The level of connectivity we’ve reached this generation has brought with it a lot of undesirable side-effects. Day one patches. On-disc content sold back to us as downloadable content. Multiplayer that empowers and unleashes the biggest jerks mankind has to offer.
But it’s not without its benefits, and the rise and rise of user-generated content is one of them. More and more games are beginning to embrace the power of user-generated content, or UGC.
LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule recently announced that a staggering seven million levels had been created by users for the series. LittleBigPlanet players have made the game exponentially larger than any one studio could ever attempt to make, or any one gamer could ever hope to play. The Forza franchise has built on entire online in-game economy on the buying and selling of car designs players create themselves. Forza owners can choose from thousands upon thousands of custom and replica liveries that have been crafted by other fans with no input from developer Turn 10 whatsoever.
If you can think of a famous race car, somebody has probably already recreated it in Forza 4.
However, while UGC that’s basically indistinguishable from similar studio-created content may look like an attractive way to have users help offset the soaring costs of AAA development, there’s far more to it than that.
“It’s definitely a nice add-on to the main game, but it’s also one that has to be thought out carefully right from the start of the game,” says Antti Ilvessuo, creative director at RedLynx and lead designer of Trials Evolution. “It’s no silver bullet that you can just throw in there and think, ‘Hey this will make our game popular.’”
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It’s no silver bullet that you can just throw in there and think, ‘Hey this will make our game popular.’
“Games and how we play them are changing really rapidly nowadays, so how you define user generated content changes also. Letting users create stuff for a game is definitely a big part of the future of games. I think a big part of that will be creating content creation in way that users don’t notice that what they are doing is creating a lot of the game’s content.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Bigpoint’s Rune Vendler, game director on the browser-based free-to-play Gameglobe – a game built entirely around the concept of UGC.
“I don't really think of user-generated content as a shortcut to cheap labour, almost the opposite,” says Vendler. “With Gameglobe, the goal was to design a platform where being creative did not feel like hard work, but an entertaining activity in itself.”
“Putting user-generated content into a product massively changes it. Once it went live, it was obvious that we, the developers, were no longer the sole owners of Gameglobe; it's as if the game itself is now owned just as much by the community, and they get to decide a great deal about how the game evolves. For a lot of AAA games, you can't or won't share that kind of control with the users.”
John Drake, Director of Communications & Brand Management at Harmonix Music Systems, looks at UGC success stories as falling into two groups; games that let users share and/or sell created content (like the Rock Band Network) and games that drive users to create as a fundamental part of the experience. Drake cites games like Minecraft, LittleBigPlanet, and Sound Shapes as great examples of the latter.
“Both approaches have big wins and inherent limitations,” says Drake.
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If you can give players agency to not only engage in a world but actively create within that world, your universe will be infinitely richer.
“I hope we see companies continue to evolve and embrace user-driven content as a strategy. When it's done right, ‘formal UGC’ – as opposed to general modding done outside the structure of a game – embraces the fact that games are inherently an interactive expression. If you can give players agency to not only engage in a world but actively create within that world, your universe will be infinitely richer.
“Though UGC certainly isn't a perfect fit for every title, I think it's a gamble we'll see more games willing to take as the medium evolves. The value UGC adds to a game goes beyond simple monetisation of a mechanic.
“UGC empowers the player, enriches a community, and makes a game come to life with the passion of its fans. I don't think gamers should pin all of our hopes on it, especially since designing these systems can be as time-consuming and expensive as building more assets in studio, but I think it's an exciting area to be optimistic about.”
As John Drake pointed out to us, RBN is most certainly NOT 'Baby's First Rock Band Authoring Toy'.
So why is it that more studios haven’t quite embraced this model of conscripting fans to create canyons full of content as well as others? Are there risks in letting users make and share their own content?
“Allowing for user-generated content is limited by your game’s style,” says RedLynx’s Antti Ilvessuo. “For example, a game that is story driven would need new content that somehow fits into the rest of the game. Then there are issues about game balance, and you have to have a way to monitor and check content for stuff that is offensive. So the game style also has to be the right fit for user-generated content.”
“But still, content creation can be made possible in numerous ways. It’s just not an easy thing to do.”
Bigpoint’s Rune Vendler agrees that the process is not a simple one.
“I don't want to speculate about other studios' development plans, but I don't believe you can conscript anyone to create content,” he says. “Users have to want to make it, and have fun doing so.”
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Users have to want to make it, and have fun doing so.
“Creating a game that supports user-generated content well is not trivial. The creative tools in Gameglobe have taken a long time to develop, and are of a completely different quality than what we're used to internally. The infrastructure needed to host and serve the content is substantial, and the technology to drive it all is complex.
"Once we got Gameglobe working, however, it was an amazing experience. We're giving people the freedom to create games and express themselves in a way many didn't think possible. Of course, they can misbehave, but with Gameglobe we've found that almost everyone reacts very positively to being handed this freedom.”
Harmonix’s John Drake also gives us a similar response.
“There are practical realities that keep UGC from being baked into every game,” he says. “Building tools that are accessible to the average player is a massive design challenge, supporting UGC systems for an evolving audience in perpetuity is expensive, curating the excellent from the average can be a struggle, and it's a big gamble that your audience will show up and be excited to create.
Drake points out that crafting a system that truly compels users to create “can't just be about ‘conscripting fans’ and crowdsourcing content.”
“For UGC to really take off, a developer needs to understand what fans love about the game in question, where they'd want to take it if they could, and how to build a pipeline to connect those desires in an accessible and decipherable way.”
“Oh, and then they need to build all those tools and ensure it doesn't absolutely break the core product that it's meant to extend,” adds Drake. “I'm thrilled, for example, that Rock Band Network tracks will work in Rock Band Blitz when it launches this August , but it meant testing for weird edge cases like, ‘What if the song only has drums and guitar?’; cases created by the breadth of content in RBN.”
The payoff for UGC done right, however, can be hugely satisfying.
“It's incredible to see what people have done in the Rock Band Network,” says Drake. “This was a professional suite of tools and standards and, to make it into Rock Band, we expected folks to rise to that level.”
“We had some reservations about whether people would want to invest that amount of time and energy, but all our concerns were silenced when we launched. The enthusiasm was palpable, and the community really self-enforced a quality bar beyond expectations.”
At this point there are over 1,800 tracks available on the RBN, available to Rock Band fans around the world.
“We've had big bands add extra tracks via this system and burgeoning acts find a really passionate audience of rhythm gamers,” says Drake. “It launched us way beyond where we expected, expanding the volume of content we could have ever created for the Rock Band audience at Harmonix.”
“The team who built the Rock Band Network are fans ourselves, so it's infinitely satisfying to see a community form around these creative tools. Harmonix built the system, but the network is really driven and owned by the community of Rock Band authors, and they're doing amazing things.”
It’s tracks of a different sort being built by fans in Trials Evolution, but the RedLynx team are no less amazed at what their biggest fans can put together.
“We as developers are always really surprised at some of the amazing things that our users have created,” says Ilvessuo. “It’s really humbling to see stuff that you never thought possible when making game made by users. It is definitely very satisfying too, to be sure.”
Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can chat to him about games, cars and how Rock Band is a great way to give a four-year-old great taste in music here or find him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.
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