Why the fear of user-generated content?

[Obiwanshinobi]

I was having a morning of some PC gaming and for whatever cause, 2D side-scrolling action was my choice today. The Captain Claw print I've installed comes with a bulk of custom-bulit stages, whose inclusion I'm not sure if was even consulted with their makers, but nevertheless - is a testimony to the modscene's activity of yore.
Next on my breakfast menu was Gignatic Army, and this time its muscular gameplay, cast upon A.I.'s reluctance to attack (criticised on these boards before), brought certain issue to the light. WHY THE HELL there is no level editor included, when users who wish the game acted more aggressively would likely spend more time with it, if only given convenient modding tools?
There are excuses to be made of course, like: the former being a PC game from times when toying with the fabric of software could be expected of just about any recreational user, while the latter posing slavishly retro in at least one way. No excuse quite explains to me this condenscending omission still.

So, here's a question to all developers, budding and self-confident alike, as well as to all mere users - what do you think they were thinking when decided not to help everybody tinker with their game? Feel free to expand your answer towards any piece of program which simply would be of more use to the masses if not confined so.

[ZellSF]

Uh, it takes money/time to support user-generated content and often the return on that investment is you can't sell any more products to your customers because they're satisfied with the free user content for your current product.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

It may not always be something as nefarious as anti-consumerism at work. It's a lot of work to create a level editor because it has to be user-friendly, and often a small game developer who has to build their own level creator for the works may not have it documented or polished up and user-friendly, and they simply may not be comfortable releasing it to the general public for those reasons.

The developer may also want to focus on delivering a stable, polished game experience and doesn't want to have the focus changed to a flood of user generated content which may or may not match the quality of the main game itself, or the style of game may not make user generated levels easy to do such as if there's some kind of procedural generation involved.

Of course, when a company can spare the resources, it's nice to see level editors in games.

[BryanM]

Another basic reason is they want people to move on and buy their next game. Unless its a sales feature the customers expect, there's no reason to put the money into the tools.

There's rather unequal value from basic editors depending on what game we're talking about, anyway.

What can be done to Super Mario World through Lunar Magic was truly anemic last time I saw it decades ago. Super Mario World is not a deep game - only two cosplay outfits, very limited number of enemies on the screen, nothing but anti-climax bosses. It relies heavily on some hand crafted gimmicks used very sparsely so they don't get old - for example, the Fire Breathing Dinosaur guys are only used in around 2 levels. The ninjas from Doki Doki Panic are used in one. The water layer that rises and lowers is only on a few too?

Just throwing some paint and rearranging such large lego blocks isn't making a new game. To truly get closer to that, you'd need something more akin to a Mario Integrated Development Suite.

And if you're a user, if you're putting that much time and effort into something, maybe it would be better to make your own game. Mario doesn't have a monopoly on jumping or cosplay.

[BulletMagnet]

I'm not a developer, but as a player user-created content holds precisely zero interest for me, for two reasons: 1) I have absolutely no talent for design, and 2) Neither do most people. As such, I just can't picture myself devoting enough time in a game to dig out the handful of good user-created levels from the mountains of garbage (even if you don't count the intentional garbage), let alone put together something I'm confident (probably wrongly) anyone else would want to play, especially when it would itself likely get buried, Steam store style.

For folks who do have a knack for design I can only imagine how cool it must be to have access to tools like that and to study the diamonds in the rough for additional inspiration, but it's completely and utterly lost on the likes of me.

[Ghegs]

I'm not a developer, but as a player user-created content holds precisely zero interest for me, for two reasons: 1) I have absolutely no talent for design, and 2) Neither do most people.

I echo these sentiments. Whenever I did try playing a game with a heavy focus on user-generated content, it felt like I was spending more time digging through piles of digital poop looking for that elusive content worth playing, than actually playing the game. Even peer reviews of the content can be useless in this endeavor, since troll-levels and meme-levels might garner the highest votes, depending on how the user base is feeling at the moment.

[ZellSF]

It's not any different from games themselves. There's an ocean of shit there too, but finding the good games is hardly a problem. Same goes for user created content.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Unless its a sales feature the customers expect, there's no reason to put the money into the tools.

