making.
4. You’re doing their work.
My current pet hate is Spore – you create the aliens that populate other worlds. Of course, the question that needs to be asked, considering the random and rather rubbish collection of oddbods you end up with on your worlds, is why couldn’t EA/Maxis have done a better job themselves? We’d rather have a really inventive, visually striking, but somehow harmonic set of creatures from a proper game designer than the mismatched menagerie you end up with in Spore.
5. You have to do it over and over.
The genius of the Mii is you only make it once. And Home and New Xbox Experience open that option for the PS3 and Xbox 360 – your avatars could be used in any game. But all too often, the character we spend hours customising in Saints Row 2 cant’ be used in Spore. Or my Spore alien doesn’t turn up as an avatar on Xbox Live. So, for different games we have to redo loads of work. Why?
There are many exceptions to these issues. LittleBigPlanet is already becoming, despite moderation issues, a real treasure trove of exciting levels that showcase some genius ideas. It’s user-generated content that does something. But all too often, the latest games buzzword is actually a cheap excuse for lazy games designers. Or is it? Answers on a postcard please…
You’ve forgotten point number six: if you open up content to users some WILL create in-game penises. It’s inevitable.
“You’ve forgotten point number six: if you open up content to users some WILL create in-game penises.”
I don’t know – the public’s unerring tendency to insert indecent imagery into every single facet of user-generated content, actually reinvigorates my faith in humanity.
Anyone who didn’t chuckle at that at least once is a liar, but I’m getting a bit bored of it now. Let’s be a bit more imaginative. How about a sex swing in LittleBigPlanet?
I’m all for a bit of user-generated smut – and it saddens me that the games industry is so scared of it/anything with a whiff of controversy.
Just let users rate their own content, and each others. So people can sign up to the level of content they feel comfortable with. And have a banhammer for racist, homophobic etc. content. Or should even that stuff be allowed, just clearly marked and rated as such?
In a recent article for SLentrepreneur Magazine (http://tiny.cc/d3ZB1) I outlined four elements of a virtual world that developers need to address in order for that environment to flourish: Communication, Commerce, Construction, and Constitution. Lively is/was not particularly good at allowing for folks to construct items and sell them. There is/was no significant system of exchange where items could be transacted.
Far from being, as you seem to suggest, a “chore” for people, the potential to create items is critical. Allowing folks to then own those items also ensures that people become vested in their experience. And “creating” includes creating your own character. Winning “points” to enhance your status/gain new weapons/beat the boss is just another form of economic exchange where the “points” act like money.
Just an observation – don’t want to post a 20-page thesis
I agree. On paper UGC sounds great, but in practice it often gets in the way of a good game. I loved the idea of Spore, for instance, but since I couldn’t be bothered to design the intricacies of my species cars and buildings, I whizzed through those parts of the game and quickly got bored. I haven’t played it since those first two days. Once I got to the space stage, the ‘evolution’ bit seemed to have finished, just leaving me to design weirder and wonderfuller space ships, that actually have no bearing on the game! Maybe I’m missing the point, or maybe I’m just not that creative!
Sigmund,
I genuinely believe in some game environments and in some ways, generating your own content is part of the enjoyment. But I guess one of the things I feel about UGC is that it’s not “real” creation. The amount of time some of us put into scripting animations in Second Life would be better put into going and writing a book or scripting a game or their own animation series. In other words, something that didn’t just reflect on someone else’s game world.
So yes, all too often, it is just a “chore” – a virtual cubicle job where you’re grafting for “the man”. When actually, all that creative energy and vitality would be better for you and the world spent elsewhere.
I think user-generated content will be very key in virtual worlds, but you’re right in that it really makes sense only when you start thinking beyond games and levels.
So “it’s not a game level it’s just a jacket” makes perfect sense if the thing you really want is a game level. But “it’s not a game level it’s just an art gallery / jetski / tropical island / danceclub / university / philosophy discussion / giant octopus / vampire RP game / wedding dress” seems kind of silly once your head is no longer in the “it has to be a game with levels” space.
User-generated content may not be the best way to get new games levels. But imho it is definitely the best way to get *everything*…
Dale,
Where I think user-generated content does work brilliantly is in terms of generating stuff that mainstream games companies don’t want to bother making. Whether that’s vampire weddings or giant octopus jetskis. But what I think borders on taking your fans for a ride is when user-generated content is used instead of good in-house generated content. In essence, I didn’t find Maxis’ Spore creatures particularly brilliant – and they should have been in that game. There was the sense that they plopped out a few random creatures to get the ball rolling, then expected users to generate better stuff (which they did).