A while back, popular MMO “City of Heroes” rolled out an “Architect System”, allowing players and developers alike to create missions and in-game content.  It has been a huge success, and Senior Designer Joe Morrisey sits down with MMOGamer to talk about the thoughts and philosophy that went into designing it.  One particularly interesting point is how they chose to deal with simply bad content:

To some extent you can’t. You want to give players the freedom to create stories they want to create.

So you are going to end up with some stuff that isn’t that good.

But the real thing that you need to do just like any other medium, where you have a lot of entries into, like if you look at the music industry or if you look at the movie industry, there is a lot of noise.

So how does the good stuff get to the top? It gets to the top by people saying, “Hey I really like that song,” or “I really like that book,” or “I recommend that you play this.”

With my recent Second Life kick, I find this quote particularly interesting:

Joe Morrissey: We’re kind of moving to this new area in games. I mean, everybody hypes user-generated content, and it seems like, “Oh, it’s the next big plateau,” and stuff.

As a storyteller, I’m not really as concerned about if it is the next big thing. But, what I do like is it’s giving the new people, the new blood that will eventually become the movers and shakers in the industry, the ability to have their voice in games.

via City of Heroes Senior Designer Joe Morrissey on the Conception and Philosophy Behind the Architect System : The MMO Gamer.

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