Speaking of user-generated games, MIT Technology Review has a brief article on two new game development projects aimed at the casual, participatory development market. From the site:
Sites such as MyGame and Scratch, for example, provide simple personalizing or programming tools so that people with little or no programming experience can create their own kind of fun. Players can personalize games on MyGame in a matter of minutes using a basic home computer, and they can spend anywhere from hours to weeks designing a game, depending on its complexity. ... "One main goal of the casual game developers is to tell the nontypical potential computer players ... that gaming is also something for them," says [Ulrich Tausend, a graduate student in the sociology department at the University of Munich and the founder of the game company Neodelight]. The challenge to providing user-generated content, Tausend says, is that companies have to provide tools that are easy to use yet powerful enough to let people express themselves.
Surely this is a winning formula. PlayStation3's Little Big Planet, which uses the same concepts for a Sony-friendly audience, recently walked away with the Best Original Game award at the industry's Electronic Entertainment Expo.
Yet the reaction from some of the games community to this news has been surprising. Forum members on several sites appear aghast that a "a phyics [sic] simulator/level editor" would take such a prize.
If other media plough the depths of the masses for diamonds in the rough, shouldn't games?
