I’m all for user generated content. It opens the door to new ideas, things that the software creators could have never imagined. Valve of course is the best example, some of their hits were based on user generated content.

On the subject of Halo 3. I bought into the hype and got an Xbox for Halo 3. I beat the game and was mildly satisfied but I basically never played it again unless I had company over.

Recently I had my cousin over. He loaded up his Gamertag on my Xbox and had his friend send him some of the custom maps he had downloaded. They weren’t on par with the maps Microsoft are charging $5 each for, but they presented new ideas that you wouldn’t get with a commercial game. One was a simple Smash Bros style map, a platform floating in the air with a ton of items popping up. I had no idea that you could even do that with Halo 3. My cousin and his friend played that stage for an hour, screwing around. Playing the game the way they wanted to play it.

I consider Smash Bros another great example of user-generated content, solely based on the way you can configure your matches. There’s a ton of ways to play the game. I find that many people have different “house rules”. I was playing Brawl over at a friends where they considered having items turned on heresy. The kind of customization allows for the players to make the game their own, by playing it how they want to play it.

It may suck to have to wade through a bunch of shit content but that’s what friends are for. Luckily we don’t have to experience the cold darkness of the internet alone. I didn’t have custom Halo 3 maps my Xbox so my cousin got his friend to send him the maps that he had on his Xbox. All viral like. I like to believe that truly good content won’t go unnoticed, the worthwhile content will be passed on.

Both the pros and the UGC crowd is looking for evidence that it’s worth spilling cash for. They want to see a well done product that proves the software, a player base that will pick up their content, marketing support from the company that created it, etc. A good game is the best advertising for good development tools.

I think UGC is as much a mini-industry as you can get. The possibilities tend to be smaller and therefore the investment is smaller, the product is worse, and the profits are null.

It would be silly to bank on UGC, but it also seems clear that packaging a great game with great UGC potential is a guaranteed hit for years. And of course there are the long term benefits of earning a dedicated fan-base, a talent pool, and cheap ideas and development pursued by amatuers competing for your attention.

But would it have been so successful if it had just been a tool and had not had the HL single player story to drive the game, engine, rules and mechanics into the gaming consciousness? Of course not.

My point is that, by all means include UGC tools in your games but aways make them a secondary feature. After all, the pool of talent able to create meaningful and quality things from these tools will always be relatively small and narrow.

That said, this was a grumpy and facetious post that wasn’t meant to dissuade or discourage content creators so much as ask developers work at better filtering tools (just look at how Bungee’s lack of efficient filtering has made so much Forge content impenetrable) and to not rely on UGC as the sole driver for a title. So apologies if that’s what it did.

Even that software was clunky child’s play compared to what could be released, but with ideas like yours no one wants to put in the effort (or is afraid of the competition).

UGC isn’t just a way for nerds to extend the life of your game. It’s a way for people to do your job better than you do because they have the passion to do so and when developers embrace that, they profit from it.

Welcome to the 90′s.