Player vs. Dev: So there I was on startrekonline.com's forums and I happened to get into a conversation about dynamic MMOs which quickly evolved into a conversation about players building things themselves. I happened to bring up topics like Little Big Planet and Second Life and how they were both created with the intent of having players build most of the game's content.

Its with that that I started thinking what type of game do I like? Well when I was in high school and my first two years of college I attempted to become a game designer, I even went to school for it but eventualy I found that I enjoyed playing more than creating (or rather that creating games often involved a lot of backstabbing and idea stealing as do most artistic jobs). So deep down inside of me I have this desire to create games if not on "true devloper" level. It was with that desire that I was drawn to Second Life for a short while.

Second Life: Though not officaly a game in any real way the whole online world is built by players for players. Real money is exchanged and people have actualy spent a large ammount of time on the game creating true money making positions (don't think its easy though as most people on SL will tell you its extreamly hard to get the position you need to create a money making venture and it even requires a small investment as well). Everything in SL is player created though, from the house you hang out in to the clothing your avatar wears. The client has a built in 3D rendering system which allows you to put shapes and textures together to create interesting objects.

Little Big Planet: I haven't played LBP yet but I'm looking forward to it, what makes this game interesting is that it ships with a whole game but at the same time the developers have given the players the ability to create their own levels. From what I've read/seen of the game you can design very complex levels for other people to experience and as some articles have stated "if you can think of it you can make it in LBP".

So which is better? Honestly this is obviously upto the player, if your an MMOer you'll note games such as Ultima Online (UO) and Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) and though they didn't have any built in systems to let you customize your own content they did have houses. I remember in both games players created some of the most intersting things out of objects within the game... it was like Junkyard Wars but with interior decoration and they did a great job with it. In UO a 2D game I saw people create fish tanks out of cut cloth placed on the floor with fish stacked ontop and visually it looked like a fish tank though the game registered it as fish ontop of cloth. The same things happened in SWG a 3D game where players would turn fountains into pools or baths for their avatars, these players literaly took what the devs gave them and ran with it.

The dark side of player made content is that not everyone is very creative... Second Life proves this for some sections of the game look bland or just plain ugly, I'm sure we'll see things like that in Little Big Planet when it hits the PS3 this fall.

Deep down inside I'm all for player created content even if its not on the scale of LBP or SL and honestly I think more games should have level editors and player design aspects within them, from time to time you find a gem of a level or map that you may have never seen anywhere ealse... I remember seeing some realy great stuff on Half Life online made by players.

Recently I've seen quite a few topics pop up about different complaints, some saying that sex and violence in gaming has gotten out of control, others saying that its "hidden" away forcing developers to hide such contents or cut them completely. To give you some examples of this I bring up the notorious GTA3, and the daring Mass Effect.

Both games have taken a ton of heat and in different areas, mass ban's, boycotts, and overall negative unrest follows in their wake. I'll start with GTA3, this game is obviously an M rated game, you kill, have sex, and do tons of horrid things. Personally I'm not for or against the game, why because I respect the M on the box. I know when I pop GTA3 into my system that I'm going to experience some rather dark topics, that the game will push the social limits of what is right and wrong (mostly wrong) and at the same time I know its just a game and when I walk away I'll be the same person that I was when I started to play it.

Now as mentioned above GTA in general has taken a beating due to its content, personally I think this is very unfair. To use another example lets throw in the TV show the Sopranos, or American Gangster. Both movie and show have tons of 'R' rated content, both have nudity on some level, blood and gore on some level, and crime elements on some level. Yet these two bits of modern media take significantly less flack than the game counterpart why is that?

Before I answer the question... in the most neutral way possible let me address my other example, Mass Effect. The game is rather innocent, aside from killing aliens in a rather gore-less way it has no major flaws, a few changes and it may have passed for 'T'. Yet in the game we find a sex scene, after watching it I realized it was no worse than anything I had seen in an 'R' rated movie, yet again the game takes a ton of flack (I won't even get into the alien on human scene that everyone is going crazy over... that's a blog for a different time).

