Comments on Lost Garden: User Content: Working with players to efficiently ...

I suspect it is because Furcadia is less well know...

2008-07-21T19:51:00.000-06:00

I suspect it is because Furcadia is less well known. Though this becomes a self fullfilling prophecy.

I remember when Furcadia just started up as a wild new project from Dr. Cat. Every time I chat with him I'm always amazed at the systems that they have in place for both user generated and their user moderated community. He does some absolutely wonderful, inspirational work that will slowly make it's way out to the mainstream games. Ultimately, the driving force for adoption will be economic. Such systems are cheaper in the long run.

take care
Danc.

That's one of the best essays I've read on User Cr...

2008-07-21T12:20:00.000-06:00

That's one of the best essays I've read on User Created Content, and I've read a lot. Nice work.

I do wonder though - how come articles like this invariably mention Second Life, but make no reference to Furcadia, which was doing many of the same things with user created content starting back in 1996?

You sir, are a great writer. Very articulate and w...

2005-09-27T08:03:00.000-06:00

You sir, are a great writer. Very articulate and well thought out. Keep up the good work!

Dan Boutros

The biggest problem that I can see is getting over...

2005-08-16T23:59:00.000-06:00

The biggest problem that I can see is getting over that initial hurdle of charging people for something that has traditionally been free. There have been many cases where the user created content has been sold in stores, but all of that content was still available online for free. (Counter-Strike and the Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition come to mind). The only time that I know of where a user mod was only sold was the Die Hard: Return to Nakatomi Plaza, which flopped but it was rather out dated by the time it finally saw a release.

In a way, it’s like all those instant messengers. They are currently provided for free and now people would like to tap the market for income. However, if you start charging a fee, any fee, and you’re going to lose almost your entire customer base to the competition. You might be able to stay alive for a while from the few who are too dependent on your service to switch, but I think it would be safe to say that you’d steadily lose customers. How can you charge for something that people are currently getting for free and escape being destroyed by the backlash?

I could envision some sort of subscription service. You pay X dollars a month and you get priority access to the current and most popular mods. For example, Valve could charge you $5 a month and you can play the latest version of Counter-Strike when it comes out. Otherwise you’ll have to wait a month before you can get it for free. This, however, assumes that Valve is paying for the development of Counter-Strike. The original developers (Valve) get income from charging $5 a month for this premium content, the user developers get small income and recognition, and the end users still get access to this content. Granted, I have no idea if that could work at all.

On another note, I think it’ll be interesting to see how the mod community for Civ IV turns out. I have trouble seeing many mods developing from this due to the complexity of the Civilization games. The FPS games which pioneered the mod community were rather simplistic and were easily built on. Any change could have a huge impact on the game. Since Civilization is so large, and is comparatively a specialized game, will there be many completed mods that successfully do anything more than a graphical change? I know this all depends on the quality of the tools and the fan base’s interest, but I’m wondering how well it’ll turn out. I personally don’t see it taking off in the same way that many of the FPS mods have, but I’d love to be wrong.

It's all about how you structure the experience. S...

2005-08-15T14:59:00.000-06:00

It's all about how you structure the experience. Sticking a clause in the Eternally Unread Licensing Agreement that allows you to swipe and republish user generated content is clearly a boneheaded way to go about things.

I'm sure users WERE livid in the example you suggest, because the publisher's actions confounded the expectations of the community (even if they were not technically doing anything wrong). You can bet that if MS had run some sort of contest, and asked for submissions, they would have received exactly the same content and the winners would have been overjoyed rather than pissed off. Epic (the makers of Unreal Tournament) do exactly this, and very successfully, because they're adept at building and managing communities.

In any case, that's only the tip of the iceberg. As Danc notes, the really interesting stuff happens when you create a market as well as the tools. This is going to be a very fertile area for development in the years ahead.

Very true. Reselling someone else's content witho...

2005-08-15T14:56:00.000-06:00

Very true. Reselling someone else's content without paying them is a bad thing.

The two models I've seen are:

- User content is free. Anything someone makes and posts is available to other users. Most games use this model.

- User content is resold and the revenue is split between the user and the game developer. This is often positioned as a store 'fee' much like what ebay does. However, expansion packs usually fall into this category as well. Give the mod makers cash and take a fair cut for the marketing and platform support services that you provide.

Grabbing content and reselling it without payback is moronic. In a service based game, your relationship with your customers is your business. Poisoning that relationship for the sake of a one time revenue hit is bad business. You end up cutting off the lifetime revenue of the customers you piss off. That's +10 bucks for an expansion pack and -200 bucks in future revenue.

What you mention is a great example of a company not understanding how to leverage user content.

take care
Danc.

The idea of having users generating content then y...

2005-08-15T14:03:00.000-06:00

The idea of having users generating content then you profiting from it directly (by selling it to other users) seems to be a good way to anger your community.

When Microsoft published the Mech Paks for MechWarrior 4 they included user-generated maps. The users were livid that the map-makers weren't paid for their content - even though the EULA essentially gave MS the rights to do this.

This is just one example but I'm sure that there must be others out there.