Stop me if I’ve gone on about this before, but I’ve been wondering if user created content (specifically on consoles) is something that we really want to be courting as an industry, or even as gamers.
On the surface, yeah, this sounds like a very good thing. I think mainly because we’re all operating from the assumption that it will all be good, or at the very least, most of it will be good. Hell, I’d even take some of it being good.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, my very unscientific and anecdotal statistics show that typically almost none of it is any good. I avoid user created TF2 levels like the plague. Sure, out of the 100s that have been created, Valve has managed to sift through the detritus to find us a couple that are worth sharing every so often (and they just so happen to be ones I’ve already downloaded. Hooray I get to download them again!). But good lord, there is no greater displeasure in my gaming than waiting to download a map (a very long time over my wireless DSL) only to have it be some untextured nightmare that looks and flows like it was made by an eight year old. Easily 99 times out of 100 I get something that doesn’t even remotely resemble a finished or balanced level.
And these are still “gated” by the fact that we’re dealing with PCs.
The PC has a natural buffer to it that keeps most people from attempting user created content. There’s usually some installation that needs to happen, then some unpacking (meaning you need to get an unpacker). Then there’s a lot of forum trolling about how to use the SDK for the game you’re trying to mod, and if you even manage to figure out how to get the ball rolling, then there’s the actual work to be had. Most people give up. Many just phone it in (as evidenced by over ten years of grabbing mods with only a handful of successes).
Now, imagine the “gate” of the PC being eliminated. Imagine everyone and their moms generating user created content, because it’s coming to a console near you. Prepare to smile through clenched teeth and nod politely while your friend subjects you to all ten of his incredibly uninspired Little Big Planet levels he made as a shrine to his favorite animes. Maybe your other friend wants you to check out his awesome Guitar Hero IV riff he made for the new Steve Vai song. You don’t even like Steve Vai. He knows this. He doesn’t care. And he has more.
The point here is that professionals make professional grade content. Amateurs make amateur grade content. Am I saying one is better than the other? Oh yes. Yes I am. Consoles are wonderful to me because in the past, there’s been two guarantees which up until this console cycle were intact in one form or another:
- The game will work straight out of the box and not require a patch.
- Only devs working on a dev kit can make content.
People, these are good things, and they were why consoles were wonderful. Now with the inclusion of hard drives and games including author kits for content creation, we’re right back in amateurville again.
Does anyone remember Napster? Even that was ruined by people submitting sub-par quality files claiming they were sampled at 128k, if you even got the file as labeled. Half the time you got static or Barney’s “I Love You” or some other ancient form of “Rick Rolling.” I can’t wait to grab a version of a challenging song for Guitar Hero IV only to find that the person gave up authoring note patterns halfway through and just repeated the green note a thousand times. That’s IF the song quality is even worth listening to in the first place.
Sure, there will be an occasional diamond in the ruff, but I’m not really willing to do the sifting to find it. I already have diamonds. I bought them at a store and they came packaged in shrinkwrap with little reflective shiny stickers on them that guaranteed me that every single level I downloaded for Little Big Planet was not going to have nothing but hairy penises in them.
Yes, it’s true, in my day, we walked to school through five feet of snow up hill, both ways.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
If there is a user creation feature in a game, just as important is a way of rating and filtering/sorting said content for the end user. If the publisher/developer is willing to sift through the crap to find the golden nuggets for me, then that’s one tedious way. From what I’ve seen, LBP’s rating system seems pretty good. I think it’ll take a couple generations of console products with user generated content before we get a majority of games to have useful rating/filtering/sorting, but I think in the end it’ll be worth it. You’d be surprised at the high level of quality that .001% of the audience can create for free for hundreds of thousands of others. If there’s a really sweet way for that cream to rise to the top, then I’m all for it.
But isn’t user-created content for games just an extension of the internet revolution? With blogs, anyone can write and publish whatever they want, even if 99.9% of it is crap. Ditto youtube. How is user-created content in gaming any different? I’ve learned to be picky about the blogs I read and the youtube videos I bother watching by trusting other sources (link blogs/meta blogs) to do the sorting for me.
