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Quit being snobby about user-created content

May 22nd, 2007 (Visited 4477 times) Tags:

I’ve seen a few posts here and there about user-created content and how it can’t be great. I won’t bother pointing fingers, nor will I drag out the hoary old examples of Counterstrike et al (oops, guess I just did).

Instead, I will merely point out that any distinction between “users” and “creators” is artificial. Creators were all users first. In this business, a professional is just someone lucky enough to get paid for their hobby. Good creators (in any field) are often simply those who have more practice — and you can get practice as an amateur.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t tons of crappy user-created content out there. Of course there is; MySpace is exhibit A. Odds are that your first tries were equally bad. But sometimes first tries are genius — when Pajitnov made Tetris, he was a researcher at a computing institute in Moscow. (He also went on to make unremarkable stuff until returning with Hexic, which is brilliant — so don’t expect consistency either!)

The real issue is sorting through the crap, the slush pile, the bargain bins. And that’s not a new problem. Similarly, there are ways to keep one person’s crap from spilling over into your enjoyment of another person’s masterpiece.

Seeing yourself as somehow above or different is shorthand for thinking that you’re better. And that’s just being snobby. Remember, those who were here before you hired you out of that same pool you are looking down upon.

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Business and Games Blog wrote on November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am:

I’ve been following a thread over on Raph Koster’s blog (Link) that I wanted to call out. The topic is user-created content. The title of the post is “Quit being snobby about user-created content“. You get the picture. And I figure many of you can already see the battle lines. This debate isn

Man Bytes Blog: A Frenzy of Lexicological Optimism » Raph Smart. Audience Smarter. wrote on May 22nd, 2007 at 9:24 am:

[...] I’m elbow deep in my Round Table post, but I wanted to quickly call your attention to this post by Raph which resonates with some things I’ve been thinking over the last few weeks (link). [...]

External News wrote on May 22nd, 2007 at 10:39 am:

[...] Quit being snobby about user-created content [...]

feed on feeds - Man Bytes Blog - new items wrote on May 23rd, 2007 at 5:54 am:

Loud - by Baldur Bjarnason wrote on May 23rd, 2007 at 9:51 am:

Creators were all users first. In this business, a professional is just someone lucky enough to get paid for their hobby. Good creators (in any field) are often simply those who have more practice — and you can get practice as an amateur.” - Raph’s Website » Quit being snobby about user-created content

capnjosh » Blog Archive » Constrained User Generated Content wrote on May 25th, 2007 at 3:33 am:

[...] From the comments on Raph Koster’s post “Quit being snobby about user-created content”: User-generated content, like all human creative endeavor, is subject to Sturgeon’s Law…. The free market tends to act as a sort of crud-filter….. User-generated content also needs crud-filters. We used to have ways of doing this on MUDs….. The threat to the scalability of our approaches was that they were largely top-down… Modern… techniques tend to be more democratic. However, there are inherent problems in these systems….. Have you ever noticed that the vast majority of clips on YouTube have 4 stars? I’ve seen the same phenomenon on NetFlix. To me, it would seem as though mass voting on a star rating isn’t very expressive or useful for many kinds of content…. I think that the case for user-generated content is not helped by the kind of wild, anarchic approach we see in Second Life… (from here) [...]

GuildCafe Favorites wrote on May 25th, 2007 at 10:40 am:

Raph Koster admonishes industry for being snobby…

Raph claims that the only difference between professionals and amateurs in the game industry is that the pros are lucky enough to get paid for creating content. He mentions Counterstrike as a great example of user-created content that makes it to the …

The Plush Apocalypse » Blog Archive » Web 2.suck wrote on May 27th, 2007 at 11:15 am:

[...] 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 [...]

reBang weblog » Blog Archive » Sense in the User-Created Divide wrote on May 30th, 2007 at 2:06 am:

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

Business and Games Blog wrote on June 2nd, 2007 at 12:45 am:

ve gotten tired of this debate and didn’t have anything worth saying. Well… not so tired I didn’t occasionally peek in to see how it was going. And now I can be glad I did take the time to at least do that. Andy Haven has posted (Link) what I think is the best comment on the thread and one of the better one’s I’ve read recently. It helps a little (kinda) if you read all the junk the rest of us posted before him, but if you only have time to read his observation it

Reader Comments

Delzo Delacroix said on May 22nd, 2007 at 9:42 am:
The thing about user created content is that anyone can whip together something, slap their name on it and call it done, even if they have no talent at all. It’s like sitting through a talent competition. You might have to sit through a lot of junk to see anything good.

However, what’s “good” to one person might not seem “good” to the next person. It’s all relative.

Opening up development of online worlds and games is leveling the playing field. You do have to look harder for the gems because of the increased noise, but that’s no different than real life. Plus you end up seeing some pretty cool stuff you would have missed otherwise.
Trucegore said on May 22nd, 2007 at 10:30 am:
I enjoy strong art direction.
Trucegore said on May 22nd, 2007 at 10:32 am:
It also depends on what kind of content you are referring to.

“User created content” is a huge umbrella.
Benson C. Dooley said on May 22nd, 2007 at 10:59 am:
As pointed out, user created content will vary in quality dramatically. But what if a virtual world built by “users” was only updated with the top rated content. Then all that would be needed is a system to “rank” the quality of someones work. It would serve as quality control, and give people a chance to learn how to build their own world, and eventually see it “discovered” on a wider scale. But I would say that there were probably alot of “creators” who got their ideas from watching other people fail. So a natural cycle occurs.
downsj said on May 22nd, 2007 at 11:02 am:
This is what I really miss from MUDs. The level of skill required in order to generate appealing 3D/art content is so much higher / different from writing compelling text.

The focus towards graphics really shut out a lot of creativity.

And yes, I miss that creative outlet. And yes, I can’t help but think, while staring at yet another poorly written quest dialog in some MMORPG, how any number of people from “back then” could’ve done so much better.
chabuhi said on May 22nd, 2007 at 11:14 am:
I just wish vw’s with user-created content had a mechanism for voting the crap content out of the world. ATITD had voting for user-created content, and SL sort of has it (well, it does, but it’s optional).

I have no problem with everyone taking their shot at creating something, but I also think we should be free to provide our honest feedback.

And if the wisdom of the masses can evict your poorly rendered 10-foot-tall phallus from SL … well, all the more fun for the rest of us to wave bye-bye to your pathetic reliance on the lowest common denominator.
Lacero said on May 22nd, 2007 at 11:22 am:
Remember, those who were here before you hired you out of that same pool you are looking down upon.

And then gave us 8 hours a day to work on it with maybe £2000 of hardware/software and an environment full of others in the same situation. Just because people say user generated content sucks doesn’t mean they think users suck, just that content made by individuals with little time is worse than content made by groups with lots of time.

Sure some students can do all the above, and funnily enough they usually make the best content. Like Counterstrike.

But really, I think the snobbishness you’re talking about is people recognising the amount of time and effort that has to go into something to make it good. A lot of games are selling themselves on the dream of making your own thing, and it’s just a lie. Almost no one who buys it will be capable of making anything half decent with it and it’s that lie that poisons the user generated content idea. (almost) everything will be rubbish because the software isn’t targeted at people who are capable of using it, there simply aren’t enough of them to make a profit. (they are not capable due to the amount of free time they have. no superiority here)
csven said on May 22nd, 2007 at 12:06 pm:
This issue certainly isn’t limited to videogames/virtual worlds. The product design community has expressed the same sort of arrogance (and in pretty distasteful ways; example:

Why is this notable? Because Aloft is planning on implementing the design changes in their real hotels, too. Fate is a cruel mistress, friends; four years of design school, and we designers may be put out of work by a bunch of transgender teenagers with batwings for ears.

