The infinite value of player-created content

Yes, yes, I know... It's probably an issue for me, but I'm still coming across stuff on the Internet that makes me think of Diablo III... even when it's not directly about D3.

Por ejemplo, this article at Kotaku:

Overwatch’s PTR just got a bunch of new custom game options, and people are using them in responsible, measured ways to— just kidding. They’re turning the game into a dang Bugs Bunny cartoon.

The new custom game options allow players to boost movement speed, remove cooldowns, change team sizes, ban heroes, and alter all sorts of other values. That’s already resulted in a handful of cool ideas. Also, a whole lot of chaos.

And, boy oh boy, are they ever not kidding. Predator mode, Zombie mode, a Pro Genji Simulator, Juggernaut mode, various Counter-Strike themed maps, Lucio Racing, and on, and on, and on.

All this, and the new custom options have only been live on the PTR for a couple days. I imagine things will only spiral further out of control once the server browser hits live servers.

This should be a lesson to every game developer out there. The larger population of gamers includes a large number of creative, and often technically-savvy, people, who apparently cannot wait to add content, and thus value, to your game. Give them the option to create custom games, or maps, or mods, and the free content will flow; give them an easy way to showcase their creations for other players, and you can extend the lifespan of your game by years, all at zero cost to you. Even the mod tools don't cost anything, since they're probably the same ones you used to make the game's official content in the first place.

The other option, of course, is to lock down your game, insisting on rigid control over every aspect of the experience, and nerfing the shit out of any creative fun way the players find to play your game that isn't the core experience you'd intended. Basically, the approach taken by Diablo III, whose players spent years begging for the ability to mod the game... before losing interest and leaving because Blizzard refused to even discuss the possibility.

The kicker here? Overwatch and Diablo III are both Blizzard games. As is StarCraft II, a game with best-in-class modding capabilities and an Arcade showcase that makes finding them super-simple. SC2's Arcade is available with free editions of the game, too, meaning that you can play all the SC2 mods you want without spending a cent... including basically-complete versions of Diablo and Diablo II. Yes, you read that right... you can play fan-crafted HD "remakes" of D1 and D2 in the SC2 Arcade, but not as D3 mods.

D3, of course, is basically moribund, with Blizzard planning only one new class (as paid DLC) and no other new content that we know of, and players openly wondering whether Blizzard is getting ready to abandon the game entirely, while Overwatch is inspiring a flood of creative player-created content, even before the custom game functionality goes live. The two situations, both in games from the same publisher, couldn't be more different; it's actually hard to believe that both games were made by the same company. I don't think it's a coincidence that the vibrant, thriving game is the one whose dev team appreciates and encourages the creativity of its players, while the team that's taken the opposite approach from the very beginning is the one that's struggling to sustain player engagement.

Learn the lesson, devs. Unleash the creativity of your players; give them toys to play with, and an unstructured place to play, and you can reap the rewards of other people's creativity and passion for years. The alternative is for you to maintain the flow of content by yourselves... which, while certainly possible, it a lot harder and more expensive to do.

Esports can giveth... but will it?

Esports are so hot right now.

League of Legends, DOTA2, CS:GO, Hearthstone, StarCraft 2... with a few high-profile titles making esports look more legit every day, suddenly everyone wants some of that sweet, sweet esports action:

Per a release from the Pac-12, the athletic conference will become the first to run and broadcast officially sanctioned esports competitions. They haven’t picked a game yet, but they say they will pick one soon and broadcast some gaming starting next year:

Intercollegiate competition in egaming is in its initial stages, but Pac-12 universities are increasingly involved through passionate student groups competing in competitions with popular games. Esports is also closely tied to academic departments at Pac-12 universities such as computer science, visual and cinematic arts, engineering and others.

And they're not the only ones. Activision Blizzard recently "scaled back" their licensed properties division, even as they were acquiring Major League Gaming; they've since partnered with Facebook to deliver esport content worldwide.

They're not alone, either:

Turner Broadcasting and WME/IMG announced that they were forming an eSports league that would debut on TBS. Amazon-owned Twitch, one of the pioneers in this space, receives over 100 million monthly unique viewers, and 1.7 million monthly unique broadcasters. Users view approximately 422 minutes of programming on Twitch, which is more than YouTube’s 291 monthly minutes, according to TechCrunch.

Yes, it's the new videogame gold rush. In the same way that everyone wanted to be making MMOs (only to discover that there really only was room for one World of WarCraft), and then MOBAs (only to discover that there really is only room for one League of Legends), and then free-to-play games (only to discover that people are only willing to drop so much cash on microtransactions for ostensibly free games), now everyone wants to be in esports.

Is this realistic? Maybe not:

While some publishers establish their own eSports divisions and appoint chief competition officers, Take-Two is approaching the competitive gaming trend with a bit more caution. Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz in advance of the company's financial earnings reporttoday, CEO and chairman Strauss Zelnick said the field was promising, but still unproven.

"eSports we find very interesting," Zelnick said. "It is, however, still more a promotional tool than anything else. And most people see eSports as an opportunity to increase consumer engagement in their titles, and depending on the title, to increase consumer spending within the title."

That more or less matches my thinking on the subject. Riot Games didn't design League of Legends to be an esport -- they were just making a game, that they were hoping players would enjoy enough to support with online purchases. It was always an online multiplayer game, and it always had its competitive elements, but there are a lot of competitive online multiplayer games, and almost none of them have become juggernauts of esports in the same way that LoL has.

The same applies to games like Hearthstone, the popularity of which was something of a surprise to Blizzard; players were organizing their own tournaments long before Blizzard got involved. Even Blizzard's StarCraft and WarCraft III, which basically established the current eSports template when it became a cultural phenomenon in South Korea, were not designed as esport titles. Just as with regular, athletic sporting events, the biggest esports grew organically, from games that people just loved to play.

The same applies to almost every big, athletic, sports league. Soccer (or Football, for readers outside NA) was a game long before FIFA became a sporting juggernaut. Football (or gridiron football, for readers outside NA), was organized into the massively profitable NFL long after its popularity as a game had helped it to spread. Baseball is big business, but that's because it was everywhere in the USA at the start of the 20th Century, and not because some corporation decided that their strategy called for a strong position in pastoral past-times.

Conversely, more recent attempts to manufacture new sports have largely flopped. Do you remember when Roller Derby was huge? Do you also remember watching moon landings on TV as a kid? Roller Derby is still around, and experiencing something of a renaissance in the last two years, but it's a long way from being the pop cultural touchstone that it briefly became, back in the 1970s. 

Even attempts to popularize already-existing but lesser-known sports, like Lacrosse (yes, there's a pro Lacrosse league) have met with only moderate success; and other contenders only meet with fleeting success before fading into obscurity, living on like zombies in the wasteland of daytime weekday ESPN. Meanwhile, Professional Darts has gone from daytime ESPN broadcasts out of croweded pubs to packing good-sized arenas, much like esports... again, I think, because it was already a popular game.

I have a feeling that esports are here to stay, but even absolutely dominant titles like LoL can only remain on top for so long; it's the nature of the medium, for new games to eventually supplant older ones at the top of gaming's zeitgeist. But companies that are revamping their entire business models around chasing esports gold? I have a feeling that even the even the AAA prospectors might end up with more fools' gold, than real stuff.