So is it unfair that games take so much heat for following in the footsteps of their parents, movies and shows? I say yes it is, and I feel the major reason games are taking a beating is because respect for the 'M' rating is low. When I see a big 'M' on a box I think 'R', I know its not good stuff for kids, I know it may contain foul language, violence, and sexual themes and if your unsure they list it on the back of the box! So I fail to see why it is that games can't have all the uncensored violence and sexual content of a movie as long as they throw it on the box for all to see? Some say that kids may get into it, well my response is if your a good parent you'll sensor your child's viewing, if its to hard to do that then you explain what they are seeing to them, you cover the bases and give them a strong moral guide.

The bottom line is, if a game has an 'M' rating than expect mature conetent, or if its easier for those who watch movies expect restricted content. Overall I feel that games in general are on the same level as movies and TV shows which both have rating systems now (movies before games), so why is it that games take such a beating? Because people haven't given the 'M' respect.

Now this is my first time blogging at all, so I'll make my personal intro realy quick. I'm a MMO gamer (been doing it for about 6 or 7 years now) though I do own a Wii and an Xbox 360 so I'm not a pure MMO gamer.

Well now that thats out of the way I'll start this off: Recently I just got into Lord of the Rings Online (LoTRO), its a great game, lots of neat stuff to do but as always it and many MMOs have disappointed. Its not the game-play is bad, and the world is very nice it makes me happy to run through the Shire and feel as if I'm a part of Tolkin's masterful world, but at the same time I get this dejavu feal that I've been here before. In reality I have, not this world, not this game but this type of game.

Before WoW the MMO world was an "underground" one, and often people said "you play MMOs... what is an MMO?" when you told them about it. Now that games like WoW has stormed the market and made MMOs "mainstream" even football players dable in the MMO world (often through WoW). Now this is great and all, I always figure the more people the better, means that the game is doing well, but with WoW I'm starting to see a tried and true formula poping up. Ever game after WoW has had some form of Wowisumin it. LoTRO is a perfect example of this, the game screams wow... from the leveling system to the crafting system they have transplanted WoW into Tolkin's world of Middle Earth. This isn't the worst thing I've ever seen and you can tell that lately developers are using WoWs success to fuel their own designs.

This is where the title of this blog comes in, before WoW when you developed a game you had to come up with ways to make your game "new" or "better" than your competetors. Often new MMOs were exciting because they tried new and daring formulas, many bombed but a few stayed strong and realy developed worlds and game-play styles that were unique and interesting. In our modern world of MMOs all you see are rehashes of WoW, just as Korean games are constantly turning out Lineage style games. Now you can't blame a company for going the "safe" path, and doing a WoW style game, but when will the line be drawn... how long will it take untill players get sick of the constant "WoW Effect" storming into there favorite MMOs (Heck SOE destroyed Star Wars Galaxies just to make it feel a little more like WoW).

Now this isn't to say that the MMO world is totaly bad right now, and I'll admit I think WoW is a great game, I just think that its sad that everyone is copying the game... I will admit I like LoTRO a bit better than WoW, but I can also tell you I may get sick of it real quick because it screams WoW so much. On the horizon we have some new and daring titles, games like Gods and Heroes, and Warhammer Online, heck even the Conan game looks like it could be vary promising. I can only hope that these titles stay true to there origonal formulas and don't submit to the the masses craze for WoW.

Aside from the WoW effect we've also got the general MMO formula. If its a level based game we've got your "tank", "DPS ranged or melee", and your "healer". It would be nice if a company out there could attempt to do a totaly new formula. After a while it gets boring to constantly seeing the same old classes redon with differnt names and differnt effects and armors and junk like that. A game that would do wonders for itself would be the one that steps back and says "lets try somthing differnt... somthing new!"

So with that said, it will be interesting to see how long the tried and true formula of MMOs lasts. It would be nice to see games like Ultima Online (UO) and Dark Ages (not DAoC... but the Nexon game) be relived. In UO you had housing that was in the world, constant player built content and adventures and crafting that felt it mattered. If you wanted to run a shop, you could the only downside is that they never got a city of village system for players to band togehter and make there housing area into a city with roads and lanterns and so forth (SWG attempted this, but in the end it was bland and under done). Dark Ages hand an interesting way of playing, you had gods that you could worship, you'd join there church, you could go to mass and hear a player priest give a sermon about that god or godess, and everyone got a nice chunck of EXP for it. You could run for mayor of a city, become a judge or a town guard. The world was run by the players and it was somthing we've yet to see reproduced in a more "mainstream" game. Hopefuly the future of MMOs will be a brighter one than our current era of bland WoW remakes.