I’m a bit worried about user-generated content in video games
In a GDC presentation on Spore’s editors (called Spore’s Magic Crayons), there were some interesting bits mentioned:
- Everything that people make will automatically be uploaded to the Spore servers.
- Stuff on the Spore servers will be automatically downloaded to Spore players and will populate the gamer’s universe.
- The editors are designed to create great looking things quickly, and without needing artistic talent.
- The editors are powerful enough to make realistic looking Navy battleships and the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek.
The battleship and Enterprise were shown during the presentation of examples of things that could be built with the editor. All those points kind of have me worried. I love the idea that I can go to other planets and interact with stuff that other people have built, but if I run into the Starship Enterprise I know I am going to be sucked out of the game and won’t want to play it.
Spore’s editors are designed to make things look pretty without effort, and that is really cool, but even then I am a bit worried about the universe of Spore becoming a mish-mash of badly done pop culture tributes, and penises. I hope they organize their universe in such a way where it’s easy to avoid stuff like that. I don’t want Spore to become the next Second Life (in the sense that Second Life is a mish-mash of ugliness).
User generated content in video games is the bandwagon to be climbing aboard these days. Take for example Raph Koster’s Areae, Three Rings’ Whirled and of course Spore. All of these things are banking on user generated content. But will any of them not end up feeling as amateurish and fugly as Myspace? Raph actually alluded to that in his GDC presentation, so my guess is he’s thinking about ways to solve that (or, at least hide it from the masses). Spore has put a lot of effort into making their tools generate great looking, original content, but it looks like it’s still possible to create off-topic content. Are these others putting the same amount of work in?
Until they prove me wrong, I’m worried about this trend of user-generated content in games.
I'm Hanford Lemoore. My parking skills are unparalleled.
March 18th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Try browsing the google videos of spore such as this one:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-262774490184348066&q=spore&hl=en
Will Wright explains that content filters are a considerable part of Spore -- if you only want designs from certain people you can specify that. If you only want designs of a certain style you can specify that too. Thus if you see unwanted designs by default, you can presumably filter out the people who designed them.
March 18th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Wow, the penis parade thing was hilarious…but yea, pretty wrong.
In terms of user-created content, I think player’s such as yourself will get used to things in time. Sure a lot of MySpace pages are horrible, and however decided letting people embed auto-playing videos and sounds into the page is a moron, but more often then not, if there’s a band I like, or someone I know professionally, they’ll have a pretty decent site.
So hopefully as Huminado points out, you can filter designs out from people, or perhaps…even better, only see designs from a specific set of people. If that’s the case, just know i’ll be making huge genital monsters, so you might wanna block me too
March 19th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Huminado: Thanks for the link. It does look like Spore is going out of their way to make sure players get a consistent experience. But I hope others follow suit.
Roho: Games are a bit different than other forms of creative expression. A bad Myspace profile might suck, but a bad game world can really pull you out of an otherwise-immersive experience. It can water down a world.
March 20th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
hmm, yea, after thinking about it for a while, I’ll have to agree. Since the game is an immersive experiance, you’re arguing things need to “mesh into the universe” to create a consistant experiance.
heh, not to bust out the tired-old games/movie comparison, but along those lines, you’d be watching a movie that’s well done and suddenly it turns into a shakey-hand-cam video, and then into some oddly unfocused amateur piece, it’d be really hard to come away with a satisfied feeling.
I think the solution though is to separate the shared content from the “critical-path” of the game, it’d be interesting to see if the notion of channels / authors / etc can transfer over to a game like Spore. Ie, if you move to a Sci-fi universe, you’d expect the starship enterprise and be suprised if you saw a bunch of dragons etc.
But I’m just rambling now
March 20th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
This is one of my biggest problems with MMOs. the ones I’ve played sucked me out of the game because the people had stupid names and were talking about off-topic shit. I know that most MMOs run at least one server where everyone’s supposed to role-play, but that’s a little too dorky for even me.
March 20th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
1. On your origin planet, the player content that you would be encounter would be those imported to flesh out your ecosystem. Hopefully you are able to filter out unwanted/ inappropiate content such as “genital” characters, Corporate logo/characters etc. From your own planet right from the start. Especially the corporate characters—if I find any Ronald McDonald’s I’ll be doing my best to filter out or exterminate them. Hopefully any of these will be flagged and removed from the database when found.
(On a side note, there is a Coke add—in Australia—that looks remarkably like a Spore generated planet.
2. If you find the former characters or just shoddy content on other worlds, then surely you can just not visit them again. Or when advanced enough, take enjoyment in the various means of destroying them: War of the Worlds; teleporting down a stronger creature you’ve designed to hunt them down; drowning the planet, or causing other environmental reshaping or catastophe; or planet busting weapons.
I’m sure at some stage everyone is going to try destruction as well as creativity, and these “dud” planets will be a perfect target to vent your destructive wrath upon.
3. To continue with what I believe RohoMec was saying on a SciFi universe. It would be interesting to see clan type grouping, where content matching that universe may be grouped and thereby uploaded into your game. For example “trekkies” may want to form planets, creatures, buildings etc based on Star Trek. Then a user may be able to download a consistent galaxy populated by those creations. Of course this probably raises additional questions. Whether there are moderators that have the say on what content is/is not allowed in the “theme” universe, or maybe content’s allowed when a certain number of votes have been recorded for that user-creator or content.
4. I wonder if you can filter content based on the complexity of the creation. i.e. If the game can recognise a creation that has had a lot of work put into it, and you filter to allow those. Then hopefully they’re better quality creations.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
I watched the entire video that huminado posted and Will Wright does indeed say they the stuff that gets uploaded will be categorized and sorted, and they’ll try to match the content that’s being downloaded to the type of content you’re making. I have no idea how they’ll do that … but it should be pretty cool.
March 30th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Our solution: fear not the fugly. Lots of people clearly like fugly. Let them like it. So long as people with taste have the tools to customize their own experience (like, picking their friends or not visiting the ones with fugly rooms) I think it’ll be okay.
April 6th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Daniel, from what I’ve seen of Whirled, you’re designing it work with any style and you’re already setting people’s expectations as such, which I think is genius. But that clearly won’t work for every game out there. Spore is one of those games … it appears at first blush to have it’s own style … at least until you run into a Carebear or a Star Wars ship.
April 24th, 2007 at 12:52 am
I think user-generated gaming will make certain advertisers take notice. Especially as it ramps up into a more mainstream medium. As the advertisers I work with look at an approach to gaming, the more innovative and diverse the opportunity, the more the demand.
July 6th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Of course this probably raises additional questions. Whether there are moderators that have the say on what content is/is not allowed in the “theme” universe, or maybe content’s allowed when a certain number of votes have been recorded for that user-creator or content. In terms of user-created content, I think player’s such as yourself will get used to things in time.