Talking Game Design - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 57

The fi nal way in which gamers impact the games they play is by taking
advantage of the increasing number of opportunities for players to create
elements within the games they play. The MMOG genre has been a leader
in enabling players to develop content within games, largely with an eye
toward increasing player investment in games. By facilitating player devel-
opment, game developers can free up relatively scarce, paid game developer
time to access the participation of active player-developers. The technical
skills needed to engage in player-based game development run the gamut,
from in-game events that can be planned by any active player to the pro-
gramming and development of modifi cations in World of Warcraft , which
requires player-developers to write computer code in authoring their addi-
tions to the game. In this vein, City of Heroes took an in-house mission
development tool and turned it over to players, allowing them to make
custom designed missions. Within twenty-four hours of the initial launch
of the tool, players more than doubled the content available in the game,
exceeding all of the paid development work to that date. 25 Although the
players then found a way to exploit the system, which warranted additional
modifi cations to the program and a limitation on rewards, 26 the ability
for players to create content within the game radically shifted the author-
audience relationship and produced content that “was arguably better than
some of the game designer's attempts.” 27 EVE Online took a similarly inter-
esting approach by turning the construction of space stations over to play-
ers. In a game where the only place you are safe is inside a space station,
the presence and placement of stations is incredibly important. By putting
players in charge of creating their own stations, developer CCP created a
system where players could build things almost wherever they wanted to,
while adding a new talk-about-able part of the game with “a rich history
behind” each station's “construction and the battles fought over it.” 28
A growing number of other kinds of games are also dependent on player-
developed content, most notably LittleBigPlanet , Spore , and Minecraft .
These games are dramatically expanded by the ef orts of players, which
are integrated into the overall landscape of what makes these games what
they are. The game disc for LittleBigPlanet comes with a complete game
and many platform based levels to play, but where the game shines is in the
ability for players to use the Create Mode to develop their own levels and
publish them online so other players can download and play them. The sec-
ond edition of the game is backward compatible with the fi rst, and millions
of levels have been created by players of the game. 29 The internet abounds
with top 10 lists of the best user-generated levels, 30 and user-generated con-
tent became so popular over the run of the game that the game developer,
Media Molecule, helped gather “12 of the most talented creators from the
community” 31 to develop a “community-made level pack.” 32 By producing
a game that not only enables but also depends on user-generated content,
and by gathering a large, invested community of players behind the game
Media Molecule blurs the line between audience and author. In this case,