Ready to unleash your inner creative genius?

Winda Benedetti Citizen Gamer • E-mail

I’ve spent the last several days carefully crafting a little something I like to call “A Foul Fowl.” It’s a game that requires players to traverse a strange planet and get to the bottom of a vast conspiracy. There are innocent lives to be saved. There are mutant farm animals to be subdued. There is lots and lots of shooting to be done.

Or at least, I hope there will be by the time I’m finally finished. I have to admit, I’ve been a bit obsessed with “A Foul Fowl” which, to be honest, is not exactly a full game per se, but rather one mission within the larger game known as “Spore Galactic Adventures.” Still, I can’t stop tinkering with it. I want to get my mission just right before I share it with the world.

And share it I will.

“Galactic Adventures,” which launched this week, is the first expansion for “Spore” and one that gives players the tools they need to create their own gameplay adventures and to then share those adventures so that other people can play them. It’s also the latest entry in the growing gaming phenomenon known as “user-generated content.”

Increasingly, gamers aren’t just “players,” they’re often “creators” as well. “Player expression” and “user-generated content” were two of the phrases buzzing about this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo. It seems game makers everywhere are trying to come up with ways to help game players unleash their inner creative genius. 

In April, the online game “City of Heroes” launched “Mission Architect” — an expansion that gives players the tools to create missions and then publish them for others to play. At E3, Nintendo showed off “WarioWare D.I.Y.” — an upcoming DS game that will let players design their own micro-games from scratch and then share them with others.  Meanwhile, next week, Microsoft will launch “Kodu,” a programming tool that allows even novice players to create and share their very own Xbox 360 games.

Express yourself
Blame it on the Internet … and YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Everywhere you look these days, media consumers are becoming media makers. It seems everyone wants to create stuff and share it with the world … gamers included.

Paragon Studios The new "Mission Architect" expansion for "City of Heroes" gives players the tools to create their own story arcs for other players to experience. Within 24 hours of the launch, players had crafted 3,800 story arcs — more than the game’s developers had, in almost five years time, created for all of "City of Heroes."

“I think players and people in general have stories they want to tell,” says Matt Miller, “City of Heroes” lead designer. “Everybody has that Great American Novel in them, and this is our outlet for them.”

With “Mission Architect,” “City of Heroes” players craft their own unique missions and story arcs by using a series of easy-to-navigate menus. They type in the story details and dialogue they want players to encounter. They select the goals players will be tasked with and design the enemies they’ll face off against.  And then they post it for all to play.

Miller says they’ve been stunned by the response: Within 24 hours of the launch, players had put together 3,800 story arcs. As of this week, more than 200,000 missions have been published.

“I think that the desire to create is universal and has always been there, but now the tools are making it more accessible,” says Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo executive VP of sales and marketing.

Indeed, user-generated content in gaming is not new. For years, games like “Quake” and “Half-Life” have spawned communities dedicated to creating their own modified levels. But these days, it’s no longer just the savviest gamers who are getting in on the action.

Sony At the E3 gaming conference, Sony introduced 'ModNation Racers' — a game that lets players design and build their own race tracks and share them with other players.

When Sony launched “LittleBigPlanet” last year, they brought the user-generated concept into living rooms in a big-big way. The game gave PlayStation 3 owners approachable tools with which they could craft some seriously stunning levels. And players loved it — so far they have designed more than 800,000 of their own “LBP” levels.

At E3, Sony executives unveiled the next installment in what they’re calling their “Play, Create, Share” line of games. “ModNation Racers” is a PS3 kart-racing game that allows gamers to craft their own tracks for others to take a spin on. Check out this video to see just how easy it will be.

And that’s the key — ease of use. At long last, companies are coming up with ways to make gaming creation so easy that even a child can do it. In fact, that’s exactly what “Kodu” aims to be — a programming environment that even 9-year-olds could use to build their very own games. Scheduled to arrive via Xbox Live next week, “Kodu” is currently being used in schools to teach programming.

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