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The Daily Grind: Should players be rewarded for creating content?


American McGee, during a recent Geek.com interview, made a comment about user-generated content in games that made us stop and think. The snip in question was: "...I think if game products or publishers are relying on "outside the box" content created by users to drive interest in their titles – then they should find ways of compensating those users for developing added value." While he may have been talking about Little Big Planet at the time, we thought immediately of City of Heroes Issue 14, and other systems like Myst Online: URU Live, which will be depending on player-created content for future growth when it comes back up.

You could argue that at this point players who create and run Mission Architect content are largely already rewarded; there are several badges available that way, and it's a nice break from the regular missions when you've already run them eleventy-billion times since launch. Of course, as anyone who has actually built a mission arc can tell you, writing one can suck away some serious time from you very easily. So this morning, we thought we'd take it to you, the Massively community - do you think players should be rewarded in some fashion for creating content in MMOs? Should it be something simple like badges, or should it be more involved? Should Paragon Studios and NCsoft look at giving players who create quality arcs more space to create in? Free game time? Or is the ability to create fun content and get recognized by the community for writing good arcs enough reward in itself?