And don’t think this attitude doesn’t extend to most professional videogame content creators; first thing you’ll hear is how you don’t know anything about manufacturing processes… even though what’s on the horizon makes all that irrelevant.
hunter walk said on May 22nd, 2007 at 12:25 pm:
the issue is a non-issue. It doesn’t matter if it’s crap. 100% matters to the creator and people who know the creator. Some smaller percentage matters to larger group. And some even smaller percentage matters to everyone.

There you go, the economics of UGC is in having a business model that celebrates this fact, not ignores it.
JuJutsu said on May 22nd, 2007 at 1:02 pm:
There you go, the economics of UGC is in having a business model that celebrates this fact, not ignores it.

Is it safe to assume that these celebratory business models allows someone [e.g. me] to avoid the content generated by the vast majority of other users that I don’t know? And more importantly those with, shall we say, dramatically different tastes? I don’t really care if someone has a poorly designed table in a ‘private’ virtual space or even a poorly designed building in a public virtual space. I worry much more about ‘time to cock’ measuring in seconds.
Raph said on May 22nd, 2007 at 1:08 pm:

Is it safe to assume that these celebratory business models allows someone [e.g. me] to avoid the content generated by the vast majority of other users that I don’t know? And more importantly those with, shall we say, dramatically different tastes? I don’t really care if someone has a poorly designed table in a ‘private’ virtual space or even a poorly designed building in a public virtual space. I worry much more about ‘time to cock’ measuring in seconds.

Sure. After all, you’re on this blog right now, not these. Somehow you found your way here, and didn’t stop on those. And somehow the content on those blogs isn’t leaking onto here (most of the time, anyway!).
Tess said on May 22nd, 2007 at 3:28 pm:
User-generated content, like all human creative endeavor, is subject to Sturgeon’s Law. In Sturgeon’s own words:

It is in this vein that I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against the attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of s f is crud. The Revelation: Ninety percent of everything is crud. Corollary 1: The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction is admitted and it is regrettable; but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere. Corollary 2: The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field.

The free market tends to act as a sort of crud-filter. That is, a company is going make an effort not to invest in a content creator who is going to produce more crud than not-crud. Ergo, what you find in stores will tend to be less cruddy than what you get for free. While you may find most of the musicians on the radio to be be well-polished turds, somebody out there likes them, or the record labels wouldn’t be ruthlessly exploiting them for money investing in their work, such as it is.

User-generated content also needs crud-filters. We used to have ways of doing this on MUDs. They worked with varying degrees of success, and, in many cases, probably wouldn’t have scaled well. Yet, the important thing is — we recognized and acknowledged the need. Oftentimes, it was something we grew into organically, after learning the inherent problems of wildly uncontrolled user building.

The threat to the scalability of our approaches was that they were largely top-down. Wizards were elected by the existing administration, or rose to the top of a pack, in some fashion or another (in an LP-MUD, this was often the “endgame,” if there could be said to be such a thing). Wizards did building, and inspected and approved building that other people did. It was authoritarian, and the public usually had little say in the matter.

Modern (”Web 2.0,” if you will, but that phrase gives me hives) techniques tend to be more democratic. However, there are inherent problems in these systems, as well. Have you ever noticed that the vast majority of clips on YouTube have 4 stars? I’ve seen the same phenomenon on NetFlix. To me, it would seem as though mass voting on a star rating isn’t very expressive or useful for many kinds of content.

Nonetheless, the effort to find good filters is important. I think that the case for user-generated content is not helped by the kind of wild, anarchic approach we see in Second Life. For every person who enjoys that, there are probably another nine who would like to reduce the probability of spontaneous furry bondage orgies appearing on their front lawns — if they even knew that such things existed prior to their descent into the luminous geometry of your digital sandbox. Most people could never cope with a year-round Burning Man — even the people who go to Burning Man. In the end, they burn it all down, and go home.
Andrew Crystall said on May 22nd, 2007 at 5:33 pm:
The most interesting “user created” mixing bowl to observe was probably NWN1. There were strong, central places for user-submitted mods, and comprehensive rating systems. And lo, the good user-created content rose to the top. Not all of it, of course, and some poor things drifted through, but in general the system worked quite well.
Mike Rozak said on May 22nd, 2007 at 6:05 pm:
I don’t entirely agree. There are a few differences (that are obviously non-binary):

Time commitment - How many hours goes into producing the content.

Skill - The amount of mastery behind the time commitment.

“Altruism” - At one end is users (and some game designers) creating the world that they want, not caring whether or not other people will enjoy it. At the other end is someone trying to create an experience with broad appeal.

A professional would tend to have 50 hrs/week (times many people in the team) over years, with skill, and altruism.

Someone modelling their home in SL probably has fewer hours total, with less experience, and with the goal of pleasing themselves and (maybe) their friends.

An “arteest” is someone with time, lots of skill, and low altruism.

As you point out though, ultimately this comes down to the issue of making it easy for “me to find what I’m looking for”, and one person’s content is another’s clutter. However, given a lack of content filters, the best/easiest filter to use is to look for profesionally created content.
joshlee said on May 22nd, 2007 at 6:28 pm:
We don’t yell at karaoke singers to get off the mic when they miss a note. We don’t return the socks our friends knitted for us if the lengths aren’t exactly even. We understand that these creators are making art for their own pleasure and presenting their art to us as a gift. The quality of the finished product is beside the point.

Filtering isn’t a question of separating the “good” from the “bad,” but of finding the content that’s relevant to a particular person at a particular time, that is, finding the gift that’s for me and not for someone else. Turns out there are already lots of methods of doing this: tags, clustering, behavioral analysis, good old fashioned word of mouth. VWs have just been behind on implementing most of these methods.
Raph said on May 22nd, 2007 at 6:56 pm:

Mike, most of those are circumstance. Time, skill, and altruism are not inherent in a professional setting, nor are they unavailable in an amateur setting. They may be more or less likely to manifest in one setting or the other, but it’s not a binary, either/or situation.
chabuhi said on May 22nd, 2007 at 7:43 pm:
I think some of what we see is a product of the all-enabling Internet (if not technology in general). “Ordinary” people, with increasing frequency, are able to participate in places where they were previously only able to consume. However, once they “arrive” what we too frequently witness is these newcoming “stars” slam the door shut behind them, lock it, and sneer out the window at the remaining pretenders.

It is similar to those folks who start a blog and then label themselves “writers” or “journalists”. I suppose the very act of writing makes one a writer, but I’m certainly not going to style myself thus on the basis of this comment (or the fact that I’ve journaled a few thoughts on a web page and published it to an rss feed).

Oh, my! And now we’ve arrived back at that very same snobbery we meant to criticize. Hmmm … so that’s how it happens.
Amaranthar said on May 22nd, 2007 at 8:13 pm:
I think you have to consider the setting for the content in all this, because it matters.
If you go to an art museum, you know what it is and will pass judgement as you feel you should, but it doesn’t bother you if some of the art strikes you as crap. But if you go to an art fair that’s got a “scenic wonders” flavor to it, and see some crappy version of modern art, or even a boatload of good, you wouldn’t think protesting would be out of order.

