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User-content should be rewarded - McGee

"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.