[MUD-Dev] Histories and Legends

[Edward Glowacki]

On Mon, 2002-08-26 at 17:35, Matthew Dobervich wrote:

> It's widely stated that player-created content is the future of
> persistent worlds.  Player created content already exists in great
> quantity in the form of fan fiction, fan art, etc. and is already
> providing players with the sense that there is life beyond the
> retirement of a given character.  It strikes me that this content
> is often overlooked as a source of player created content in
> persistent worlds.

(snip)

> Player created content >IS< the future of persistent worlds, but
> most of the discussion tends to get hung up around legal issues
> and customer service overhead associated with its inclusion.

This is definitely a big hangup.  Consider a player who builds a
town that eventually becomes famous and an integral part of the
game.  Does the company that created the game (the world in which
the town is built) have the rights to include that town in their
advertisements?  Spin-off games?  Spin-off movies/books/TV/whatever?
Make changes to the town? How about the player's rights to write
stories/books about their own character's adventures in that town?
Transplant that town into a different setting (world/universe)?
Request that the town be erased when they retire from the game?

Defining clear boundaries as to the ownership and rights of content
is the key to opening up player-created content.  If you can create
a simple ownership/rights concept, and explain it simply to your
users, then you can encourage players to create things for you.

> Why not create in game tools and systems that leverage the
> external game related content already in existence?  A simple
> engine that captures URLs a player receives in chat to
> "weblog.txt" would be a good first step.  The next step being web
> connections being built into the world such as a the texture on a
> 3d object being an image behind a URL or a general midi file
> behind a URL.  You get the idea.

There are a few major problems I can see with external (off-site)
links: 

  1. Could be on a slow connection or unreliable server, possibly
  resulting in them being unavailable for the majority of the
  population.  

  2. How do you verify that the content on the other end of the link
  belongs to the user?  A URL can point to anywhere...  

  3. How do you handle when external resources are
  moved/deleted/modified/etc.?

For a consistent and reliable world, you probably want to host
everything yourself.

> To me this offloads the copy write issues on to another party,
> reduces the amount of customer service overhead associated with
> player created content (how much is the question), doesn't
> increase the hosting company's bandwidth bills, and most
> importantly helps to create new links between the nodes in the
> network that is the player community.

Not really, because if copyrighted content appears in your game,
regardless of where it comes from it will look like you either put
it in there yourself or sanctioned its use by the player.  I would
think legally you'd be in the same boat as if you were hosting the
content yourself, possibly on the grounds that "the users can't tell
the difference...".

> This may be a naïve view (and probably is), if so, please educate
> me on the issues involved, or recommend some reading.

I'm not claiming to be an expert either... ;)

> Student of the issues associated with persistent world creation.

Aren't we all! =) Even the masters are likely to learn something new
on occasion with the quality of the stuff that comes through this
list.


-ED
--
Edward Glowacki			glowack2 at msu.edu
Michigan State University	
"...a partial solution to the right problem is better than a complete
solution to the wrong one." (http://uiweb.com/issues/issue14.htm)


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