MMOGology: Build your own adventure

I hope all of you got to check out Elizabeth Harper's great preview of the upcoming LEGO Universe MMOG by NetDevil. I'm personally a huge fan of LEGO and proudly admit to playing with those little, plastic blocks well beyond the recommended age rating. There's just something great about a product that gives you the tools to create without limiting the possibilities of your imagination. When it comes down to it, LEGO is simply another medium like clay or paint. It's up to the artist/designer to manipulate the medium into something unique and meaningful. NetDevil's product will allow us to partake in that enjoyment in a digital fashion, although, unlike creation in Second Life, it appears as though artists and designers will not have free reign over content creation.

In the context of an all ages game, the choice to place limits on creativity seems like a valid one. Allowing users to create anything they wanted with LEGO obviously opens up a Pandora's Box of offensive possibilities. I'll take the high road for now and refrain from mentioning the many examples of naughty things you could create in LEGO. But beyond potentially offensive things, creating absolutely anything you wanted in a game could potentially destroy the game from a design and gameplay perspective. User-created content brings up a variety of questions. To what extent can users shape their worlds without breaking them? To what extent can they expand and add to the content without altering the original vision of the developers? What role can user-generated content play in the future?

Second Life is one of the few online environments I know of that offers very little, if any, restrictions on player driven content. If you can imagine it, you can create it and then sell it to your fans. Of all the massive worlds out there it represents the most free spirited and creative. It's sort of the Wild West of creativity where anything goes. But I think most people would agree that Second Life is more virtual world than game. There are no objectives, no directed tasks to complete, no storyline, no overriding theme, etc. Creativity works and thrives in such an open environment. But what about opportunities for creative expression and development within massively multiplayer games? Thus far most content creation in your standard massively multiplayer game is limited to player crafting.

The original Star Wars Galaxies implemented one of the more impressive crafting systems I've seen thus far. The ability to create weapons and armor is common among many MMOGs, but the ability to build entire cities is very unique and very impressive. SWG did a great job of giving players the tools to create content that was thematically appropriate and fun. SOE was able to work player created content into the gameplay in a meaningful way that most other MMOGs have not been able to accomplish. Crafters relied on each other for goods and services and that reliance, coupled with a fair amount of creative freedom (in terms of city planning and development) truly allowed the players to build their own world. It's too bad the rest of the game was pretty buggy and sorta sucked.

Of course, creation via crafting and actual world building are fairly different things. What if developers went beyond the crafting element and allowed players the opportunity to create more interactive content for other users to experience? To some extent NCSoft accomplished this. The concept of base building in City of Villains is a great example of providing players with the ability to create and modify the gameworld in a thematically appropriate way that also provides players an added level of interaction with user-generated content. Base building in City of Villains essentially allows players to create their own villainous lairs stocked with their own henchmen and devious traps. If so desired, player Villains may open up their custom lair to be raided by Heroes by acquiring "items of power". Because I haven't experienced it myself personally, I really don't know how well this concept has been implemented. From what I've read it sounds fairly involved and challenging to build a successful base. Regardless of the level of success, the idea of dungeon building within an existing MMOG is an exciting one.

Interactive user-created content like the base building in CoV is one step closer to the ultimate dungeon master experience that Neverwinter Nights worked hard to create for small groups of players. Imagine if this concept were implemented in World of Warcraft. Imagine Horde players creating customized instances to play against Alliance players, perhaps merging the PvE and PvP concepts by allowing five man Horde teams to complete against a five man Alliance team. The Horde players might take the place of a typical dungeon's boss, or work with the NPC minions to wreak havoc on the Alliance raiders. The most popular of the user created dungeons might net the designers some in-game loot or unique privileges. A simple set of world building tools might create exciting opportunities to expand the life of a game by offering a variety of additional content that the developers don't have to create themselves. In addition to extending a game's life it allows players to participate in the world's creation; adding a unique, lasting, player-driven impact.

Of course, the quality of player created content can be a mixed bag. There are very skilled amateurs out there that can design and create amazing content, but there are at least as many, if not more people, who just aren't that talented. Let's face it, there's a reason why developers are paid to create content while the rest of us are not. It takes time and effort to produce something truly brilliant, and those of us that do have the talent, often don't have the time. Thank goodness there are some people out there are willing to invest their time and talents into expanding the games we love so that the rest of us slackers can enjoy their hard labor. I'd pitch in and help, but ya know, I've got a raid in WoW in a few and uh ... yeah ... Here's to hoping that future MMOGs continue some of the trailblazing techniques of City of Villains, Star Wars Galaxies, and LEGO Universe when it comes to user-generated content.

MMOGology [mŏg-ol-uh-jee] – noun – The study of massively multiplayer online games via the slightly warped perspective of Marc Nottke on a weekly recurring basis.