So, whatever you’re doing Raph, I think this is relevant to how it will be accepted. (And it’s loose enough that I can claim to be insightful no matter how it goes. )

As far as this kind of arrogance goes, I’ve been around enough to know that this is common everywhere. People with experiance find it hard to believe that someone with little experiance can know a thing or two. Most people don’t really think all that well. They rely on training and experiance, or maybe it’s those things that make them have more faith in that than thinking in new ways. Thinking outside the box is not common. In fact, it can be foolish if not done right, and a thing that rightly should be looked at with a wary eye. But still, not avoided, in my opinion.
Mike Rozak said on May 22nd, 2007 at 10:01 pm:
Raph wrote:

Mike, most of those are circumstance. Time, skill, and altruism are not inherent in a professional setting, nor are they unavailable in an amateur setting. They may be more or less likely to manifest in one setting or the other, but it’s not a binary, either/or situation.

I thought I said that…

On a random note, here’s a really rough formula for what I see going on:

Enjoyment = AuthorSkill * sqrt(AuthorTimeCommitment) * (PlayerWants dot AuthorTargets)

I use sqrt(AuthorTimeCommitment) because doubling the time devoted to a project doesn’t double the enjoyment.

PlayerWants and AuthorTargets are both vectors with length of 1. PlayerWants is the player’s ideal experience. AuthorTargets is the experience created by the author.

If I create my own content for myself (aka: my own house in SL), then PlayerWants == AuthorWants, thus (PlayerWants dot AuthorWants) = 1, and I think it’s the best thing in the world, despite my potentially low skill and low time commitment. My friends (and mother) will probably have a reasonably high dot product too; everyone else will have a dot-product close to 0.

Conversely, mass-market worlds are designed to appeal to everyone, which turns them into McFood… designed to offend no one, and destined to please no one. This means that (PlayerWants dot AuthorWants) is consistantly mediocre for all players. To counter this low value, mass-market worlds (theoretically) hire the best people (with a high skill) and hires a lot of them (lots of time commitment).

An artsy niche world, has a devisive AuthorWants that only attracts certain player personalities, who have a high (PlayerWants dot AuthorWants); most people end up disliking it (with a low dot product), end of story, and will leave no matter how great the author’s skill or time commitment. For example: An world based on authentic roman culture will turn off most people, but attract a group of loyal followers. Such loyal followers are willing to accept a lower skill and/or time value.

And getting back to what I was trying to say:

There’s a (strong or weak?) correlation between an author being a professional and having a high skill value.

There’s a (strong or weak?) correlation between the author being a professional and having a high time commitment. This is especially true for large 100-people projects, where trying to do open-source unpaid work is like hearding cats; you may get 10,000 volunteers to help you create an open-source WoW killer, but they’ll pull in so many directions that the time will be wasted. Inevitably there’ll be a civil war, and the team will split into two WoW killers going opposite directions, and then another civil war, ad infinitum. (Not to mention that 90% of the unpaid people will be low-skill and/or low time commitment.)

There’s a (strong or weak?) correlation between an author being professional and an AuthorTargets equalling McFood… after all, most professional authors are hired on big projects, which have to produce a non-offensive experience to attract millions of players. So, in some ways, more professional content (by large companies) is WORSE because it tends to be bland.

Lacking any decent player profiling (technology which Areae seems to be creating), players ultimately make choices about which world to try based on two metrics: (1) How much money was spent, with more expensive projects having tendencies towards higher skill, time commitment, and McFood, and (2) the “genre”, which implies a specific AuthorTargets vector.

If players arbitrarily try user-generated content, the probability of it having a low skill, low time, and/or low dot product is so high that it becomes “common wisdom” that “user-created content sux”.

Oops. Went a bit long. Probably offended a few people too.
m3mnoch said on May 22nd, 2007 at 11:00 pm:
Sure. After all, you’re on this blog right now, not these. Somehow you found your way here, and didn’t stop on those.

awwww, c’mon! you can’t go picking on perez like that! that blog is hawt! pink is the new black!

m3mnoch.

p.s. i got here through a trackback from perezhilton.com.

p.p.s. okay — so, not really…. but, shucks, that’d a been cool!
Richard Bartle said on May 22nd, 2007 at 11:46 pm:
I can’t draw. Nothing will make me be able to draw. Drawing is a skill I do not have and never will have. I could practice every day from now until I die and as I breathed my last I still wouldn’t be able to draw.

Some people can draw. They can draw, paint, animate, and a whole bunch of other things that I can’t ever dream of being able to do.

When it comes to drawing, some people have natural talent and some people don’t. If that’s true about drawing, why is it not true about designing virtual worlds?

Richard
m3mnoch said on May 23rd, 2007 at 12:35 am:
hrm. but, just because you can’t draw, richard, doesn’t mean that someone who’s never really been given the opportunity or encouragement to try can’t draw either. hell. i couldn’t carry a tune with a handle, but look at the raging storm that is american idol. talk about ugc….

what happens when someone who’s never even thought about virtual worlds much less designing them, but is say, an event planner in real life is given the opportunity to build one? what if they’re good? how are we going to know?

is it a question of talent? or opportunity? do you assume that anyone with any talent has already been plucked? if so, wow — what happens when we all die?

/shrug

oh well. that whole internet thing is a fad anyway.

m3mnoch.
Kerri Knight said on May 23rd, 2007 at 2:04 am:
I’ve had the experience, many times over, of running into content friction (for lack of a better term). That is to say, I and those of like interests pursuing an RP storyline or trying to promote an overall community feel getting run over by people with competing interests.

I had the joy of running a player city in SWG. We were dedicated to the purpose of an entertaining and open community, I didn’t mind that some shady business would go on, I actually encouraged it in fact. Some level of dissonance or drama gives us something to do, a challenge. What irked me is how I’d constantly deal with the issue of sex slave cults, mind rape RP scenarios, and other ‘taboo’ subjects being flaunted openly. It breaks the suspension of disbelief to constantly be subjected to others’ secret (well, the problem was they were not so secret) depravities.

I don’t mind what people do in their privacy, its when people unload their disruptive behavior in a way that makes it difficult for others to avoid. Kidnappings started, peopled began avoiding our weekly jams. Yes, you have to consent to being kidnapped in RP, but when faced with the vague threat of being cut off from the RP community for not going along with whats happening, lots of people fold. Their OOC desire not to get involved in this sort of behaviour was belittled, so their only choice was to avoid it entirely. I made rules to discourage slaving activities and was immediately beset by accusations of being emo, care-bear, and stifling RP.

My character as mayor typically was very militant against criminal elements of all kinds. Oddly, though she allowed their presence provided they weren’t violent or nothing was going on that she could otherwise prove. Off the books, she had a few syndicates she’d provide cover for, funny how the ones who complained OOCly that I was too harsh never bothered to offer her a bribe or do anything to improve the city or its community (i.e. we were someplace they came to take a crap on). I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have guests attacked and kidnapped from your cantina and next thing you know you’re getting yelled at for reacting as if this is unwelcome.

My point being (if I had one beyond nostalgia…) that for a number of people out there, content is something to subject you to. You are expected to play by their rules and they are above reproach or rebuke. Your desires and goals (especially if they don’t lie on some extreme) are unworthy of consideration. This applies also to arguments such as endgame goals in PvE-centric games, both sides disregard the others’ values…time, effort, and skill vs. community, socialization, etc. Either someone is playing the wrong game or we can’t get the concept of parallel progression paths with equal feedback/incentive structures. Apparently having what you want isn’t enough, you have to deny others access to their version of fun and enjoyment.

Quite frankly as far as what 90% of the general public will consume, Brittney Spears goes platinum in days, ok? They are exploited because they are exploitable; not because of quality, but becuase people follow trends. They are told it is what everyone else is doing and then do it. I honestly believe people would convince themselves moldering feces tastes great if everyone around them said the same, you don’t want to be different, do you?

