[MUD-Dev] Future of MMOGs

[Valerio Santinelli]

From: "Shane P. Lee" <tacodog21 at yahoo.com>
> --- 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?

It all depends on different interpretations. In my mind, PGC is
exactly how you describe it. Something that has a lasting effect on
the online world.  Although this is quite easy to do (and it's
already been done) in text MUDs, it is way harder to do in MMOGs.

Imagine that you want to build your own personalized sword. You woul
need a tool that let you make your own 3D model of the sword. And
not everybody is able to model a sword that looks like a sword, so
you would probably need a tool that let you combine different pieces
together to make you own version of a sword. You would also need a
tool to give your sword its special properties, and so you also need
a set of rules on magic swords creation, since you don't want to
have a GUI where you choose "I want a +1 sword that is effective
against zombies". You want to be able to cast a set of spells on the
sword in order to attain this ability. Multiply all of this for the
number of items, rules, spells and actions you can have in the game
and you'll end up with a lot of stuff to be done.

And what if I want to add my own textures? And if I just make a
texture with a big "F*CK" word on it? Who can control such a thing? 
It gets really difficult to be able to have PGC in a graphical
game. And I've illustrated only the case of an item creation, but I
could go on and talk about building a town, or a forest, or a quest,
or digging a dungeon.. this could go on forever.

--
c'ya!

Valerio Santinelli
tanis at mediacom.it
HateSeed Gaming Magazine http://www.hateseed.com/
My Lab http://tanis.hateseed.com/
In Flames Italia http://www.inflames.it/
One Man Crew http://www.onemancrew.org/



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