User Generated Games

GamearraY in Action: Game Wizard/FaceGrabber and Game Editor


I was asked to participate in a panel about user generated games in the Casual Connect Conference this February in Amsterdam. This made me look back at the long way I have walked since I first came up with the concept of GamearraY till this day.

When I first came up with my idea of allowing people to actually create their own mobile games back in 2004, it seemed weird to a lot of people. And this shouldn't be too surprising, as in that time even more "mainstream" user generated content (such as videos, pictures, blogs) were not as popular and hyped as they are today (Can you believe that YouTube was founded just two years ago in February 2005?...).

And even now, when everyone knows that user-generated content is the way to go, it seems that games still did not get the "treatment" that videos, pictures and blog got in the user generated content department.

However, there's something in the air, and I do believe that this is going to change very soon. In fact, I am also aware of several initiatives of several companies besides GamearraY that are now in the process of launching their own user-generated games portal. These companies include a known games publisher, a known media corporation and as always mobile content companies. Some of these are also in contact with us to use our technology for that end.

But for me, and for many other gamers, user generated games is not new at all. In fact it has been here for a long time, maybe not served as neat as consumer user generated content (UGC)sites, but there is already a community of people who make their own games or modify other people's games.

And I am referring here to the phenomenon known as modding. Modding is short for "modifying" and in the gaming world it means taking as existing game and modifying various aspects of it (usually the assets but sometimes also the logic itself). This is usually done either with tools provided by the game publisher itself, or sometimes by hacking the game and changing stuff inside even if the publisher didn't actually want that to happen.. So for example you can take a dark 3D-Shooter and turn the scenery from a battlefield to an hawaiian village and the missile launcher to a "coconut launcher" etc. (And that's a real example from a mod to the classic Duke Nukem 3D).

Now one of the questions I am always being asked is whether people actually want to make their own games, or rather play ready made ones. By the level of involvement that "modders" are showing - I can definitely say that they do. There are entire sites and groups dedicated to modding, and the members are usually investing their time in creating complex art work such as 3D models of new monsters and heroes. Just to get a taste you can go to Planet Quake (hosted at GameSpy) which is dedicated to modding of the legendary 3D shooter Quake. The site includes news, featured "mods" and it has a very active community.

Aside from modding, which is usually a term used for modifying 3D games, there are also other games that have accumulated a big enough fan base that started producing their own games. One such genre is Sierra's old AGI quests (King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest etc.). People have actually reverse-engineered Sierra's quest engine and built an editor for it, and people actually made a lot of amatuer games back in the time).

Now, these all require a lot of effort and talent, and usually indeed groups of artists and programmers and other creative people come together to form groups that actually make mods or games (For example the modding groups PPM and Pocket Plane). This comes to show that there is real interest in making games. The question is - how wide is the market for that?

It is clear that not all people are "modders" and in fact, even though they have quite an impressive footprint on the web, these guys form a rather small community. However, we should remember a few things here. First off, unlike consumer-facing sites, they use professional offline tools, and the level of complexity they are involved is rather deep. What if people had easy access to online tools that allow games modification, and not only that - they didn't have to actually model 3D sprites (not an easy task...) but just pick and choose existing characters and place them wherever they want, maybe accesorize them etc. (BTW - this is not unlike what people already do in the "*craft" games, but in a different context).

In addition, like any UGC community, the ratio between the contributers/uploaders and users/downloaders is 1 to 1000s (and even more). So, we don't need everyone to be able or even to want to make their own game, we just need a core community that has the ability and desire to contribute and can produce quality content, that will appeal to thousands of users. The only thing we have to do to make it happen is to provide the community with both the tools for content/games creation and the community tools (publishing, messaging, profiles etc.)

I also wanted to write a bit about the difference between user generated content and personalization, but it will have to wait to the next post as I have to get going. Just to touch on the subject: most of the things I described here is UGC. However there's great potential in just allowing people to perosnalize games, meaning put their own face on top of the body of the hero, their teacher/boss face on the villain etc. This can appeal even to non-gamers, and this is why in GamearraY we put extra emphasis on that segment as well by providing a 3-steps wizard, and a "FaceGrabber" that allows quick and easy game personalization. To see that youcan watch the video above or simply go to GamearraY and personalize our "School Getaway" game.

(Sorry for the extra promotion in this post to GamearraY, but what can I do - we are the best at user generated and personalized games... and here I did it again...)