‘Broad Appeal’ seems more of a tendency towards groupthink and mob mentality than an endorsement of quality. I’ve really started losing hope on an MMO/VW returning to the earlier appeals of the genre. More niche cultural groups and gameplay systems, less ‘one path for all’ progression and kill, loot, repeat content. All I’ve seen the latter accomplish is to devide the community into haves and have-nots, basically resembling class warfare.

So I propose a big question:

How can we satisfy a diverse selection of tastes without that diversity causing friction among incompatible groups?
Steve Streeting said on May 23rd, 2007 at 2:15 am:
I think everyone has an approximately equal amount of creativity, although how much it expresses itself is dependent on how much it has been repressed through life experience (and in most walks of life, creativity is often ground under foot, not least by so many people being rabid critics). What differs generally between content created by a professional and content created by an amateur is the level of polish, and application of accepted forms. Many professionals are able to mass-produce ‘good’ work largely because they follow accepted patterns known to mostly lead to good results - aesthetically and structurally it may be very pleasing & solid, but there’s an argument that there’s a good chance there may be less actual creativity, in terms of a percentage, going on there in many cases.

Yes, the amateur space has a low signal to noise ratio but it’s also free of many of the constraints that can hold back creativity. When you don’t actually _have_ to make a living from something, you have unprecedented rein to do something completely off the wall because of the lack of risk. If invest hours trying something completely bonkers and it doesn’t work, you’re not going to worry about that as an amateur. If it does work, chances are there will be nuggets that can be re-used and folded into those patterns professionals use so much. Thus I see the amateur arena as an incredibly useful experimentation space - yeah most people will just imitate others and probably do it badly, but provided the right distributed, Darwinian-like structures are in place to allow good ideas / implementations to float to the surface (and both the open source community and ‘mod sites’ follow this principle) it can be a rich seam of alternative content.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on May 23rd, 2007 at 2:26 am:
Richard: When it comes to drawing, some people have natural talent and some people don’t. If that’s true about drawing, why is it not true about designing virtual worlds?

The talent argument does have something to it, but I think MOST people can learn to draw/make music up to a certain level (some have genetic deficiencies, but not the majority). What most people are incapable of doing is getting most out of what they are capable of doing. They have pre-made ideas of what they are to achieve, only recognizable copies of som cliché is going to satisfy them. That is an even worse problem than a lack of talent. You get lots and lots of shiny manga-crap even with people who CAN draw. You don’t need to have drawing-skills to make great art, you need a good eye (a brain that can filter out the crap and that is willing to go in new directions). Unfortunately good World-Making skills means being good at conceptualizing in a pragmatic way, you need persistence and social organizing skills. Very few users in online worlds fill those requirements. 1 in 1000? If they don’t they aren’t going to bring any coherent vision to life, just a lot of shiny junk-items.

Anyway, I am not 100% if I know what Raph is aiming for. Maybe it isn’t Art. Very few of the current worlds are worthy of the Art label. You could create a user-contributed Manga-world framed in a template-system.

I just want to know how one are to avoid having the majority of users feeling “under-powered” because their skills are way below average if the theme is “a user-created coherent world”. Templates are the age-old idea of how to do user-created content in a fair and controlled manner. That works to some extent, but is dis-satisfactory for those users who have real talent… Filtering doesn’t work. Filtering produces the icing on the cake, but the cake is missing. Filtering buys will get you pulp and jokes. (which is ok, if that is the goal).

IMHO, blogs, flicker etc doesn’t count as proof-of-concept. You are your own island in those systems. Some islands are crap and some are Art, but there is little cross-communication, compared to what would consider reasonable for a virtual world.
Lobosolitario said on May 23rd, 2007 at 2:30 am:
I disagree with the comments stating that professionals have more time than amateur creators. Better tools, yes, but more time? Not often.

An amateur may only have a few hours a week to work on their project, but they have the freedom to keep on working on it “until it’s done”.

The professionals may have a lot of hours a week to dedicate to content, but they’re under constant time pressure to finish what they’re doing and get on with the next batch (unless they’re in a very permissive company) and are often forced to release content that they would personally like to have spent longer working on.
Lacero said on May 23rd, 2007 at 3:14 am:
I just want to know how one are to avoid having the majority of users feeling “under-powered” because their skills are way below average if the theme is “a user-created coherent world”.

The same thing happens with time, if you make it easier to create you cause quality inflation. More quality creations are available, so each one is desired less, and users can more easily create their own perfect creation rather than using a best fit one from someone else.

I’m not down on user generated content in general, I just think the experience being promised and the experience being delivered don’t have a lot in common. Some creators do it to show friends, some do it to see their creations used by other people, some do it for the act of creation and then never share. The distinctions between these groups, and sometimes between them and the actual users, don’t seem to be acknowledged in most places.

An amateur may only have a few hours a week to work on their project, but they have the freedom to keep on working on it “until it’s done”.

ok, but unless they can commit exactly the same amount of time and at the same time every week they’ll still be working alone. You can’t run a group of people who works a few hours a week when you can’t predict exactly when they’ll be giving those hours. If they take a week off it means things aren’t ready for other team members to use, slowing the whole project. These pressures and the sense of missing out usually mean people with a few hours a week don’t work in teams, meaning they get much less done.

Even so, the numbers are kinda scary. 50 hours a week for an overworked paid employee vs say 3 hours a week for the guy at home. It’ll take him 16 times as long to make the same thing, without adjusting for equipment or team members with more suitable skills for some sections. ok, some time is spent thinking, some time at work is wasted (like I’m doing now..), but I think 15x is about the right order of magnitude.

Also building something in a few hours a week falls down when the thing you’re building in isn’t stable. For a boat, or painting, it’s fine, but in eg. SecondLife if you take 15 years you’ll be left behind with no support, and no users when you’re finally done.
Morgan Ramsay said on May 23rd, 2007 at 3:41 am:
Seeing yourself as somehow above or different is shorthand for thinking that you’re better. And that’s just being snobby.

Thinking yourself different is not akin to thinking yourself superior.
Lobosolitario said on May 23rd, 2007 at 3:59 am:
Agreed, the commitment is the big issue for the non-pros. Those that have the dedication, and the skill, make great stuff.

I’d say that 3 hours a week is a bit low though - it might be right for a family guy with a lot of commitments, but most people I know who are serious about making content can afford to invest upwards of 10 hours a week in it. Again, teams may have a lot of combined man-hours, but the amount they get to focus on any one thing is strictly limited.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on May 23rd, 2007 at 4:11 am:
The same thing happens with time, if you make it easier to create you cause quality inflation.

Depends on how you do it. Easy doesn’t mean “not time-consuming”. If your game is based on collecting materials, you do get a grind…

I’m all for user-building. Has always been. I think the Active/Worlds and SL route is the wrong route though. You need to first establish the world, then gradually enable players to build. And carefully, as a nerf will be massively not popular ;-D. I’ve been arguing for a constraint-oriented solution since 1998 or so (even had a chapter musing over the concept in my master).

One thing you probably will need to do, is to embrace Pulp as Valid Art (kinda like the pop-art movement). I am increasingly thinking that the world will need to be Designed-As-Pulp right from the start if you want to remain within reasonable bounds of coherency.
Kerri Knight said on May 23rd, 2007 at 7:07 am:
Depends on how you do it. Easy doesn’t mean “not time-consuming”. If your game is based on collecting materials, you do get a grind…

This presents an interesting question I’ve had. If there is a materials requirement for producing player-created goods, who determines how many materials and of what kind? What effect does their value (if applicable) have on the end product?
Richard Bartle said on May 23rd, 2007 at 7:47 am:
m3mnoch>hrm. but, just because you can’t draw, richard, doesn’t mean that someone who’s never really been given the opportunity or encouragement to try can’t draw either.

