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Tuesday, February 07, 2006

User Content Evolves Media

The Washington Post has a piece about the recent "Entertainment Gathering" in LA, which featured Dwight Yoakam and a 19 foot boa ... among other things. The article points out that while traditional media is declining, video games are something of a bright star:

That became clear as leading game creators talked about how their industry is eyeing a new way to fund the future of entertainment -- by putting you to work building their virtual game worlds.

The next generation of video games aims to give players a much bigger role in producing the look and feel of their own games, Microsoft's gaming vice president, J Allard, said Thursday. The gaming industry is copying the models of the community-created Wikipedia encyclopedia and open-source software. By giving players new tools to shape the design and action in more personal ways, the industry hopes to draw in a bigger audience while helping foot the bill for "skyrocketing" production costs, he said.


So, take a bow. Gamers can probably take all manner of things to heart with this concept, since it's not entirely new. You've got Counter-Strike, Sims, Spore, etc. ... all chipping out sections of how the players themselves can be just as important as the game. Heck, the rise of MMO's could possibly be attributed to the fact that sometimes you just can't replicate a ton of people interacting with software.



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