Before we jump into what is just over the horizon let's first take a step back. I'm an ol skooler and have been I think we can be categorized into which game system you had your first experience. Even though I played some late Atari when I was real young, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was my first console I owned and what really sucked me into being a gamer.
So for all my other NES gen gamers out there, do you remember Excite Bike? Simple side scrolling dirt bike racing game where you could change between 4 lanes. Awesome game for me as a kid but what set this game apart was user generated content. Yup even back in '86-'87 they had a game where you could make your own map.
You were able to set the boost arrows, jumps and obstacles in any crazy combination you wanted. We used to line up 10 boost arrows in a row then launch off the biggest jump to see how much air we could catch. Yes I know it's not that impressive compared to today's games but the sheer fact that they had this option opened up a whole world of possibilities.
Fast Forward to Halo 3. Bungie gave us Forge to create our own levels and modify the maps that were already there. The tools they gave us were very crude and clunky to work with. If you had a LOT of patience, you could create some really amazing things. I am still blown away by the Forge art people are creating. They are creating massive pictures using placement of in game objects. Simply amazing. Bungie made a huge leap forward in allowing us to create our own levels.
Little Big Planet comes along and kicks our chairs out from underneath us. They gave us tools to create and customize everything about our levels, then gave us the ability to post it up into the Little Big Planet Universe for everyone to play. Their file share system definitely needs an upgrade. There was no way to really sort the list of content in a way that you could find good content. You just had to sift through lots of crappy levels to find one really cool one. With their expansive tool set, LBP set the bar for all user generated content in games today.
These 2 games have opened up a world of possibilities. Users have come up with maps, levels and game variants that the studios couldn't possibly have the time to create. The community has shown that, if you give us the tools to build stuff, we will build it on our own. They have taken note and both have made sure to come big with their next games.
Halo Reach is Bungie's final installment in the Halo series and they are going out with a bang. It drops Sep. 14th. They have taken everything that the community had issues with in Halo 3 and given us tools that will allow us to truly create fully functional maps. Bungie really doesn't even have to do map pack releases anymore. The community will produce high quality content on its own. I hope that there is a good ranking system for finding good maps. Maps with the highest rankings should cycle into a playlist of user generated levels by game type. That way we always have fresh new levels to play long after Bungie has bailed on us.I still love you Bungie. I hope your new project is even better than Halo.
Little Big Planet is bringing the heat with their Nov.2 release of Little Big Planet 2. It looks like they've paid attention to their community to improve their tools. They have added a bunch of new tools that open up LBP2 to a lot of other game variants besides just being a side scrolling platformer. I am definitely looking forward to this title too.
Games have come a long way. I think user generated content is what is going to push video games to another level. Instead of having a studio of 20-50 people coming up with new ideas, you now have millions coming up with fresh ideas and building it themselves. C'mon Sep 14th, I'm ready to get my Forge World on!
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