Of course it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean they can, either.

>is it a question of talent? or opportunity?

Well that’s kinda what I was asking…

Richard
Richard Bartle said on May 23rd, 2007 at 7:52 am:
Steve Streeting>I think everyone has an approximately equal amount of creativity

Why would they?

Richard
Raph said on May 23rd, 2007 at 7:55 am:

I have come to think that talent can be defined as “predisposition towards specific mental models & cognitive approaches.” Given that, and what I have read about how the brain works, that also means that a huge amount of what we call talent is practice. Talent is a head-start: an inborn predisposition to, say, see the world as flat, or think in terms of shapes and masses and colors. But ANYONE can learn to do that — though they may be battling against their preferred habits. And that means anyone can learn to draw.

Basically, everyone can run, but some people happen to have longer legs. But that doesn’t mean the long-legged person will always win the race. Who trains longest and hardest matters more. A lot of long-legged people coast on their natural advantage — and some folks to whom it does not come natural just keep working at it.
Mavis said on May 23rd, 2007 at 8:43 am:
Raph - I’ve got to disagree with you about talent. It’s more then just a head start. Your right - lots of hard work can beat your talent head start, and in a race the person who trains the most does get an advantage. But you know what - no matter how hard I train or even if I had trained my entire life - I would never win the olympics or even represent my country or even just my city. I’m good with numbers, and I’m good with problem solving - but I would takes years of effort to learn to even sing badly…..

So talent does matter.

All that said - I agree with the article. User created content can be brillant - and a user is just somebody not being paid YET to make stuff. But we do need a filter to dodge the cr*p. It might be the fact that soembody was willing to pay to make it - is simply a filter - but it needs to be there.
Gene Endrody said on May 23rd, 2007 at 5:20 pm:
The approaches used by Second Life and Spore are so vastly different that they provide two completely different perspectives on this debate. Ok, silly analogy time…

Ask an participant to build something out of a block of clay with no training and 90% of them are going to come up with crap. 90% of them are likely not going to bother trying in the first place. Ask a participant to build something out of Lego and you’ll get a different result. Most people don’t find Lego that daunting, so they are more likely to participate. A truly talented artist may find Lego a little constraining, however piles of Lego creations side by side done by different participants have a consistency that art director’s like (well, sort of).

Procedurally generated content where the parameters of creation can be messed with by the user (like Spore’s approach) has the potential to encourage people like Richard to be creators. It’s way easier to ensure that new content follows the rules of the system, maintains a certain level of consistency of art direction (assuming you’ve built in reasonable limits) and it’s smaller (small is good if your trying to stream content into a 3D world.)

The tools that a developer gives the user to develop user generated content have a major impact. (Tools might be the wrong word, because it implies they are standalone, as opposed to integrated in the game experience.) There’s a point at which these features become so complex, that you might as well use a 3D package, but at least it’s up to the designer where to draw the line. I would like to see some competition between developers in this area because it needs more exploration.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on May 23rd, 2007 at 11:10 pm:
Gene, yeah procedural construction can add something, but it is difficult to get right. You risk creating a system where users only use 0.01% of the capabilities, not because it is difficult to use, but because most people are driven by the aesthetics of Fashion, not art. That means they will try to copy whatever their neighbours are doing. Ok, so you will get different-looking neighbourhoods, but maybe you would have been better off having a real artist create 1000 objects which can be composited and muted. Then you are at least assured that some aspect of the output have artistic merit.

The advantage of freeform creation (e.g. pixel-level) is that the creation is likely to carry a personal signature. SO, even if users copy their designs will carry a personal signature if you can force them into using your own tools. Look what happend at The Palace. Most of the avatars ended up looking similar.

You could stratify the designspace to combat this, and turn it into some kind of collectible-items game. (limited editions of each visual look) The implications are less attractive: ==> ebay ==> punishing late-comers.

Constraining resources is a good idea, though. Yes, Lego is too limited, but too much flexibility will invite copying. Look at Miami where the rich live in ugly dull kitsch neighbourhoods and where some of the less fortunate live in a brilliant mix of colours (gee, I ran out of pink, but I got hold of some turquise… How can I make good use of that?). Western suburbs is a living proof of the potential failure of “user-created” content world creation… Give people what they want and they will want something incredibly bland.
Richard Bartle said on May 23rd, 2007 at 11:51 pm:
Raph>a huge amount of what we call talent is practice.

Yes, but you’re still saying that not all of it is. This suggests that some of it is hardware, not software.

>Talent is a head-start: an inborn predisposition to, say, see the world as flat, or think in terms of shapes and masses and colors.

My wife is just over five feet tall. No amount of practice is going to enable her to reach objects from shelves eight feet off the ground. She just can’t do it - it’s a hardware issue. Now if that’s clearly the case for physical abilities, why not for mental ones? There are well-documented differences between the sexes in their general capacity to do linguistic and spacial tasks: are those merely “an inborn predisposition” or is there some brain wiring involved that no amount of study is going to beat? Do people with Asperger’s syndrome make good mathematicians and programmers because they’re predisposed to it, or because they have some special tools in their mental toolbox that the rest of us don’t?

>But ANYONE can learn to do that — though they may be battling against their preferred habits.

There is a difference between talent and ability. You’re arguing that anyone can acquire an ability, which, even if it were true (and I don’t think it always is), doesn’t mean they have talent. It doesn’t mean they don’t have talent, of course, which is why we encourage people to try things out - they may indeed be talented.

Some people, though, you know from the start are never going to have the ability, let alone the talent.

>And that means anyone can learn to draw.

Despite intense education on the subject in my formative years, I can barely do handwriting. I am never going to be able to draw, unless you slacken the definition of “draw” so much that a fish could do it. I can not make the tip of a pencil go where I want it to go. All the theory and practice in the world isn’t going to help what is basically a fine-control issue.

Even if we restrict ourselves to mental tasks, we find differences. Some people have eidetic memories, while others can barely recall what they had for lunch. Can you ever train the latter to be able to do what the former does? If not, then the former are always going to be able to perform some mental tasks that the latter aren’t.

Although it would be great if every human merely had to practice in order to become talented, what evidence is there that this is indeed the case?

Richard
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on May 24th, 2007 at 6:27 am:
Kerri:

This presents an interesting question I’ve had. If there is a materials requirement for producing player-created goods, who determines how many materials and of what kind? What effect does their value (if applicable) have on the end product?

Hard to tell without assuming a particular design. You could tie materials to login-days and subscription days (4 pieces for each day you log in + 4 pieces for each day you subscribe). So if you log in often you get to add a few bricks to your house. I you log in seldom you get to build more. You could discriminate between different subscriptions too. (I am not endorsing this design, just suggesting one of many possible solutions to regulating building pace).
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on May 24th, 2007 at 6:40 am:
Richard: I can not make the tip of a pencil go where I want it to go. All the theory and practice in the world isn’t going to help what is basically a fine-control issue.

If that is all… paint using bigger units. Do tiles. Do collages. Drape valleys in cloth. Practice drawing big circular motions (lots) on A3 paper for several minutes. Then do lines. Everyday. Great artists cheat, btw. Use photos. Sketch lots of outlines with pencils and plot in black lines when you’re done, scan the drawing and threshold in a paintprogram. Etc.

