So, who won the 3rd gen?

[Amaron]

In theory, Cryptic's Neverwinter is going to have content creation tools in there from day 1, so that will be an interesting experiment.

It's just foundry 2.0.  From what I've read you can't even do basic stuff like make a Sword of Foozle +1.  The MMO factor means they have to lock everything down or people will cheat.

[Ghambit]

Notch's new game (if he gets his way) will be the 1st to pull it off (if you choose to explore the multiverse), but it still remains to be seen how innately moddable the individual universes will be aside from the onboard CPUs. Stations are player made and I assume planets, trade systems, economies, etc. are malleable but not sure how much.

[Margalis]

Never panned out???  So what about Half Life, Unreal, Arma, NWN?  In the strat. space, Civ, Sins, and many others.

What about them? Every year there are probably 50+ games that ship with some sort of mod or user created content support and out of those a small handful benefit. It's like multiplayer on consoles - there are like 4 games that do well and 46 games that tank.

Half Life, Unreal and NWN are all like a decade old! I would also point out that relying on users to create a significant amount of content (like in LBP) is different from allowing users to mod. Half Life is already a complete game - it needs zero user-generated content. The game benefits if someone makes some awesome mod but it doesn't suffer if that doesn't happen. I'm talking about games where users creating content is integral to the success of the game as a whole, rather than merely a bonus.

[Ghambit]

[not really arguing with ya]

So you think Unreal, Arma, and NWN would've been perfectly successful (and for a long time) w/o user-created content?  First of all, no one buys Unreal unless they want to at least try hobbyist level designing or even total conversion.  UT4's gamemode was a tack-on at best.  It's one of the most recognizable game franchises near solely because of UE/UDK.  Period.

Arma?  Same deal.  Matter of fact, it was originally developed as a military toolset derived from Virtual Battlefield Systems.  The game would've never even existed w/o being originally developed as a user-created platform for tactical simulation.  The game itself is really just a VBS mod with the editor dumbed down.  It still succeeds now for this reason only.

NWN wouldn't be NWN w/o at least the intention of dungeonmastering.  And regardless if people intend to DM, people would BUY IT because it has/had that capability.  Hence, key to its success.

You think Minecraft would've succeeded to the extent it did w/o creative mode?  If that's not integral I dunno what is.   ALL of the above examples are games designed almost specifically with user-content in mind; not merely as a bonus.  W/o it, they're not great games.

Someone mentioned Ryzom.  That's actually a good example of how user-content can save a game.  Because there's no way that game gets revived as much as it did w/o Ryzom Ring in place.

[HaemishM]

We haven't seen this revolution because at heart, content creation is hard. And good content creation requires the kind of skills that evolved into the industries we pay all this money to support.

Actually, content creation itself isn't hard - it's just that making GOOD content isn't an exact science. The real hard part has always been distribution, getting the content to the people willing to pay money for it. The Internet has changed all that.

The biggest problem with user-gen content in MMOG's is the platform for distribution. As in, MMOG's fucking SUCK as platforms for anything. They are horribly cobbled together pieces of shit that barely work much less work as intended. Triple AAA MMOG's with budgets like Secret World are still releasing with broken chat systems FFS, which is MMOG 101. The content creation tools are there - but the platforms to move the content are utter shit.

[Lantyssa]

So you think Unreal, Arma, and NWN would've been perfectly successful (and for a long time) w/o user-created content?

Yes.

Counterpoint:  Second Life.

[Ghambit]

 
Sorry, there's no way ARMA survives w/o the player community.  Not a chance.  The makers of the game will tell you that.  Unreal may have been successful in early iterations, but their entire existing business model (today) would've been thrown out w/o the player community.  NWN is perhaps the exception, but I distinctly recall people having visions of dungeonmastering stardom when considering purchase of that game.  Whether it ended up that way for them post-purchase is kinda moot.   W/o tools, the new NWN would be bargain-bin at release btw.

[Sheepherder]

Morrowind and Oblivion would have been utter and complete flops without mod support.  Skyrim is actually a good game on it's own merits, but it still owes a huge chunk of sales to the Creation Kit.

[Venkman]

Aren't most of these examples of usergen going big after they went into the formal industry though? I'm getting hung up on the business angle. But honestly, I think that's the piece that many miss when talking about how usergen is just around the corner... for the past 30 years.

MW, MC, NWN, all traditional games that released toolkits for post-play fun. Emergent behavior made the post purchase communities what they are. But I'll bet Bethesda isn't wooing future publishing deals because of all the Skyrim mods. This is not the business they are in. Because they're not monetizing those toolkits, and their value in marketing a big budget video game is unknown.

To me, we'll have reached the point a few of you think is here when:

• Usergen content is the model that makes it a success, monetized, well supported as a business unto itself. A Metaplace that wasn't ahead of its time, a SL that doesn't suck, a marketable usergen experience that doesn't require 95% of it be blocked for appropriateness.
  
• We (or a successor generation) would rather pay for usergen content than professionally generated stuff.

