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What an amazing community. I'm always struck at how much money these video game corporations leave on the table, though, if they just leaned into the community

What an amazing community. I'm always struck at how much money these video game corporations leave on the table, though, if they just leaned into the community a little bit more, giving them the tools to build what they need/want. And I often wonder about video game development in particular too. This is just me throwing random ideas out there, but it seems like video game design would benefit immensely from certain open-source "tools". Like the ability to edit a mechanic in-game and its values, to discover what the most interesting "metas" are. In general, whenever I think about the longest enduring games, they all seem to have a period where players are experimenting with rules and mechanics. Then they discover a "stable" meta and over the next decades, make very few changes to keep things balanced. Games like chess, basketball, baseball, soccer, etc. And I'm struck by how this isn't possible most of the time today, because businesses aren't keen on making any part of that process open with the possible exception of Roblox. I also imagine it would be very hard to build something like a game editor for CS:GO that's intuitive and simple for players to use, to experiment with new modes of playing. I sometimes imagine a future where players can open up a game, edit the rules, then share that "seed" with other people, until the most popular "seed" is discovered and becomes popular amongst a community. In this way, one would discover non-intuitive, but immensely interesting game modes through sheer trial and error (much like how ARAM was discovered in League of Legends by players). I think in some sense, video game development is still in its early days. There are so many things we don't know and haven't done.

colechristensen 4y ago
Plenty of games lean in to the modder community, for others the difficulty of modding is its own incentive. You mention counterstrike, the first version started life as a half life mod. Primarily online games do a lot to prevent modding these days because the most popular usage of this is to cheat ruining the fun for a lot of people.
- totetsu 4y ago
  and they want to clip the ticket on content. Why let people add custom skins to a game when your making money off gun textures
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    The valve strategy is simply to co-opt them and give them a piece of the profits. (e.g. TF2)
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
You're describing outsourcing game design to a Monte Carlo community search. It's not without its problems. Imagine a book publishing business that releases random word salads until a particular one sells well. A funny idea on paper but in practice very few repeat customers.
creakingstairs 4y ago
> I sometimes imagine a future where players can open up a game, edit the rules, then share that "seed" with other people, until the most popular "seed" is discovered and becomes popular amongst a community. In this way, one would discover non-intuitive, but immensely interesting game modes through sheer trial and error (much like how ARAM was discovered in League of Legends by players). I would argue that Starcraft and Warcraft 3's map editors were basically this. Many of the popular maps got developed into actual games - Dota, Various TDs, Uther Party etc. Only thing that was missing at the time was a match making system, so you had to use some private app or community to get quality games after certain level. I was very sad that Blizzard squandered the opportunity they had to create a thriving custom map coummnity when Starcraft 2 came out due to some strange choices they had made, especially when their custom map engine for SC2 was quite powerful. I've day dreamed about a future where Starcraft 2 came out as a free* game that focused on creating custom map communities instead of the mess that was at the initial release. * with purchasable campaign and ladder add ons, of course.
- DantesKite 4y ago
  > I would argue that Starcraft and Warcraft 3's map editors were basically this. Many of the popular maps got developed into actual games - Dota, Various TDs, Uther Party etc. I never knew this, but it explains so much, especially how Riot has been unable to build a new game mode as successful as Summoner's Rift. > I've day dreamed about a future where Starcraft 2 came out as a free* game that focused on creating custom map communities instead of the mess that was at the initial release. That's my dream as well. It's such an interesting idea I'd love to explore or see someone build.

colechristensen 4y ago

Plenty of games lean in to the modder community, for others the difficulty of modding is its own incentive. You mention counterstrike, the first version started life as a half life mod. Primarily online games do a lot to prevent modding these days because the most popular usage of this is to cheat ruining the fun for a lot of people.

totetsu 4y ago
and they want to clip the ticket on content. Why let people add custom skins to a game when your making money off gun textures
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  The valve strategy is simply to co-opt them and give them a piece of the profits. (e.g. TF2)

hypertele-Xii 4y ago

You're describing outsourcing game design to a Monte Carlo community search. It's not without its problems. Imagine a book publishing business that releases random word salads until a particular one sells well. A funny idea on paper but in practice very few repeat customers.

creakingstairs 4y ago

> I sometimes imagine a future where players can open up a game, edit the rules, then share that "seed" with other people, until the most popular "seed" is discovered and becomes popular amongst a community. In this way, one would discover non-intuitive, but immensely interesting game modes through sheer trial and error (much like how ARAM was discovered in League of Legends by players). I would argue that Starcraft and Warcraft 3's map editors were basically this. Many of the popular maps got developed into actual games - Dota, Various TDs, Uther Party etc. Only thing that was missing at the time was a match making system, so you had to use some private app or community to get quality games after certain level. I was very sad that Blizzard squandered the opportunity they had to create a thriving custom map coummnity when Starcraft 2 came out due to some strange choices they had made, especially when their custom map engine for SC2 was quite powerful. I've day dreamed about a future where Starcraft 2 came out as a free* game that focused on creating custom map communities instead of the mess that was at the initial release. * with purchasable campaign and ladder add ons, of course.

DantesKite 4y ago
> I would argue that Starcraft and Warcraft 3's map editors were basically this. Many of the popular maps got developed into actual games - Dota, Various TDs, Uther Party etc. I never knew this, but it explains so much, especially how Riot has been unable to build a new game mode as successful as Summoner's Rift. > I've day dreamed about a future where Starcraft 2 came out as a free* game that focused on creating custom map communities instead of the mess that was at the initial release. That's my dream as well. It's such an interesting idea I'd love to explore or see someone build.