The phrase "Web 2.0" is generally considered to mean a web where the users are able to easily create content that becomes part of the web. Blogs, YouTube, Flickr, all that stuff is part of the browser experience for anyone visiting any reasonably current part of the web these days. It's been a great change for the better, too. For those of you who don't recall or weren't on the web at the time, websites were for the most part extremely static because most people had yet to realize the possibilities that hooking a database up to a dynamic web page could do (not to mention all the multimedia now available). In other words, extremely boring unless you were a true geek such as myself. Slowly at first, and then explosively, this changed as content became dynamic seemingly overnight and the Net became a lot more fun as a result. I hope - and expect - the same will happen to MMO games in the future. The players really will be active participants in creating the content for content-driven games and not just sandbox environments like Second Life. While there are definitely challenges to making it work, I think it can be done.
When I've tried to bring this kind of functionality to MMOs I've worked on in the past, I failed to convince anyone it was worth doing. Now, with "Web 2.0" becoming something that makes sense to people - and more importantly is proving to be popular - perhaps it's time to revisit this. Previously, it seemed that most people fell into one of two camps: those who enjoyed the mod scene from Quake's heyday and could see the potential of making it possible for users to contribute, and those who felt that allowing users to contribute to the world would have an intolerably high risk of abusers ruining the experience for people who wanted to experience a perfectly crafted game environment. I can see both sides of this debate, after all designers put a tremendous effort into their work and who can blame them for not wanting content-griefers running around breaking the immersion that would otherwise be possible. On the other hand, not allowing users to contribute something other than the body of text produced by their avatar is on the other end of the spectrum of what is possible and results in a world as static as a webpage in 1996. Neither end is ideal, but what is perhaps not clear is that there are alternative solutions on this spectrum.
A spectrum indeed. I call it, "The Spectrum of Content Anarchy" not only because I like grand names, but I also think it makes some sense.
On the one end, we have absolute order and static design. Could be the average MMO today, or it could be a webpage circa 1996. On the other end of the SoCA, we have a website or a world that the users are able to do or create pretty much anything within certain constraints. For example, Wikipedia is a good website example, and Second Life is a good MMO example on this end of this spectrum. There are certain constraints applied to both examples on the far end of the spectrum that exist due to the nature of what Wikipedia or Second Life are and what they do; there are certainly other applications or games that lie beyond these two on the spectrum. And even more so in the middle, but this is a pretty empty list when it comes to MMOs. But most games, however, lie fully at the static end of the spectrum. Which is quite boring, frankly, and I think is going to be pretty obsolete soon as soon as players find a game on the sweet spot on the spectrum that provides a level of user content that has an acceptable amount of anarchy.
Now, if we were to let players create their own avatars for an MMO, suddenly everyone would look as cool as they could possibly make them look. We'd have all kinds of stuff going on. While this would be fun in certain contexts, it makes for very poor immersion if everyone can have the coolest armor they want without having to quest for it. Moreover, allowing people to freely swap models about can actually break the game. You simply can't let players choose how they are going to look or you will almost certainly find they like having more triangles than pixels (== kill performance for everyone nearby). While it's possible that people might play nice, history has shown if there's a way to grief people then griefers will grief and thus if it's possible to transform into a 5 million triangle object made of nested cubes for maximum overdraw, they will do it in order to lag people out. Thus, control mechanisms simply must be in place. MMOs are often a battlefield between players, and we as game creators are obligated to provide tools for players to protect themselves.
But it's not just about griefers; if the "game" has some kind of progression to it where the results are reflected in the appearance of the avatar, allowing people to just turn on the cool armor at will defeats the purpose of progression. There are plenty of other reasons to prevent people from changing their appearance, such as guild associations and so forth, where an open appearance system would allow people to effectively become imposters. So, as far as I can tell, some kind of limitations need to be in place unless the game is a completely progression free sandbox where none of it matters in the first place. Which means, most games need to have some limits because for most games this sort of thing actually does matter. That said, I think games are simply going to have to support some amount of user created content that is appropriate for the gameplay and regulated in a reasonable manner so that immersion is not broken. Is it possible? I think it is. It will, however, require some form of moderation - probably several tiers of it modelled after what has proven to work for successful Web 2.0 sites. That is to say, procedural moderation, followed by user moderation, ultimately under the observation and override of the paid staff. It worked for Web 2.0, why not MMO 2.0? Obviously I'm skimping on a lot of important topics such as what exactly would you allow a user to create, but that I am afraid I shall have to keep to myself for now because my examples would be too specific for the general point I am trying to make.
I believe the right balance of proper moderation of user generated content combined with easy & automated content migration between games will one day spark the fire that begins the age of MMO 2.0. The appearance of an MMO game that is a platform capable of hosting content that can live beyond the game itself, migrating to other games through server back channels will be one indication that this point has been reached. Items and Avatars will be able to transcend the game environment they were created upon, transparently migrating from game universe to game universe, transforming to reasonable equivalents in their new environment and existing forever within an MMO universe where disparate games are loosely connected and users can make meaningful contributions to the environment. Your avatar will be "iMMOrtal", no longer tied to any one game or company and they will become more "yours" than they have ever been in the past.
Sounds fun to me.