I am pretty sure I could teach anyone to construct a one-way perspective of a street and get a decent result. Same with colour, you can teach people basic colour theory and have them seek the most promising combinations. The bigger challenge is to train the eye to see the artistic potential… That might take 1 year of unlearning followed by 3 years of learning (art school?). However, you can’t do anything if they have no desire to be creative in the visual medium. So maybe the real question is: how many have this desire?
Daniel Speed said on May 24th, 2007 at 7:02 am:
The difference between the user created stuff and the stuff you do “professionally” isn’t the creation of it, it’s the stuff done by your Art Director, Art Lead and Producer, that maintain the consistency of look and quality. It’s the sign-off by the technical artist or graphics programmer about it being within your performance requirements, and it’s about the sign-off from QA about it not being broken.

The argument against user created content is not one against users being able to create good quality stuff, it’s one about nobody having come up with a good way that you can maintain your own standards on it as a whole if that’s what you care about.

Can you imagine what it would be like, if players of a PVP game had to make their own informal rules not to wear hair when they wanted to do more than a 5v5? Or if one guy was invisible because he had no model.

Would WoW be where it is today if Blizzard didn’t have such exacting standards?
StGabe said on May 24th, 2007 at 8:18 am:
Quit being snobby about user-created content.

To which I say: quit cherry-picking “user” content. Yes, you can find some great examples of people who were “mere users” making great stuff. But they were universally the exceptional. The ones who probably could and should have been doing this professionally all along.

Given that, and what I have read about how the brain works, that also means that a huge amount of what we call talent is practice.

You are right but also very wrong. It is practice. But most of it is practice done at an age when one is flexible enough to take it in. If you get to be 20 and you haven’t done a lot of problem solving then it’s too late. You might as well call it a “talent” at that point because you’re at a point where cramming in those skills now would take more time than you have.

Want a real life example? My adopted sister. No education until age 11. Despite having an eager and intelligent teacher in my mother she will never know how to add 3 and 5. After years upon years of “practice” that is not something that she will learn. Because she’d already passed the time in her development where the practice would have stuck. At this point it would be sufficient to say that she simply has no ability, aptitude or talent for math even though in truth she could have learned it had she sufficient practice at an early time. Other things she has managed just fine because she did get to practice them in her orphanage. People and relationships were very important and she has an uncanny knack for recalling people’s names and how she knows them, for example. Because she practiced that at the right time in her development.

Remember, those who were here before you hired you out of that same pool you are looking down upon.

Well you are hiring right now so you must be saying “no” to a lot of candidates. I know that I am called to do interviews of candidates fairly often and the answer is usually “no”. I would say that the tech industry in general has been facing a problem for years where it has grown far beyond its ability to supply itself with qualified employees. Most of the really hard jobs in the industry aren’t something that you can “just learn” real quick. They’re something that, by age 13 or so, someone is going to be able to do or not. To back that up, I also have experience trying to teach complex computer concepts to CS students. I’ve worked with very motivated and hard-working kids who really wanted to learn how to do more and yet, years later, still weren’t really there.

So, it’s not that easy. You can’t look at that “pool” that “we all came from” as homogenous. Not all user-created content is created equally. The good stuff is created by outliers. For every blog like this there are a thousand or more barren blogs that really are never going to amount to much utlity to anyone else. I’ve created one or two of those myself. They’re nice for having contact with a few friends or such and I am not denigrating that utility. But let’s not make more of them than that.
Brask Mumei said on May 24th, 2007 at 9:46 am:
“PlayerWants and AuthorTargets are both vectors with length of 1″, or, in common parlance, scalars. :> Despite this nitpicking, I do like the analogy.
Raph said on May 24th, 2007 at 10:09 am:

So, I concede that there are of course plenty of cases where either physical handicaps or (as in StGabe’s example) massively late starts means that achieving parity or competence, much less excellence, may be out of reach.

The underlying point of the post, however, was the attitude that ALL user created content is bad. And the fact is that it’s just not the case.

Look at music: there are literally tens of thousands of competent musicians out there, doing their indie thing. They may be trying to make money at it. Lots of them are failing, and lots of them don’t even try. That’s user-created content. And the line between them and the “pros” is really a very gray area.

Saying “well, those are the ones who should have or could have been doing it professionally all along” is essentially drawing a bright line in that gray area.
Morgan Ramsay said on May 24th, 2007 at 11:35 am:
One has to wonder what exactly this discussion aims to achieve.

The underlying point of the post, however, was the attitude that ALL user created content is bad.

Games are interactive and because that is so, everything the player does to contribute to the game experience can be considered user-generated content. Somewhere down the road "user-generated content" became "transferrable user-generated content," but transferrability is not necessary to the ability of users to generate content to effect change in their game experience.

This discussion appears to be too narrowly focused on the shallow end of the spectrum. There’s a lot more content that makes up the game experience than the elements you can manipulate in Photoshop.
StGabe said on May 24th, 2007 at 12:22 pm:
So, I concede that there are of course plenty of cases where either physical handicaps or (as in StGabe’s example) massively late starts means that achieving parity or competence, much less excellence, may be out of reach.

It’s not just handicaps or late starts though. It is literally: what you learn before age 10 becomes a talent. Let’s say it takes 10 years of practice to become a good programmer or artist. Ok. But it’s not like you can just put in 10 years at any stage in your life. To be doing the learning you need to do at 18, you need to have already done all the learning you needed at 10. If you don’t get to certain stages by certain cutoffs then you’re never going to go further. If you aren’t already excited by and good at problem solving at age 10 then there is almost no chance that you will ever be a good programmer. It’s not that this is genetically programmed or not a matter of practice. It’s just a reality of developmental psychology.

And so, in practice, talking about talents for anyone over the age of 10 is in fact mostly accurate and appropriate. There are kids in college who don’t have the skill and aptitudes to be programmers or artists and they won’t pick that up no matter how much time they spend on it.

The underlying point of the post, however, was the attitude that ALL user created content is bad.

But I’m not sure that anyone’s saying that. Instead they’re saying that the vast majority is bad and that user content creation tools will often (not always) fail to generate anything useful. The last few years have seen huge growth for toolkits for game development for example. And while some games have come out of these toolkits the content has been vastly underwhelming. The reason? The outliers that have the skills to make really good games don’t need tools. Picking up any of a number of API’s or tools isn’t hard for them. Those people were there and thriving in about the same numbers when they had to hack in models and hex edit existing code. And it IS too late for most people without the requisite skills to build their way up to competency in programming. I’m not saying there isn’t anyone stuck in between those extremes just that those people aren’t very common and that’s why these products aren’t that successful.

Look at music: there are literally tens of thousands of competent musicians out there, doing their indie thing. They may be trying to make money at it. Lots of them are failing, and lots of them don’t even try. That’s user-created content. And the line between them and the “pros” is really a very gray area.

Indie bands have been around, well, forever. Not much has changed about the existence of local/indie bands and I haven’t seen any evidence that there are more garage bands today than 20 years ago. What has changed, and is completely separate from creation tools, is that now these bands have broader access to potential audiences. This is great, it’s just not about user created content so much as it’s about changing commerce models and more efficient communication and information dispersal.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on May 24th, 2007 at 1:02 pm:
Morgan, if the designer has (or could have) predicted the most significant aspects of the user-experience then that experience isn’t based on what I would call user-generated content. For your average MMO, only hardcore role-players truly create user-generated content…
Morgan Ramsay said on May 24th, 2007 at 2:30 pm:
Morgan, if the designer has (or could have) predicted the most significant aspects of the user-experience then that experience isn’t based on what I would call user-generated content.