I'd expect a publisher to think along those lines, but not a maker. If the future memories of Half-Life will be exclusively those of a game that spawned Counter Strike, it should still be more pleasant to anyone who worked on it than any mention Myst seems to ever get anymore.

Gigantic Army's case particularly bugs me as it is a computer game, I gather - published by its own makers, on the market swarming with similar products, where freeware titles alone pose a very direct competition for people's time present and future. These days, when PC game is remembered over a year after its release, it must be due to any new content, which of course not every small-time dev would be providing rather than making a new game. All the more puzzling why its users don't receive an invitation to carry the burden of keeping it, well, used for a little bit longer.

[ZellSF]

Unless its a sales feature the customers expect, there's no reason to put the money into the tools.

I'd expect a publisher to think along those lines, but not a maker.

Why not? They want to make great games too. They have to prioritize where their resources are spent too.

Make a great game or a mediocre one that has a level editor? I think it's an easy choice for many.

[Ghegs]

It's not any different from games themselves. There's an ocean of shit there too, but finding the good games is hardly a problem. Same goes for user created content.

I'd say it's a bit different, because anybody can put out a shitty Doom/Trackmania/whatever level in five minutes and have it be available to the game's entire userbase right away, but making a shitty game in five minutes and have it up on Steam or GOG is just not possible. Of course if you go for some web-game site, Kongregate or what have you, then it probably is possible, but aren't those types of sites' ratio of good games somewhere around 0% to start with?

[ZellSF]

It's not any different from games themselves. There's an ocean of shit there too, but finding the good games is hardly a problem. Same goes for user created content.

I'd say it's a bit different, because anybody can put out a shitty Doom/Trackmania/whatever level in five minutes and have it be available to the game's entire userbase right away, but making a shitty game in five minutes and have it up on Steam or GOG is just not possible. Of course if you go for some web-game site, Kongregate or what have you, then it probably is possible, but aren't those types of sites' ratio of good games somewhere around 0% to start with?

Not seeing the difference there, unless you rely on curation from massive corporations to tell you what to play.

Steam accepts way more trash than Mod DB does and you're insane if you limit your PC gaming to GoG's limited library.

[BryanM]

Heh, I see Ghegs doesn't watch the Jimquisition or use Steam. (That's ok, I don't either.)

There've been cases where games were sold without an executable. Not to mention the copy and paste spam, which is like those masses of creepy youtube videos.

[Ghegs]

Not seeing the difference there, unless you rely on curation from massive corporations to tell you what to play.

I can literally boot up a Trackmania editor, make a simple oval course and have it uploaded for the world to see, download, play and review in five minutes, all within the game itself. I could create a "game" where all you do is move a pixel from one end of the screen to another and "You win!" text pops out, but it would not be accepted to Steam or GOG or any established source of games, all within five minutes. You don't see the difference in barrier of entry for the creator there? You don't see the difference between creating content and creating a whole game?

Heh, I see Ghegs doesn't watch the Jimquisition or use Steam. (That's ok, I don't either.)

I do use Steam. Sure there's crap in there, but show me a game that was literally created and published to Steam in five minutes and is up in there. I can show you user-generated content that was done in five minutes, for an existing game.

[ZellSF]

Not seeing the difference there, unless you rely on curation from massive corporations to tell you what to play.

I can literally boot up a Trackmania editor, make a simple oval course and have it uploaded for the world to see, download, play and review in five minutes, all within the game itself. I could create a "game" where all you do is move a pixel from one end of the screen to another and "You win!" text pops out, but it would not be accepted to Steam or GOG or any established source of games, all within five minutes. You don't see the difference in barrier of entry for the creator there? You don't see the difference between creating content and creating a whole game?

So the difference is the time it takes to develop and publish? Why's that relevant? You still have to sort through the shit to get the things you want and to do that you still need a better system than the curation of stores backed by huge publishers.

[Ghegs]

Not seeing the difference there, unless you rely on curation from massive corporations to tell you what to play.

I can literally boot up a Trackmania editor, make a simple oval course and have it uploaded for the world to see, download, play and review in five minutes, all within the game itself. I could create a "game" where all you do is move a pixel from one end of the screen to another and "You win!" text pops out, but it would not be accepted to Steam or GOG or any established source of games, all within five minutes. You don't see the difference in barrier of entry for the creator there? You don't see the difference between creating content and creating a whole game?

