April 07, 2004

GDC: User Created Content

User Created Content, Roundtable
Trent Oster, BioWare (NeverWinter Nights)

Raph Koster (Star Wars: Galaxies), Dan Huebner (Second Life), folks from There, in attendance

BioWare had to let the community host their own content, because of licensing and bandwidth issues. Company legally owned all the content, but did not distrubute without author permission.

Pros:

  • good recruiting tool
  • extends life of product
  • let motivated players create their own content and not pester devs
  • game tweaking can be done based on the niches that the community is filling
  • forces you to make better tools

Cons:

  • tools cost $2.5M to empower 25-30% users
  • need tech support/community management

Localization gets done based on what work is the most popular work and people are willing to translate themselves.


[At this point I asked a couple of questions about user created content for MMOs, which I am most interested in.]

There

  • painters (model/texture) vs builders (code/script)
  • 60% of users create, work is approved by devs
  • has a conversion rate for virtual cash to real cash

Second Life

  • doesn't sell currency
  • players pay for land
  • developer incentive for good content
  • 90% users create in real time, spread to nearby users
  • company is paid in submission and repro cost

Some MMO questions I had:
When does live support end? User-created content/expansions use the old engine, but how do you transition the game? What will EQ2 do? I spoke with a designer who used to be on EQ, and he said that 2 was a different game, targeting a more casual audience. Rather than try to cannibalize or tap other MMOs' audiences, they want fresh blood. I'm rather worried that the market's oversaturated, especially for fantasy RPGs.

April 7, 2004 02:09 AM
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