We're a long way from both. In large part I think we need to grow a generation of kids as content creators, not just another generation of predominantly content consumers. Monetization models will evolve from that, not into that.

it's just that making GOOD content isn't an exact science. The real hard part has always been distribution, getting the content to the people willing to pay money for it. The Internet has changed all that.

What has the internet changed when the vast majority of distribution and consumption happens through a few channels that require the goods to fight for attention (or: same as it ever was)?

That wasn't a vast conspiracy. That was self-selecting. Anyone can see anything they've ever wanted, learning everything there is to know, play, design, build and distribute anything they want. And what are they doing? They're going where the marketing campaigns tell them to go. Word of mouth only goes so far and for only a rare few things, and even then, only if you have the patience for that to happen in your lifetime.

There ain't no "if you build it they will come". Take your pick:

• "if you build it, and a core group loves it so much they become ambassadors for it over a period of a few years while you triple-mortgage your life holding your breath...
• You kickstart it alongside the hundreds of other video games being kickstarted (what is it now, the top 6 of 10 projects are games?) and hope to get funding then the right team then those people still paying attention 18 months later when you done, then you can pay the bills..."
  
• You fund a clever marketing pitch and your product isn't complete shit..."

... maybe they will come".

There is nothing new here. We'll see it again with 3D Printers. We'll see it again with the Holodeck, and the Matrix. Unless we change how kids are raised.

Funny how this and the 3D printer thread in politics are overlapping

tl;dr: you didn't read the above because I didn't sell you on my usergen'd post 

[Amaron]

... NWN, all traditional games that released toolkits for post-play fun.

NWN was created specifically as a user gen/dungeon master game.  The campaign was tacked on purely to give people something to do at the start.   Everything about the design was centered around making usergen easy.  They released the toolset before the game came out to let modders start creating user gen ahead of time.  The game was definitely not traditional.

[Margalis]

So you think Unreal, Arma, and NWN would've been perfectly successful (and for a long time) w/o user-created content?  First of all, no one buys Unreal unless they want to at least try hobbyist level designing or even total conversion.  

The second part of this is just clearly false. The first part - again Unreal and NWN are a decade old. Yes, there are some user-created-content success stories. But those successes are not repeatable in any real way. For each game that succeeded largely because users grabbed the ball and ran with it (this does not describe Unreal btw) there are dozens of games hoping to benefit from user-created content that flounder because the content never comes.

Unreal may have been successful in early iterations, but their entire existing business model (today) would've been thrown out w/o the player community.

Uh what?

The Epic business model is to sell Unreal Engine to other companies. It has nothing to do with the player community at all. Unreal Tournament was basically left to die in favor of Gears.

[Ashamanchill]

No, no, no! You guys are ruining this thread with your pedantic talk of user generated content and what not. Well I'm bringing it back where it's supposed to be, a nerd slap fight about who won an arbitrary set of rules.

The winner is Warhammer (yeah I said it). Was it a failure? of course, all the fucking games on this list are failures or haven't had their whole story written yet. But you know what? At least there was enough halfway decent shit for people (mostly WoW) to steal from. Before Warhammer, there was no queuing for PvP anywhere in the world, no achievement page, and no public quests (recently resurfacing in Rift and Guild Wars 2).

Also, I am in the camp that considers TOR and GW2 in the 4th gen of MMOs. Simply put, they just don't belong in with AoC and Aion and LotR and what not.

[Lantyssa]

W/o tools, the new NWN would be bargain-bin at release btw.

It'll be a Cryptic game.  It is already destined to be bargain-bin at release.

[HaemishM]

We're a long way from both. In large part I think we need to grow a generation of kids as content creators, not just another generation of predominantly content consumers. Monetization models will evolve from that, not into that.

And I'm telling you that this IS the generation of kids raised as content creators, the ones who made YouTube worth a billion dollars to Google, the ones who made Facebook vastly overpriced, the ones who made Twitter a household name, who are blowing up Pinterest and a bunch of other things you and I can't even imagine yet.

Is the money all there and all getting to the right place (i.e. the content creators)? Not really and not yet, but it's a slow process. My nephew is a great example. He and I are both getting into digital music creation and distribution. He's 17, I'm 41. He could create a song, put it out there, Youtube it and luck into a hit. When I was his age, music creation tools were unattainable financially, and distribution of any music I created without a very wealthy patron was non-existent. Not to mention the tools to LEARN how to do all that were out of reach, whereas now, a few Google searches and I have more than I need to learn what I want.

it's just that making GOOD content isn't an exact science. The real hard part has always been distribution, getting the content to the people willing to pay money for it. The Internet has changed all that.

What has the internet changed when the vast majority of distribution and consumption happens through a few channels that require the goods to fight for attention (or: same as it ever was)?

It's changed an absolute ASSLOAD. See my paragraph above. When I was a teenager, had I been lucky enough to be able to make a demo tape, what would the possibilities of someone in Uzbekistan seeing or hearing that song (or reading my novel)? Almost zero without big financial backing. Now? It's a distinct possibility. Do I still have to market it? Of course, I just don't have to go begging to a patron to do it. I'm not saying I'll be stinking rich doing it, or even making a living wage. But the great thing about the Internet is that I won't have to - whereas before, my creation would have to be a BIG success to make me money, now I can concentrate on niche success and still do well.