So the difference is the time it takes to develop and publish? Why's that relevant? You still have to sort through the shit to get the things you want and to do that you still need a better system than the curation of stores backed by huge publishers.

The point I was making is that the barrier of entry, time requirements, quality control, everything is far lower (or non-existent) for creating user-generated content compared to creating a game. So the number of shit user-generated content is also far greater compared to shit games.

Steam has about 24,475 games available at the moment. tm-exchange.com is a site for finding, downloading and reviewing Trackmania courses. Looking through tracks for Trackmania Nations, just one of the many TM games, it gives us 143,634 tracks to browse through. Many of those are just people testing the editor once or twice and putting their results up for download because why not, it's free, simple and it's cool to see your creation up on the internet. So the ratio of "bad user-generated content:all available user-generated content" is bigger than with games where it takes more than that five minutes to create and put something online.

[BryanM]

but it would not be accepted to Steam or GOG or any established source of games, all within five minutes.

I think it's a little pedantic to drag on the point that the automated acceptance process puts things in a queue for a couple days to have a virus scanner rub over it. (I assume this is done to give that anti-virus developer some time to find and update its malware database for new attacks. Clever of them if so.)

Your dot game seems like way too much work. I recommend just auto-building an installation file with nothing but a blank bitmap file in it. Maybe you can write the word "poop" on it, or, if you're feeling very energetic that day, draw an actual poop with color and everything.

[WelshMegalodon]

Something people haven't yet brought up directly - genres like this one strike me as being less conducive to quality user-generated content than something like Skyrim or Freespace 2.

[ZellSF]

I can literally boot up a Trackmania editor, make a simple oval course and have it uploaded for the world to see, download, play and review in five minutes, all within the game itself. I could create a "game" where all you do is move a pixel from one end of the screen to another and "You win!" text pops out, but it would not be accepted to Steam or GOG or any established source of games, all within five minutes. You don't see the difference in barrier of entry for the creator there? You don't see the difference between creating content and creating a whole game?

So the difference is the time it takes to develop and publish? Why's that relevant? You still have to sort through the shit to get the things you want and to do that you still need a better system than the curation of stores backed by huge publishers.

The point I was making is that the barrier of entry, time requirements, quality control, everything is far lower (or non-existent) for creating user-generated content compared to creating a game. So the number of shit user-generated content is also far greater compared to shit games.

Steam has about 24,475 games available at the moment. tm-exchange.com is a site for finding, downloading and reviewing Trackmania courses. Looking through tracks for Trackmania Nations, just one of the many TM games, it gives us 143,634 tracks to browse through. Many of those are just people testing the editor once or twice and putting their results up for download because why not, it's free, simple and it's cool to see your creation up on the internet. So the ratio of "bad user-generated content:all available user-generated content" is bigger than with games where it takes more than that five minutes to create and put something online.

Again though, does it matter? Are you browsing through the tracks A-Z? You need effective ways of finding good content, and if you have that then none of the bad content should reach you. Even if there were 143,634 games like "Hentai 3018" on Steam, I wouldn't have heard of any of them.

[Ghegs]

I think it's a little pedantic to drag on the point that the automated acceptance process puts things in a queue for a couple days to have a virus scanner rub over it. (I assume this is done to give that anti-virus developer some time to find and update its malware database for new attacks. Clever of them if so.)

That was never the actual point I was going for, 'twas just to highlight the ease with which user-generated content can be put online. I didn't even touch on the app deposit fee that more or less prevents people from putting their dot games up on Steam, while no such obstacles exist for user-generated content.

Again though, does it matter?

At least to me it does. You'll still end up going through a lot of content that doesn't appeal to you, even with the help of filters, searches, reviews of other players, and other ways of sorting through the grains. And because there's more user-generated content available, it takes more time to go through that than go through games.