What does prediction have to do with users generating content? If content is generated by a user, it’s generated by a user. I can predict that someone will create some innovative, original technology. When that technology is developed, does the fact of my prediction annul the fact that the technology was developed? No. The user generation of content has nothing to do with originality.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on May 24th, 2007 at 10:24 pm:
Raph is clearly talking about creators, not generators. Ok, rephrase everything using the term “user created content” then…

And yes, prediction has everything to do with it, because prediction is at the core of design.
Richard Bartle said on May 24th, 2007 at 11:55 pm:
Ola Fosheim Grøstad>If that is all… paint using bigger units.

I didn’t say I couldn’t daub paint or make collages, I said I couldn’t draw. If I’d said I couldn’t read small letters, would you suggest I started looking at big letetrs and worked my way down until I could see small ones? No, of course you wouldn’t - you’d accept it was a problem with my eyesight.

>when you’re done, scan the drawing and threshold in a paintprogram. Etc.

This is like telling me to use a magnifying glass to read small letters. Sure, it circumvents the problem, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I can’t draw.

>I am pretty sure I could teach anyone to construct a one-way perspective of a street and get a decent result.

I know how to construct a one-way perspective of a street. I did actually study technical drawing at school (I was the only one in the class to pass the subsequent exam); if I get to use a set square and T square, I can produce reasonable results. Ask me to do it freehand, though, and it’s not going to happen.

Some people just can’t do some things that other people can do, even if they’re given tuition.

Richard
Richard Bartle said on May 25th, 2007 at 12:04 am:
Raph>So, I concede that there are of course plenty of cases where either physical handicaps or (as in StGabe’s example) massively late starts means that achieving parity or competence, much less excellence, may be out of reach.

You’re not saying that there are mental differences, though? Everyone could be an Einstein if they were taken at birth and given the right kind of training? People who aren’t savants could learn Icelandic in a week?

>The underlying point of the post, however, was the attitude that ALL user created content is bad. And the fact is that it’s just not the case.

The way you put it, though, ALL users were potentially able to create good content. I want to know why you think that’s the case, too. Some users, yes, but in a proportion less than 100%, surely?

Richard
Morgan Ramsay said on May 25th, 2007 at 12:56 am:
Raph is clearly talking about creators, not generators.

“Generation” and “creation” are synonyms for the same activity of bringing something into existence.

Any division of these terms is purely arbitrary.

And yes, prediction has everything to do with it, because prediction is at the core of design.

That still has nothing to do with the user generation of content. Emergence can effect the generation of content by users, but emergence is not necessary for content to be generated by users.

Digg and other social bookmarking communities are designed to facilitate the user generation of content. The fact that a mechanism is designed for this express purpose has absolutely no bearing on whether that content generated by users can be explicitly described as content generated by users. All content generated by users is, by definition, user-generated content!
csven said on May 25th, 2007 at 3:48 am:
I didn’t bother to watch it last year, but after seeing it on Wonderland I wish I had. I think what’s said is relevant to this conversation, even if only peripherally.

“Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?” -
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66
Amaranthar said on May 25th, 2007 at 4:32 am:
If you don’t get to certain stages by certain cutoffs then you’re never going to go further. If you aren’t already excited by and good at problem solving at age 10 then there is almost no chance that you will ever be a good programmer. It’s not that this is genetically programmed or not a matter of practice. It’s just a reality of developmental psychology.

I don’t believe this is true at all. Sure, it’s a barrier. But that barrier can be broken down on a whim. The reason this might appear to be true might be the simple fact that most people find their comfort zone in life quite naturally at an early age. And most people don’t like to change because, well, change is riskier…survival mechanism at work. Yet, people do change. People break down barriers all the time.

Besides, we are all problem solvers by our very nature. It’s only a question of which problems we choose to solve.

But still, something bothers me. (1)People screw up all the time. These screw ups are often very obvious and predictable. Why do we do that? For problem solvers, we can be very stupid. It’s the rare few who succeed. (2)But anyone can learn anything if they want to, generally speaking. I know these two thoughts are true. I’ve seen it in myself and in others so many times….I know it’s true. Two conflicting ideas, both proven and true.

I think it must have to do with a combination of the hidden complexities of all involved in an enterprize (WoW’s cartoonish art accepted as good) and the mental blocks people put up in their desire to succeed (something about SWG changes?). But the entirety, or should I say the vision, of this eludes me. Vision may be the key here, but I can’t totally define it. Or it may be the artistic vision, that might be a better way to put it. You see, it’s not WoWs graphics alone, it’s the combination with the movements and depth of freedoms involved in that art, along with the feeling it brings out. Woods feel like woods, burnt lands feel like burnt lands. It’s all in the smoke, lad, it’s all in the smoke.
Raph said on May 25th, 2007 at 7:37 am:

You’re not saying that there are mental differences, though? Everyone could be an Einstein if they were taken at birth and given the right kind of training? People who aren’t savants could learn Icelandic in a week?

Savants are exactly the kind of massive head start that genetics can give.

But it doesn’t mean that someone else can’t learn Icelandic and even produce something competent in it.

The way you put it, though, ALL users were potentially able to create good content. I want to know why you think that’s the case, too. Some users, yes, but in a proportion less than 100%, surely?

I tend to go with Sturgeon’s Law overall too, in terms of overall output.

Though I have pointed out before that even bad content has a sizable audience quite a lot of the time. Friends & family, fellow fans of the sort of material (check out the fanfic world), etc. And for the creator, that is often plenty of an audience.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on May 25th, 2007 at 8:15 am:
Richard: I didn’t say I couldn’t daub paint or make collages, I said I couldn’t draw. If I’d said I couldn’t read small letters, would you suggest I started looking at big letetrs and worked my way down until I could see small ones? No, of course you wouldn’t - you’d accept it was a problem with my eyesight.

I would not!!! I would give you zoom-functionality. See? I am creative.

In the context of user-created worlds I’d say that what your argument suggest is that we have to provide many tools for drawing rather than a single one. I’ll get my pencil and you’ll get your T-bar. A well planned graphics engine should be able to render them somewhat coherently.

Besides I am not at all sure that pixel-perfect should be the goal for a world based on user-created content. Child-like drawings can be incredibly charming. Add some wobbly computer-generated toon-transforms and you have your free-for-all-draw-your-own-toon world. Now, don’t tempt me into proving my point by implementing one… *grins*

(And your handwriting is no worse than mine. Has nothing to do with freehand drawing capabilities. If it has, I’m gonna be insulted.)

((Morgan, creation is only a subset of generation if you have an infinite amount of time on your hand… and you still have to select.))
StGabe said on May 25th, 2007 at 8:43 am:
Besides, we are all problem solvers by our very nature.

Teach a college level Introduction to Logic course and get back to me on
that. Or try to teach English as a second language to people who never got a good grounding in their first language. These are people who really, really want to learn what you’re trying to teach them and the barriers they face are far more complex than merely choice or investment of time.

I don’t believe this is true at all. Sure, it’s a barrier. But that barrier can be broken down on a whim.

Unfortunately it is true. We can’t learn whatever we want whenever we want. Human physiology, while marvelously flexible compared to that of other animals, has its limits. Look for example at reactive attachment disorder. Children who are not able to form bonded relationships with their parents in the first two years suffer from a lasting inability to bond, with people in general, causing significant discord and deficiencies in their interpersonal relationships. There are treatments that can help to mitigate symptoms but without treatment this is a lifelong condition caused by a failure to meet a developmental stage by age 2 and even treatment is not a cure but merely a mitigation of symptoms (and what is easily done at age 2 may take years of therapy to approach afterwards).

