So then … are there really game developers out there who don’t think that there are other people still figuring out that they have enough talent to be game developers too, using existing tools to mod/hobby their way to recognition?

I’m not sure there is. Or at least, there aren’t enough to get very hot and bothered about it. Do you have any examples? IMO, saying that somewhere between 90 and 99.9 percent of user-created content is crap is well … accurate. Not snobby. And it doesn’t imply that there isn’t value in still letting people put stuff out there.

Also, I’d return to my earlier point. Are the tools really bringing out talent? Or is it actually that it has nothing to do with tools and everything to do with better information flow. Are there any more garage bands today than there were 30 years ago or are the ones that exist just using MySpace, iTunes, eMusic, etc. to better get their name out there.

Sell it to the masses? Because yeah, your users are going to make a crap world that others will not like.

Or are you going to just let those that make it gain there own satisfaction from it? If thats the case, why do you care what others think? The creator didn’t, or he would have tried harder or improved it, or not even shown it.

I have to ask, really i do, some of your blogs of late, and in the past make me want to ask you this question.

Why do you not like artists?

This topic, the procedural content article, and others lead me to believe that you don’t really like artists/animators, or the time and dedication they have put into becoming artists.

I mean, what if i wanted to procedurally create a game, and let its users dictate the design and game play, however they wanted… But all the art work in it would be done by artists.

There is a reason the term professional was created, and no, its not the name of a club.

Shall we make a user “repaired” car shop? And would you goto it?

Respectfully
Truce.

[...] been following a thread over on Raph Koster’s blog (Link) that I wanted to call [...]

I think it is somewhat interesting that different themes have different sensitivities to unsuitable user-creations.

1) Wild-West can work if you insist on nature dominating (especially if it is done as physical assembly, rather than freeform construction)
2) Science Fiction can work since the future includes our own culture
3) Cyberpunk and Horror can work if your building-tools produce “ruins”
4) Parodies are more likely to work than simulations of the past
5) Universe based designs means you can group players on planets where their crap have litte affect on others. (Similar to the Wild West suggestion)

Etc.

In your wild west scenario… do you limit character names to ones that are (at least arguably) realistic for the period/geography? Do you take someone who has named his character “Justin Timberlake” — which probably was a name someone had in the 19th century west — and yank it because it’s, well… related to THE JT? Same w/ many modern pop names, eh? John F. Kennedy would be a fine western name. Or Anna Nichole Smith. But, clearly, they’re not just those names.

You either trust players — and put up with all kinds of activities that generate content that isn’t optimum from the designers standpoint — or you don’t. Players are always going to find some way to be “bad to your backbone” anyway. Give them a limited pallette of colors, and they’ll stripe things.

Again… I think you’re right about providing structure and context for creativity. Those are good in many creative situations. But maybe the best way would be to provide meta-tools that allow users to develop the standards, too. Because designing the backbone is also something that your audience might be better at than you…

What is needed is a solid high-quality backbone to which user created content can be attached. I don’t think that implies devaluating the professional as Bill Trost seems to worry about. In fact I think that demands even more of the professional who is providing the backbone. Not only does it have to work internally, it also has to work with lower quality user created content.

E.g. you could make Wild West Online. You provide the users with basic building blocks for creating shacks, but they have to get through a lot of trouble to get their parts and put them in place. Nature wears down shacks. Users can add colours and create their own signs etc etc. These things fade over time, you get “cool” ghosttowns when players quit. You prevent players from cluttering the backbone (nature and roads) using forces of natures and NPC thieves. You prevent players from building too big cities (garbage dumps) by how you structure the landscape and you could also make big citities attract NPC criminals. Etc.

Ok, this is just a start… there are lots of other mechanics you could add in order to ensure that user created crap fits in and is prevented from crowding the space, but if you ignore it… Yuk!

The quality of the content does not matter. Period. Forget the noun (content) and recall that games are about verbs. “Users creating content,” or “creation enabled” or “user modifiable” (or something more verb-y) if defined as a feature of a virtual space is, I think, much more easily understood to be something very, very different than unmodifiable, professionally developed spaces. Not better, but different. And not different by dint of the quality of the “stuff,” but by the quality of being able to “do something creator-ish.”

I don’t care that you can’t draw, Richard. If I put you in a room with blank paper and crayons and a bunch of books w/ pictures and told you, “Play,” I bet you’d do *something* with the paper/crayons vs. reading the books. Maybe you’d use them to play hangman. Or to write prose in green. Or to play another game with another person in the room. The “thing” you create doesn’t matter; your ability to choose to participate in a creative context vs. a passive, audience context is what constitutes an entirely different/additional level of play.

Let’s try this on for size. Game XYZ features user-generated high-scores. Uh… duh. Game ABC features user-generated combat. As opposed to… watching NPC’s bash each other? Hooray!

More verbs is better in many, many cases. We are all adept at filtering what we don’t want. Your crap is my bling. Now, I’m not saying I don’t want good design management and/or UI that works to help me enjoy a space properly. But that has zero to do with who does the creating. Unless I miss my guess, everyone in this room has played dozens, if not HUNDREDS, of really, really bad professionally created games. So? If the pros have the “right” to create crap for money, everyone should have the right to create crap for love, glory, masturbation, etc.

It’s not the pile of blocks that matters. It’s the building. It’s not the quality of the drawing that matters, it’s the fun of making marks.

User creativity in games. Forget the content quality. The world is too big and too many people have too much spare time (especially in this space) to argue for quality standards. Designers, yes, will often produce “a thing” that more people find interesting, fun, attractive. But users now often find the ability to produce their own crap much more stimulating than monkeying about with something handed down from above.

Playing is fun. Scores are a side-product. Creating is fun. The content is a side-product. Create = play.

[...] snarky, but I’d argue amusing, catch of this typo, and Raph Koster’s post about not being snobby about user generated content, has got me wanting to clarify a few thoughts on Web 2.0. (Though I doubt that post was even [...]

What I was querying was your suggestion that talent is merely a head start for creating high-quality content (or whatever). It might be a prerequisite. Telling people that if they practise, practise, practise they could become the best gosh-darn creator of their generation is true, but it might need the rider “if you have the talent”. If you don’t have the talent, then it could be the case that no amount of practice will ever raise you above the level of the mediocre. That being so, to suggest that other people merely had a head start would be to offer them false hope. I don’t think it’s right to offer people false hope, which is why I was trying to pin down your thoughts on whether talent was necessary or not.

Removing any debate about the nature of talent, would this summary be correct?

1) With the right tools and enough practice, most people have it in them to create quality content.

2) Some people have a natural talent for this.

3) Some of the people in 2) don’t know they’re in 2) until they try 1).

4) Some of the people in 2) do know they’re in 2) and they mock the people who are in 3), even though they were once in 3) themselves. This makes them snobs and hypocrites.

Is that a fair enough summary? Note that it doesn’t say what proportion of people are in 2) – it could be the majority, for example.

Personally, I think some of the people who think they’re in 2) are in fact in 1); this makes their looking down on those in 1) even more galling. However, I do realise that in saying this I’m actually being even more snobbish about user-created content, though…

Richard