Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Brian Hughes

Development Lead | Alganon

There is most certainly a future for user-created content in MMOGs. The easiest and most prolific form is modded

"Another avenue that Alganon has employed in the past and will undoubtedly do so again is the 'user-inspired' content. This is a system whereby the actual content is created by our developers, so it is subject to our standard quality control, but is inspired by submissions from our players." - Brian Hughes

UIs, which have become one of the most popular tools among gamers, and which will become a part of Alganon in the near future. UI mods are an easy choice for developers looking to allow user-created content because their use is specific to one user's machine; there is no worry of one person's mods affecting game play for others.
 
Beyond UI mods, however, you get into dicey territory. If you allow users to create visual content that can be extended to other players' machines, you have to install a very rigid verification process that scrutinizes every piece of submitted content carefully, and you can see how that can easily require more resources than most companies are willing to dedicate.
 
Another avenue that Alganon has employed in the past and will undoubtedly do so again is the 'user-inspired' content. This is a system whereby the actual content is created by our developers, so it is subject to our standard quality control, but is inspired by submissions from our players. A good example of this is our contest from December, in which the winner got to permanently lend his name to an NPC in the game and help decide how the NPC would look.

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Jon Virtes

Community Manager | Runes of Magic

User-created content can be a very strong addition to games. We have seen many games of various genres benefit from great mod communities. User-created content would help solve the problem of being able to create enough new content in an MMO to keep players entertained with new material all the time. There are some hurdles to creating content for MMOGs, but it is not insurmountable.

There already is a great deal of low-level content creation in MMOs. It can be easy to overlook, but the act of

"Ultimately, content creation in an MMOG has to stay within the context of the game. Content has to be fun to both create and fun for players to discover and play-through. The fun factor cannot be overlooked. If it is not adding fun and enjoyment to the game, it does not belong." - John Virtes

creating and developing your character is content creation. MMOs are giving players more and more character customization options, like pets, mounts, costumes, player and guild housing. This will continue to evolve and in time we will see much more player driven creation in our worlds. Building on these foundations will bring players along into creating content and keep it a natural part of gameplay.

Finding a way to keep the creation within the game world and within the context of playing the game is key. You could expand the crafting system to allow for creating unique content, rather than just cranking out yet another Sword IV item. In fact, a cool master crafting quest would be to gather the necessary items and knowledge to create your own unique item blueprint, within reasonable parameters for balance, then that blueprint will become part of the game. Both the blueprint and the items made from the blueprint are created by a user through regular play.
 
For a bigger leap into content creation, perhaps you could open a new continent within the world that is purely for user-created content. It could be worked it into the storyline, that this a land of chaos that can be molded like clay, and build a whole storyline around reclaiming and redesigning that land to be worthy of adventurers, and so on. Then perhaps you could take the more successful parts from the continent and plug it into the main world. There would need to be some quality ranking system to sort the good content from the bad, and maybe once the good threshold has been reached, the new area earns a portal that the user can place in the main world to open it up to the rest of the player population.

Ultimately, content creation in an MMOG has to stay within the context of the game. Content has to be fun to both create and fun for players to discover and play-through. The fun factor cannot be overlooked. If it is not adding fun and enjoyment to the game, it does not belong.

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Wes Platt

Director of Content Development | Fallen Earth

Fallen Earth's Wes Platt

There's been a history of users as content that I think will carry on and evolve going forward in the development of MMOs.

In Fallen Earth, this shows up in the form of clan wars and other PvP conflicts, but also in player-driven activities - from bar crawls to road rallies to the occasional effort to extort cash.

User-created content and mods for single-player games are fine because they don't require screening before they go into the game world. For an MMO, the tools either let you do too much (and require additional work for online editors to screen the content for inappropriate material) or let you do too little to justify the creation of the tools.

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Cedric Gerard

International Marketing Manager, Ankama | DOFUS, Wakfu

There is already a lot of freedom in MMOs (not all of them) allowing players to create guilds, create stories and background, acquire houses and decorate them, all of that is actually user-generated content but indeed most often at a lower level than what players can expect.

User generated content is the most important feature and the one with the most potential, yet it is the most difficult feature to conceive, implement and handle. When allowing users to create content, you open the door to their creativity and interest, and it is a great way to keep the community interested in the game and helping the game to evolve.

But you also open the door to problems that can be difficult to handle: some people could use the feature to find exploits in the code; all content that is uploaded has to be checked by someone in the company in order to make sure that the quality and content are appropriate; and also adding content means adding new possible bugs and conflicts so every piece of user-generated content would have to be tested by the QA team before it appeared in the game.

There are also legal concerns as to who actually owns the property when it comes to user-generated content; the developer provides the tools but the user is the one creating the content. That problem has already been raised in the case of account and character property. Technically, the company is the one with the rights to the product and everything that is created with it, and normally the user recognizes that when accepting the end user license agreement.

So normally players know that they do not have the right to sell characters or mods that would be created through long hours of work, but there is a chance legal battles can be raised if the users ultimately feel they own the content. Now there is a possibility that content sales could be authorized in the future if there is a platform that is designed to host that user generated content and distribute it, in the event that the company gets compensated for the sale the users make.

One must not lose sight that in online games the ultimate truth is that the user is the content, and ultimately as an MMO developer our goal must be to give those users the possibility to enhance their experience and the experience of other users as much as they want to.

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The developer responses show that industry experts clearly have a wide range of opinions when it comes to user-generated content. Some seem to relegate the concept to future developments, implying that the MMOG world isn't quite ready for in-depth player input into the development process. Others say that we're realizing the future right now through features like add-ons and deep character creation. Either way, there's clearly a bright future for player involvement in MMOG development.