The Future of Massively Multiplayer Games
Some choice quotes:
Of course, user-created content has a lot of sticky issues. Raph Koster, former Lead Designer for Ultima Online and current Creative Director for Sony Online Entertainment and Star Wars Galaxies, expressed the problem without mincing words: “Our corporations are terrified of this.”
…
Are developers worried that empowering users to create things will just result in massive worlds packed with low-quality (read: crap) content? Of all the people I spoke with, this didn’t seem to be a concern.
…
… message to elitist writers and artists was this: “Get over yourselves! The rest of the world is coming.” … “We can do what Lego did and give them [the players] the blocks,” he explained.
…
Social structures seem to evolve in spite of this system, rather than because of it. Another designer wished that MMOG game design could be more influenced by Will Wright (creator of The Sims) than by Gary Gygax (creator of Dungeons & Dragons).
…
The root of the issue is that players will do whatever they’re rewarded for doing. And it’s easy to reward monster-bashing; it’s a simple, elegant system that’s worked in games for decades. It’s much more difficult to reward other kinds of activities without players abusing the system.
…
“We’re building games with too many moving parts!” … “Hideously complex games that are impossible to balance.” Her argument ultimately wasn’t that games should be simple, just that they needed to be elegant and easy to understand.
…
… an intuitive sampling service to get people hooked on the game world. “Like liquid crack,” he said.