Developers end up ”chasing our tail,” he said. They spend all those resources on new content only for it to be digested so quickly. The future is letting players create the content.
He points to SOE’s EverQuest Next and the standalone Landmark as embracing the future by equipping players with tools to run amok with their imaginations.
”A chunk of content that takes us four years to make gets consumed by the players in less than a year,” Clint Worley said. ”So we get into a situation where we’re chasing our tail. We’re trying to create new content for the players, but even with a dedicated team of say, a hundred developers cranking out an expansion or an add-on - the players consume it so fast.”
”From a business point of view it really puts us on our heels,” Worley explained, ”because we can’t create content fast enough, while the players can just go to a different game any time they want.”
The way around this is empowering players with creation tools, and letting them share their content with others.
”With Everquest Next and Landmark the gameplay is starting to be more about the players using their own imaginations and the tools we give them as a opposed to us reading them a story and them having to do what we tell them,” he said. ”I think we’ll continue to see more of that going forward.”
This method is being increasingly adopted especially with the meteoric rise of Minecraft and other world creating wonders like Terraria and Starbound. Even Rockstar Games is pushing for user generated content with GTA Online.
Sony Online’s Landmark is currently available through Early Access and is dedicated to player content.