…

Here’s one analogy that may help. We are basically computers whose hardware changes according to a developmental schedule that is, assuredly, based on our experiences but also fundamentally limited by physiological changes. We can always change our software but if we don’t get the right hardware at the right times then it can be late to go back and “install” more. I.e. if you don’t have a floating point unit by a certain point then tough luck (look at my sister). Now, sure, you can do the equivalent of “software emulation” of floating point for your whole life. But it will never be nearly as efficient as someone who has that as just an embedded part of how they think. You might muddle by but you’ll never be really proficient compared to peers. My sister, for example, can memorize the answers to a certain number of addition questions well enough to fake it for a bit. However she really doesn’t have any of the machinery that lets the rest of us visualize and understand numbers. She didn’t develop any after literally years of training and encouragement from her parents and teachers and at this point it’s safe to say that she’s simply not going to no matter how much time is invested.
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on May 25th, 2007 at 7:46 pm:
StGabe: Besides, we are all problem solvers by our very nature. Teach a college level Introduction to Logic course and get back to me on
that.

I’ve helped teaching (”mandatory”) introductory courses in programming in smaller groups of people on a university. In one way you are right, I can right from the start tell who aren’t likely to pass the exam. BUT, not because they are incapable, they make progress, even though they make you want to tear out your hair… They can’t keep up with the curriculum which probably kills motivation too. Maybe they will need to take the course 3-6 times before succeeding (but they probably will quit after failing 2 times…). IMO, you can learn throughout your lifespan, but you need more time when you get older. Some things takes way too much time as an adult, agreed. (e.g. violin, body building without drugs, etc)

Hardware is different, yes. Some people are more rigid than others, some to the extent that they might not be able to show much creativity. (e.g. certain disorders which makes people good at replication, but not very good at invention) Still, most people could learn creative techniques to break out of their most rigid patterns.

So, in the context of “Can we make great user created worlds” I think the question should be: can those attracted be given the toolkit they need to bring this vision to life? I feel that the answer to this is: yes, it is doable, but you need a plethora of creative avenues. For some users maybe you have to provide them with the “feeling of being creative” rather than actually stimulating real creativity…

(Sorry for writing so many entries, but I find this topic very interesting. I’m into virtual worlds for three reasons: art, user influence, design.)
Richard Bartle said on May 26th, 2007 at 1:56 am:
Raph>Savants are exactly the kind of massive head start that genetics can give.

But they could be in places that other people simply can’t get to, ever? Might it not be that what you said for physical limitations (”achieving parity or competence, much less excellence, may be out of reach”) could also apply to some mental limitations? And if that is the case, why couldn’t it extend to creativity? Perhaps some people really are more creative than other people, and no amount of training would bring the latter up to the standards of the former?

I’m not saying this is necessarily the case, but I want to know why you seem to believe it isn’t.

>Though I have pointed out before that even bad content has a sizable audience quite a lot of the time. Friends & family, fellow fans of the sort of material (check out the fanfic world), etc. And for the creator, that is often plenty of an audience.

Oh, of course. One of the ways of judging whether something is “good” or not is to see if it’s fit for purpose. If I wanted to sketch a quick map to show someone how to get to my house, even my lousy drawing talents would be sufficient to produce something that did the job. A Myspace page showing photos of friends and family isn’t making any attempt to be relevant outside a small circle of people, but it’s highly relevant to those within that circle.

When content is created for a wider audience, though, it has to stand on different merits. Some people can create stuff that’s better than what others can create. Maybe the others can learn how to do it, or can do it by taking a long time, or they can collaborate to do it. Is there a point, though, where they couldn’t ever get?

Richard
Raph said on May 26th, 2007 at 5:42 am:

Hmm, somehow my position is being portrayed as somewhat more extreme than it actually is. In the original post, I said,

any distinction between “users” and “creators” is artificial. Creators were all users first. In this business, a professional is just someone lucky enough to get paid for their hobby. Good creators (in any field) are often simply those who have more practice — and you can get practice as an amateur.

That does not equate to “everyone can be as creative as a professional creator with talent and lots of practice.” Just wanted to note that before responding.

Yes, savants could effectively have a “head start” that makes them win the race the day they get up. And yes, there can be insurmountable mental limitations. But in both cases here, we’re dealing with outliers. In general, practice can have astounding effects on someone’s ability to do something competently, even things for which they have no talent. Everyone moves at a different pace along this track.

But that is to some large degree beside the point of the post. I wasn’t even assessing the relative talent levels of the amateurs versus the pros; I was commenting that every pro was once an amateur, and that there’s lots of talented amateurs waiting to be discovered, and that therefore dismissing the entire group as inconsequential is snobbery.

Perhaps some people really are more creative than other people, and no amount of training would bring the latter up to the standards of the former?

Some people ARE more creative than others. And yes, the others can be trained, and some of them may make greater strides than others — and if the more creative ones coast, they might be overtaken. Or they might not, depending on how far ahead they are.
Lord Hades said on May 26th, 2007 at 7:02 am:
I think that user created content is a great idea, and may take the “cloned” feeling out of today’s games. Of course there needs to be some quality control process, and maybe even a user voting system but I certainly think its time to get outside the box with MMORPG gaming content.
bill trost said on May 26th, 2007 at 9:11 am:
it’s my opinion that snobbery is rude in any forum.
(really? you like money too? we should totally hang out…)

however, i disagree with this:

any distinction between “users” and “creators” is artificial

i think there are tangible, market-driven differences.

i think the real problem is that the video game industry is still young and has yet to place real value on quality contributors.

to me, as a customer and a professional, this has always been a practical problem. regardless of how they got there, either through “talent” or “practice”, some will manage to create something “worth looking at”. in either case, i don’t really care at all about how they got there. i only care about finding them… and for them to meet my, or my market’s, expectations of “entertainment value”.

i’ll use professional american baseball… where the value of an individual contributor is through the freaking roof… and where each MLB organization has a paid team of professional scouts watching high school baseball games, trying to find good contributors… they probably even helped to buy a place to play and equipment for the little leaguers in the area before they ever got to high school… investing in the future.

then they have farm teams that require additional investment and commitment to a smaller community… to test out and nurture the “good” players in a highly specialized market that enjoys the more intimate nature of the game at that level and is less concerned about consistent, high level, play…

peh, i think you can see where i was going with this baseball junk.

i think the video game industry needs a similar commitment to the value of the quality individual contributor, and the additional investment that is required to find, nurture, and market those people appropriately… not the devaluing of the professional that some seem to see as the boon of the proposition.. i.e. “free content”
Richard Bartle said on May 27th, 2007 at 1:52 am:
Raph>I wasn’t even assessing the relative talent levels of the amateurs versus the pros; I was commenting that every pro was once an amateur, and that there’s lots of talented amateurs waiting to be discovered, and that therefore dismissing the entire group as inconsequential is snobbery.

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
Andy Havens said on May 27th, 2007 at 8:03 pm:
I just read all 53 comments, and find it hard to believe that in a crowd of gamers, we’re talking about the quality of the content and/or the “talent index” as if that’s the most important thing. Perhaps it’s because of the words chosen: “User created content” puts the emphasis on the “stuff;” the content. It makes us think about the quality of the stuff (is that a prett virtual pony? no….) and, therefore, the talent/skill, time, effort, etc. of amateurs vs. pros or however you want to classify it.

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. Forge