User-content should be rewarded - McGee

By Robert Purchese Published 23 April, 2009

"Might inspire communities" to try harder.

Game designer American McGee reckons companies are extorting users, and the content they make, to sell games.

"New trend?" questioned McGee, when asked by Geek.com for his opinion on games like LittleBigPlanet that focus on user-created content. "I seem to recall this being a 'trend' back in the Doom days. The only difference now is that someone is trying to monetise it.

"That’s all fine and good, but I think if game products or publishers are relying on 'outside the box' content created by users to drive interest in their titles then they should find ways of compensating those users for developing added value.

"That might even inspire the user content communities to step up their game," he said.

American McGee is currently hard at work on a new Alice game for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

His most recent work is the episodic Grimm series on US digital distribution service GameTap, the users of which rated the episodes, on average, at around 7/10.

McGee went on to reveal that he would be interested to take episodic series to XBLA and PSN, but he doesn't feel the services are ready, yet.

"Content and audience are there," he said, "But the process isn't."

"When a single title might take months to get through review and approval (take Braid, as an example), pushing 24 episodes through would translate to years of approval process. "

"Hopefully that will change someday soon," he added.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (9) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Eraser #1 3 years ago

    Not sure I fully agree with him. Quake, Half-Life and Unreal mod makers have earned professional jobs in the game industry through their work on mods. That's their reward. I don't think the average noob should be rewarded for creating yet another penis monster in Spore. Creating something that's truly unique, innovative, creative and has a high enough level of quality is something quite different than clicking a few limbs together in Spore or slapping a few trees in a map in LittleBigPlanets.

  • Zomoniac #2 3 years ago

    Perhaps if MS ever actually deliver on their promise to have user-created content sold via micro-transactions with ease then this would already happen.

  • GreyBeard #3 3 years ago

    The big issue is who's judging the content in order to award the user for their input?

    You do it blind, and people will abuse the system by spamming crap that clogs up the servers. You ratify everything and run smack into the wall of people disputing the moderator's value judgements.

    The real issue is that no creator is ever likely to hand over full control to the users, they are going to give them a certain degree of latitude -a little bit of sandbox to play in- but handing the creative direction over to the audience... I don't think so.

  • kestral #4 3 years ago

    anti piracy tool - have users put their content up for sale thus using peer pressure to deter non-payment?
    Edited by 1 at 23/04/09 @ 16:30

  • SEVQA #5 3 years ago

    Most community based games or sites for that matter have a user rating system which could do all the work of who gets rewarded. I’m concerned with the amount micro transactions being put forward by the likes of ‘little big planet’ and ‘HOME’ for example and really dislike the possibility of a virtual elite based on what individuals have purchased over what actually gets created or contributed.

  • beckyh #6 3 years ago

    American McGee is an actual person??

    Somebody please stone me.

  • Mo0k #7 3 years ago

    Maybe he should get a less stupid name before being on the internet.

  • Reihn #8 3 years ago


    While I quite enjoyed the original Alice back at the dawn of the century, I'll never, ever forget the eric/oldmanmurray tirade it inspired.

    "MAKING A VERSION OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND, BUT THAT'S ALL DARK AND TWISTED AND FUCKED UP, IS LIKE MAKING A VERSION OF CRAZY TAXI . . . ONLY -CRAZY-!!!"

    Those guys were golden comedy genius. I hear they went on to write a puzzle game, or something? Is it any good? ; P

  • hiddenranbir #9 3 years ago

    Unlike Quake, Half-life and Unreal, Spore and LBP don't have proper dev content to fall back on. They're almost like, yeah we made a framework but you guys can do finish up for us!


    Perhaps this is why I still see much more attention on HL, Quake, Unreal user content than I do for Spore and LBP - which are actually completely dependant on it.