[qmish]

oh yeah as someone who was mostly PC gamer in first half of 00s i'm glad i was introduced to joy of custom maps and total conversions

well sometimes you had stuff on consoles too like maps for Tenchu

anyway i recall many usermade maps for first person shooters being much better than stuff they sell in DLC now lol

hell, quake 1 still gets mega awesome campaigns which put to shame most commercial games in architecture/leveldesign area

also dont forget bunch of great developers came from modding scene

regarding "shit" - when you participate in community you find best content easily

so idk what your problem is

in the end, you only harming yourself

same for folks who ignore doujin/indie just because

[Obiwanshinobi]

hell, quake 1 still gets mega awesome campaigns which put to shame most commercial games in architecture/leveldesign area

And what eludes me is - how come anybody wouldn't wish their game the same thing. Heck, said Counter Strike is rooted in the first Quake via the original H-L engine.

regarding "shit" - when you participate in community you find best content easily

Yeah, when people develop much content, they must also be playing a lot and have many recommendations to give.

The only TrackMania I've played was the Wii one, single-player only too, but it'd soon become obvious to me that its wealth and excellence of content (how many racers boast such a number of tracks this good?)* is not solely a work of the studio credited with development of this particular title. I wouldn't know if any track there is derived directly from things that came before it, but they must had studied user-made content quite a lot (if only to work out what makes or breaks TrackMania for its veteran userbase).

*) Yes, these take way shorter to finish each than your average arcade racer track, but when at least one keeps me busy for hours on end, that's a piece of excellent game design right there.

[qmish]

"Why do mods and not your own" sounds like "why do fanfics".

Well, sometimes this is what you really want.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I meant, who else wouldn't want their game to be cultivated for over 20 years like Quake? What more success can you ask for of a game?

[ZellSF]

Again though, does it matter?

At least to me it does. You'll still end up going through a lot of content that doesn't appeal to you, even with the help of filters, searches, reviews of other players, and other ways of sorting through the grains.

Well obviously we're different here, I don't have that problem and I'm pretty sure most people don't either with user content.

I meant, who else wouldn't want their game to be cultivated for over 20 years like Quake? What more success can you ask for of a game?

Aiming to be Quake isn't realistic. Besides the folly of thinking a small indie game today can inspire user content as much as a very huge title back in the day where not only the market was smaller, but there was nothing else like Quake on it (user content or not). Quake was a different time entirely. People made Quake mods because there wasn't plenty of cheap/free available 3D engines and asset packs for them to use. Even if someone had all the required components today to make another Quake, they're just not in the right time period.

That's not to say user content can't be a very significant value add, it just can't ever reach anywhere near Quake or Unreal status and game developers have to factor in what they can expect of return from making editing tools versus spending the time on making the base game better.

The choice is obvious for many: with a bad base game it will be forgotten tomorrow. No fans fixing it and creating content will fix how drowned out it will be by better titles.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Over and over again had people made easily moddable/expandable games that were not bad out of the box. The last I heard of being Crashday (hardly the first Quake level of standing out in its time and age).

[ZellSF]

Over and over again had people made easily moddable/expandable games that were not bad out of the box. The last I heard of being Crashday (hardly the first Quake level of standing out in its time and age).

The question here is, what did Crashday get out of implementing support for user content and what could they have done with the resources otherwise?

And the question you can ask for games that don't feature user content is: what part of this game is unnecessary and could be removed for the resources to implement support for user content?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Truth be told, I don't even know whether Crashday devs actively helped its modders much, or the game's mod-friendliness was more of a fluke. Nevertheless, it has gained enough following for a decade since its original release A.D. 2006 to re-appear on Steam in a refurbished form A.D. 2017. My understanding is that mods played quite a big part in keeping some busy playing the game for so long.

[ScrewedUp]

Companies who do or did make arcade games know their target audience : competitive people looking for a new challenge. Those aren't the kind of people who care about user generated content, they just want to get good at the game and compare scores. I'm not saying they wouldn't appreciate it, but on average they wouldn't put anywhere close as much time into it as a casual player would if an editor were included in a port. Now who's more likely to buy a Cave game , some casual browsing the steam store or a die hard fan of the genre ?
You'll see user generated content sooner or later, probably in some euroshmup, but the big name companies have no reason to put in extra work for people who'll buy the game anyways, especially when they got other to stuff to sell on top.

EDIT : ehh, forgot this was the off topic board, so ye, i'm only addressing shoot em ups here. As for user created content in general, I guess many devs give it a thought but then consider it not a good idea due to the genre/game not lending itself to it and the extra work involved. Also no clue how one goes about throwing in an editor when the engine the game runs on isn't even your own, probably comes with royalties that make the effort not just worth less but actually cost you money in the end.