[MUD-Dev] Future of MMOGs

[Derek Licciardi]

From: Shane P. Lee
> --- Valerio Santinelli <tanis at mediacom.it> wrote:

>>   Gradually we're starting to see the return of things like
>>   player-housing, but truly player-generated content isn't
>>   available even now, three years later!

> Well, I'm gonna make a fool of myself and unlurk once again, this
> time to ask what seems to be a newbie question. I see this term
> "player-generated content" quite a lot Apparently it doesn't mean
> what I thought it did when I first saw it. In my mind, PGC would
> be anything the player does that has a lasting effect on the game
> world. Perhaps building a house, or chopping down trees, something
> that other players notice and saves over reboots (or
> whatever). That stuff isn't very hard to add to text MUDs, and I
> can't see why it would be such a big deal to add it to a MMORPG.
> Am I missing the point here? If so, please tell me what all the
> fuss is about, namely: What IS PGC?  

I think the article summed up why this is the current state of
affairs.  Unfortunately, as an experiement in complex worlds, UO
didn't live up to its potential.  Therefore, publishers created
simpler things.

Graphics at the time of EQs release weren't easily manageable
without significantly more developer control.  3D zones required
careful planning and pathing.  This precluded player run housing or
player placed landmarks because there was no real way to effectively
manage this(ie poly counts...).  EQs success swept the
player-generated content idea under the rug as a result because
publishers were only concerned with cloning a success and getting it
to market.  I suspect they took the assumption that player-generated
content couldn't be done and represented graphically at face value
and ran with it without question.

In addition to this, player-generated content that is persistant has
legal issues surrounding it that are not quite clear.  When you're
earning revenues like the MMOs are, the game changes.  No one is
going to get in a 50 million dollar lawsuit over who owns the player
generated content in a MUD.

You're seeing the changes today, IMHO, because new entrants into the
market are trying to differentiate themselves from the old games and
trying to address the many screaming fans that want more authorship
in their worlds.  It'll be interesting in the coming years to see
how this plays out.

Derek


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