Making the virtual world a better place

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to get players engaged in games by giving them the opportunity to build content that other players enjoy.

A designer at Dragon's Eye Productions who called himself Dr. Cat for the panel, agreed, noting that while publisher-created content will likely be more polished than that made by users, content created by users--such as clothing, buildings, vehicles, weapons and the like-?can have more value to players because they recognize it was built by people they know.

Even better, the argument for user-created content goes, it can cut down significantly on the cost of developing online games. That's important in an era when virtual worlds like WoW can cost as much as $30 million to produce.

Paying for the privilege
Jim Purbrick, an engineer at Linden Labs, publisher of "Second Life," argued that because that title's 60,000 users are spending tens of thousands of hours a day creating content, the virtual world benefits-?even if a vast majority of content isn't very good-?from the creation of what the equivalent of around 300 full-time designers could do. And those members pay Linden Lab for the privilege.

At the same time, another panel investigated the ownership of virtual goods and the reason publishers want to make the end-user license agreements or terms of service players agree to as clear as possible.

Most publishers--Linden Lab being an exception-?assert that all virtual goods from their online games are their property, regardless of who created them.

Further, most companies deny players the right to trade those goods for real money. Yet in spite of that, the market for the trade of such goods is worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, as players are willing to pay hard cash for weapons, clothing, vehicles and such goods.

"The EULA isn't going to be enough to stop this kind of creativity," said Ted Castronova, a leading expert on the economies of virtual worlds. "The sphere of economic development is absolutely powerful...There's a profit-seeking incentive that will (create) a market...The future is that every single one of these games is going to have this trading around it."

Thus, said Raph Koster, another panelist and the chief creative office at "EverQuest" publisher Sony Online Entertainment, companies may want to follow SOE's lead in incorporating real-money trades directly into their games.

SOE recently became the first major American publisher to do that when it unveiled Station Exchange, which allows some "EverQuest II" players to buy and sell that game's goods.

"It's making appreciable money," Koster said of Station Exchange. "It's clearly a viable business model going forward, so the question is where it makes sense and where is it applicable."

In any case, the Austin Game Conference was a place for discussion and the trading of strategies. Developers who are competitors the rest of the year came together to help each other refine business models and development plans for games.

And that's at least in part because everyone here believes that online games are going to be getting bigger and bigger as time goes by. And those in attendance here think there is no doubt that there is enough room for everyone.

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They "need" user created content?

The statement that user-created content (even if poor quality content) is valuable to defray development costs, which are upward of $30MM doesn't sound right.

What happened to the 4MM x $15/mo = $60MM/month
Seems like they'd have plenty of cash to keep building it out on their own high-quality content.

Not that it's a bad idea, just the reasoning seems off.

[zaznet]

Not all virtual environments are the same...

You used the numbers from WoW and the costs of developing such a large environment such as WoW and crossed it with the user-created content systems of Second Life.

4,000,000 players subscribed to WoW.
600,000 players subscribed to Second Life.

Second Life likely charges players to submit their rendered game artifacts, for a processing fee. I know this is how the virtual world "There" operates. Players are willing to pay to get items they created into the world because of the distinct value add of having exactly what you want in-game.

Player inserted objects make up a lot of the There and Second Life game experience. You won't play either game very long without interacting with something another player created.

So now take the $9M potential for a game like Second Life and reduce the $30M cost of development down to just $2M for maintaining the world. You get a much more profitable virtual world. It isn't just the "need" it, as it is making it more profitable. Could you imagine going to McDonalds and paying full price, but you have to go behind the counter and cook the fries yourself? :)