I’ve started seeing a lot of games like this one that allow users to create their own content. It’s also clear that the age of the empowered player is here, with Little Big Planet, Minecraft, Bad Piggies, and other various construction based games burning up the charts across multiple platforms.
It’s great that it’s happening. Developers always dream of turning their development tools into a consumer experience, especially when they’re proud of the software they’re building.
But there are pitfalls to this desire, and they’re worth paying attention to. The challenge at the core of any experience is to make sure that it’s as fundamentally entertaining as a game woud be. Building a content creation engine that’s fun for users to play with is one of the most challenging tasks you can take on as a designer. It’s is also time and resources that are being taken away from the game experience with the added risk that building an outward facing tool set may end up diminishing the quality of your internal tools.
Mobile development already has a great deal of foundational work that has to be done to cover the needs and expectations of your users, your platforms, and your business model. Adding in another layer is probably more than most devs can handle, and is more than most users want.
Andrew,
Good thoughts regarding the recent popularity of gaming tools. Minecraft may be the most popular one, but it is not the only one! However I have seen similar tools be available for past 20 years. Some of the tools may not have been as sophisticated, since the hardware & software is more popular now, but they were always available for creative people. So, is the change do to a maturing of the game players, with many learning how to create the content they have played for years? Or is the cause simpler, in that we now have more people playing? The same percentage of creative people, means more numbers of people developing content. We reached a threshold of development effort, enough to make a difference for the original creators of the game. They want to tamp into this creative surge, but until now, have not been able to. Thoughts?
Steve
I definitely think that lots of things have changed over the last few decades, not the least of which is that not only are the tools simpler, but many of the games that we’re playing and the interfaces we’re using are simpler as well.
That means that development is easier, and it’s possible to create things in days or weeks that would have taken months or years to build a decade ago.
I agree that having a larger, more mainstream audience, means that we also have more people who are eager to try and create content (and gameplay) for their favorite games, although I think it takes a certain amount of skill to keep your audience interested in building content once they realize how much work it really is to create something polished and professional.
Proper builders make sure it’s easy to make something fun and good, but do so while hiding just how much hard work it can be to create something ready to be released to an audience.
Being able to properly manage and promote your user content is a huge part of being successful. Will Wright’s Spore, for example, had a fantastic pre-launch of their Creature Creator, but it quickly became infamous for its ability to build rude and vulgar monsters.
I still don’t think that it’s a good idea to try and release a “builder” until you’ve created a rock-solid game (with a great social platform underneath it) unless creation and manipulation is a fundamental component of your game.