So isn’t the answer to user-created gaming content simply better search and trusted sifters who are willing or obsessed enough to find those diamonds for you?
I just don’t see any downside to increased support for user-created content and mods. Sure it’s basically guaranteed that most of it will be terrible, but there will always be someone willing to try it all and tell me what I should look into. And if you or someone like you wants to simply ignore it, can’t you do so at no expense to yourself?
I understand the no-patching necessary angle, but wasn’t that going to be increasingly difficult to stand by the more complicated games became?
I look at it this way. You don’t have to download it if you don’t want too. There are pc mods that I have downloaded that were awesome, done by amateurs. Creative Assembly comes readily to mind as someone who actively supports and engages that community. Even some of the mods done up for Baldur’s Gate, etc. were pretty fun and worth the download.
Yes, it is annoying that there thousands of penis monsters soon to be populating galaxies near you, but by the same token there are also plenty of other really cool user generated Spore creatures that not one development team could have possibly had the time, money, or shear amount of total creativity to bring into the game world. That is one big pluses of user generated content, it will add a lot to that game.
I do understand that most user created content will probably suck and few people that stick with it are going to do anything even remotely noteworthy, (that is my cynical opinion regarding the human condition overall) but it does provide another opportunity to possible get that 1% that will shine through and that is worth it. Most communities have a way of measuring the value of that too, that is also one way to ensure that what does become available is worth the end-users time.
My feeling is that the ability to have user generated content is going to become more of a mainstream selling point, much like a robust online multiplayer is pretty much a given nowadays. For better or worse, it is something the market is willing to test. It adds more of that “hardest to capture” of gaming tenants: replayability.
I believe de point of this post is not if non-developers should not create extra content for games, but the difficulty it should exist to create it.
User developed mods/maps are great since they give replayability to the game you already bought or even give you a whole new gameplay.
But the great user developed content comes from people who spend a great deal of time creating their stuff. They might not be professional software developers, but they spend their time learning how model/desing/code for their specific game engine. For PC developing the tools they are provided are not “easy” to use at first glance there are usually not predesigned stuff and you must create a very great deal of stuff.
This “barrier” assures that if you want to create something, you must have a commitment with your creation.
Everyone wants to show their “creative abilities” even if you really do not have any. But the commitment is the difference between finishing a great thing or leaving it in the drawer.
(For example I am a noob who tried to create maps for cs and there it is when game designers earned my true respect, since it proved me how difficult is to create creative/great-looking/great-balanced maps…)
By the way pardon my English, I’m from a not English-spoken country.
You all seem to be focused on the end product. More specifically: “how do 17,000 user-generated maps benefit me and my gaming experience”, but it might be more interesting to see amateur design more as a goal in itself.
I can only speak for myself here, but I was raised with a very passive mentality towards the media, the closest I ever got to creating my own content for anything was playing an instrument, or writing word documents. This is changing, with machinema, open source software, modding, music software, affordable audio and video equipment, youtube, and so forth, and it might turn out to be a more healthy, involved mentality where people get to express themselves creatively and explore what they enjoy.
Even great artists or developers need to practice, and I’m sure they all went through phases where they didn’t seem to get further than the equivalent of “penis penis penis lol”. It takes practice to become good at things, and it seems a shame to raise the barrier too much. Keep things simple, and include as many people as you can. Awesomeness will still surface through the mud for other consumers to enjoy.
Without user created content, Team Fortress wouldn’t even exist! Putting up with the vast wastelands of crap is worth it for the cream that will rise if given a chance, as sdstone and AndrewN said.
I have to agree with the previous posters, that it seems a little silly to object to a system for content generation that is
1. Rated/filtered and
2. Entirely optional
It’s clear that user generated content will not replace traditional gaming or drive game developers out of work, so why worry about it? And if your TF2 example is any indication, the “gate” for PC mods wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping out the amateurs in the first place. The conclusion I draw from this is that technical proficiency does not always equal creative aptitude.
Also, your friends sound really annoying. Maybe that’s part of the problem?