[eldaec]

Consumer content will pan out only some amount of time after devs start building tools that they can use themselves to build content at reasonable rate.

One of the biggest reasons MMOGs never have enough content is piss poor tools being used to create it.

[palmer_eldritch]

In theory, Cryptic's Neverwinter is going to have content creation tools in there from day 1, so that will be an interesting experiment.

It's just foundry 2.0.  From what I've read you can't even do basic stuff like make a Sword of Foozle +1.  The MMO factor means they have to lock everything down or people will cheat.

Just want to stress this again. It's not the NWN we are used to, sadly. It's an updated version of the Foundry system already operating in Star Trek Online.

However, it's worth remembering (as I think I've said before) that Bioware once said the majority of NWN purchasers only ever played the single player game that came in the box and neither created their own content nor consumed content that other people created. And there was some good stuff out there.

However however, is it possible that things have changed since 2002 and user-generated content is seen as more acceptable nowadays? The YouTube generation Haemish speaks of?

On a side not, am I the only person that actually enjoys playing Unreal games out of the box (specifically the Unreal Tournament multiplayer modes)?

[Ghambit]

I think some of you are forgetting why people bought some of those games.  Regardless of if they used the tools or not. 

W/o tools, the new NWN would be bargain-bin at release btw.

It'll be a Cryptic game.  It is already destined to be bargain-bin at release.

Well played.

[Rendakor]

However, it's worth remembering (as I think I've said before) that Bioware once said the majority of NWN purchasers only ever played the single player game that came in the box and neither created their own content nor consumed content that other people created. And there was some good stuff out there.

This describes me and the few friends I know who played NWN. We did try out the campaign with one of us DMing once, but it was unimpressive so we went back to playing coop. We never really tried downloading any usergen stuff, nor making our own.

[MahrinSkel]

Frankly, I think we haven't *seen* a "3rd Generation" game quite yet.

1st Generation: The *old* stuff.  2D graphics, low world populations, by the minute business models, and no marketing budgets worth speaking of.  Think The Realm, Shadows of Yserbius, oNWN.

2nd Generation: Everything since UO.  3D graphics, server populations measured in thousands, monthly fees, marketing budgets appropriate to a "AAA" title.

3rd Generation: Ain't seen none.  Just as UO bridged the gap between 1st and 2nd, there are some hints to what it will involve: Multi-mode play (different ways to play the "same" game depending on platform), a heavy social network component, and a "Free to Play" business model.

There's nothing that really sets the current crop of games as being distinct from EQ, except for more polish (and greater or lesser degrees of F2P).  Hell, most of them still have *zones*, they're just usually better integrated into the story.

--Dave

[Ironwood]

However, it's worth remembering (as I think I've said before) that Bioware once said the majority of NWN purchasers only ever played the single player game that came in the box and neither created their own content nor consumed content that other people created. And there was some good stuff out there.

I would attribute that to the content creation actually being a swampy mess of bull-buggering hard-dom and the fact that there wasn't really a central area or ratings system a la Steam.  Things have changed since, of course.  Just look at Portal 2.

[Falconeer]

Also, I am in the camp that considers TOR and GW2 in the 4th gen of MMOs. Simply put, they just don't belong in with AoC and Aion and LotR and what not.

As a matter of fact Age of Conan was leagues ahead of SWTOR when it comes to evolution of the genre and the MMO generations. Not only the combat wasn't your usual EQ/WoW-clone and it was instead the first iteration of what we now, 4 years later, see everywhere (Tera, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2), but as much as they failed to deliver enough of it, Tortage is the first example of decent storytelling in a MMORPG, and it's not that different from what they did with greater resources 4 years later in SWTOR. Like it or not, Age of Conan was much more innovative in 2008 than SWTOR ever was in 2011.

[Ingmar]

Do innovations matter when nobody adopts them? I think AoC may be more of an evolutionary dead end than anything else.

Caveat: I don't think Tortage was exactly a masterpiece of storytelling. GW1 is the MMO that I think should get credit for the 'story' innovation.

[ghost]

AoC was just awful.  It was a pretty decent example of what happens when you blow your whole budget really early in the development process and have to flesh the game out with pennies.  Nobody paid any attention to that, apparently. 

[Venkman]

Yea, there's a difference between "tried" and "tried and was successful because of it". AoC tried a bunch of things, and I applaud that as well as what they tried in TSW. But these are not indie-level games with indie-style forgiveness built into it. Part of being successful is understanding what the customer will accept and good enough project management to get it there.

So we're not really sure on 3rd gen. Someday if this genre continues to sell games based on the "MMO" label, some Marketing will try their "# generation" tag. And then after that some other game will be it

As to UGC, I'm not sold. That's an ad network that started early enough to take root. And a number of social things all happened around the same time (texting, photo sharing, twitter, facebook, a culture of broadcasting oneself, etc). Music lead the way, videos became huge. Find me something for games.

Even Kongregate didn't get us there.