Three Rings are a great company for user participation, and are really open with their stuff.
A couple of years back I decided I wanted to do some stuff with player stats and approached them asking if they minded my software accessing the character info system that the real client does. Their response was basically "Sure, go ahead, just make sure you do stuff to ensure you don't overload the server". My investigations revealed that a unique session cookie was required to get the info. This cookie is provided during the client's authentication process. I didn't want to reverse-engineer that or fiddle with it. I reported that back to Three Rings, thanked them for their time and started a different project. Their programmers confirmed my suspicion and agreed that fiddling with the authentication system isn't a good idea and that they didn't want people playing with security sensitive stuff for obvious reasons.
Three weeks later, they removed the authentication requirement to access that data.

djack

At the recent Social Gaming Summit, a couple of industry types got together to talk about user generated content in virtual worlds, and why the model works for their games (such as Habbo Hotel or Puzzle Pirates):

It works because they get your work for nothing. Remember, piracy is bad, but work without compensation is good... very good.

Minister of Fun

While user created content can be good, I consider it more of a curse than a blessing and actually prefer it not be in games unless its completely segregated from the core gameplay.(which usually it is, so its not too much of an issue.) Reason being that most of it is utter crap, even the funny ones are usually not worth more than a few plays and overall the quality of the title and the community can suffer because of segementation of the amount of players playing the game online.

As for the idea here, Im not really sure I like where its headed, but who knows, they may pull it off.

RuneX21

Anyone here ever play Graal Online? That was all user created. Ace when I was 11 years old, looking back on it though I now remember how terrible it was.

Winterbringer

"design from the avatar up, not the 'world' down."
that really is a great gaming philosophy to have

GodzillaVsJapan

Late this year or early next year sometime city of heroes is looking to allow user created content. That will be interesting to see how it works in a larger mmo setup. Given the game's focus on customization and freedom with your look and powers, the community could really add a lot to the conventional mmoscape.

rianfrost

Is it like, captain of the obvious season in here at the moment?

Everyone knows user-generated content can be not only a huge extension to the game itself, but can also lead to whole new games created from the original.

Just look at Starcraft whos lifespan was massively enlarged by UMS maps and Half-life which spawned Counter-strike, the most played FPS ever.

It's a bit "hey guys, welcome to yesterday" don't you think?

Edmon

I've been looking forward to user-created content in MMO's for a while. I enjoy my table-top and virtual Table-top RPG's, but I'm not fond of Roleplay in your average MMO. About all you can really do is talk in character with some emotes to back it up. With some co-operation and a little luck, you might be able to RP to some pre-existing storyline, but that's about it.

With the user-generated content for City of Heroes, I'm hoping that Roleplay in the game will become more sophisticated, with missions being dynamically adapted by the creator for the players involved. The mission in play probably can't be GM'd, but I believe being able to make or alter the next mission based on the players actions would be a big step forward on that front.

Terranvoid

@Edmon:

Actually I felt that StarCraft was almost ruined online because of user-generated content. For years Blizzard pumpted out high-quality post-release official maps for us all to download and play for free, yet people STILL insisted on playing shitty, badly-made homebrew big money maps, variations on Big Game Hunters etc. They completely undermined the strategy of the game and to this day there are still loads of people on Battle.net playing shite home made maps.

I really, really hate user generated content. Most users aren't good at making game content. For every big success like Counter Strike there are a million really appallingly shitty efforts.

I'm just glad that Halo 3 doesn't include custom games on the matchmaking system.

kiigan

@kiigan: WOw, I didn't know people like that existed. Personally, I wouldn't pick the 360 version of Oblivion over the PC version even if they were giving it away and All I had was a 360 and a laptop from 2004.

Scuba Steve

thats why my pc rocks and valve is my favorite company

waza

humn...user generated content...and here I sit, yet to play little big planet...

Nubius