“Most people aren’t level designers” 
At about 10:30 in the latest Australian Gamer podcast, guest ranter Yahtzee makes this utterance to criticize games like Spore and LittleBigPlanet that rely on player-created content to work at all.
Which is pretty much what I’ve been telling people a whole lot lately, except one step further: “If people could entertain themselves, there would be no entertainment industry because no one would pay for anyone else’s creations.”
But yeah, that’s the thing now, making the digital equivalent of two rocks, a stick and some dirt, neglecting the historical truth that not everyone tried to make a real game out of those things, and those who tried rarely came up with anything good that anyone else wanted to play.
I suspect this will bear out over the next few years or so, and I will gloat. A lot.
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Sturgeon’s Law. Even if 99% is crap, if you have some way of letting the cream rise to the top… you have creamy crap, okay, that mixed metaphor didn’t work. Or maybe it is even more apt.
Comment by Zubon — September 12, 2008 #
Yes, but laws about “everything” are notoriously light on explanations for where to find the good stuff amongst the crap. I don’t plan to go looking for it amongst player creations.
Comment by J. — September 12, 2008 #
Right, Sturgeon’s Law doesn’t tell you how to separate the wheat from the chaff. That’s why the games that solve that problem are doing something interesting
I’m a big believer in UGC, but in every case a way to let the good stuff rise is critical.
Comment by Matthew Weigel — September 13, 2008 #
If I learned anything from my career in journalism, though, is that Editing Is Work. If you’re taking work from anyone instead of making it yourself, you need lots of editors. The real mistake would be assuming that a mechanism to allow UGC would be self-regulating. It won’t be, at least not right away and not in any way someone who wants a sustained product should want.
Comment by J. — September 13, 2008 #
[...] J. and the Australian Gamer Podcasters have realized an important truth, namely that most user-made content is crap. Then again, most x is crap for all values of x. The question, I comment there, is whether you have tools to separate the wheat from the chaff (to jump metaphors). The goal is to set a million people loose, let it be 99% crap, and still get the work of 10,000 talented people (and remember that even talented people produce a lot of crap to get their good stuff). [...]
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