Well, here we are. The final article of this series. It’s been quite a journey - we laughed, we cried, we had a heartfelt montage set to a song by Phil Collins. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the history of User Generated Content and all the myriad ways that it presents itself in video games, from level editors to full-blown game creation kits. UGC has come a long way since 1983’s Pinball Construction Set, with each game and piece of software building on everything that came before it. For our final article in this series, however, we will be looking forward instead of back. It’s time to see what kind of changes and innovations are in store for UGC in the future.

… And by “the future” we, of course, mean “The Endless Mission”.


Pictured: Our Marketing Team, excited that we’re finally talking about OUR game for a change

A lot of games with UGC features in the past came with limitations: In Super Mario Maker, you’re making levels specifically in the Super Mario template. Whatever you create in Halo 3’s Forge will always be used in the context of a multiplayer FPS. This is great for folks who are just starting out, as all the framework has been laid out for them, so they can focus solely on one or two aspects. You don’t have to know how to code up a fighting game just to make stages in Super Smash Bros. However, this also means that you can never expand beyond these limitations - no amount of creativity or ingenuity will let you make a racing game in Rollercoaster Tycoon (no, the go-kart track doesn’t count). Meanwhile, other UGC-heavy software goes in the complete opposite direction, tossing you into the deep end with no way to scale back. Sure, RPG Maker will let you build an RPG from the ground-up, but you always start with a blank canvas. Want to just add an extra dungeon onto a preexisting RPG, with all the pre-established mechanics in place? Sorry, no can do. Better start learning code. And math.


The only appropriate reaction to realizing you’ll have to use math

One of the goals of The Endless Mission is to break down these barriers and have every level of UGC complexity available in one game. You can start out loading up prebuilt games and making minor changes - adjusting some variables here, placing an extra power-up there, and so forth. Or maybe you start by doing a simple find-and-replace mod where you take out all of Enemy A and replace them with Enemy B. One you’ve mastered that, you can move onto crafting entire levels from scratch. All the behind-the-scenes code necessary for the game to behave the way it should is already there without you having to write it up, but everything about the level itself, from geometry to enemies to mechanics used, is up to you. The ultimate goal, of course, is to not have to rely on any prebuilt code at all. If you want to build a game entirely from the ground up, writing your own code and using your own assets, The Endless Mission will let you do that.

This sense of progression -- this pipeline from minor edits to crafting entirely original games -- is the crux of The Endless Mission. Our hope is that someone with absolutely zero experience in coding or game editing can pick up The Endless Mission and, after spending enough time with the game, can create something that is completely, uniquely theirs. The Endless Mission will turn players into creators in ways that no other game has done before.


Today, you’re putting a fully-controllable race car in an otherwise-standard RTS just for a laugh. Tomorrow, you’ll be making a car-based RTS from scratch because that joke ended up being actually fun. That’s the power of The Endless Mission (and cars).

… Yeah, we might’ve forced that title a bit, sorry.

One of the biggest roadblocks with games that have UGC features has always been the fact that not all the skills one learns while using those features are transferable to other platforms. Sure, conceptual lessons like “treat the player fairly”, “playtest and iterate”, and “please stop using the editor to make naughty images” can and should apply across multiple games (especially that last one), but knowledge regarding specific toolsets and their strengths and weaknesses do not. It doesn’t matter how much you know about using Dreams or the insanely awesome content you’re able to craft in it (and you can indeed craft some insanely awesome things) - the moment you move onto another game, you’re back to square one. Not even game making tools are immune to this - move from Adventure Game Studio over to M.U.G.E.N, and you have to learn an entirely new interface and non-standard coding language just to get up to speed.


The pineapple symbolizes a new UGC Tool. Captain Blackclaw symbolizes the huge leap that’s required whenever you want to learn a new tool. Our High School Lit teachers would be proud.

Again, making the skills you learn be transferable to other applications was a major goal for us when creating The Endless Mission. We wanted it to be so that anyone who mastered The Endless Mission’s full editor (after working their way up to it - see the previous section) would be able to move onto other, professional game-making tools without missing a beat. How do we plan to accomplish this? Well, The Endless Mission is created in Unity, one of the biggest and most-used game engines in the world. Why not simply base our in-game editor on what we used to create it?


If The Endless Mission’s editor looks familiar to you, congratulations! That was totally the point.

When creating the editor for The Endless Mission, we based many of its features on what Unity already uses. Concepts such as dividing the game up into scenes, having a game-wide hierarchy, tools like the library or inspector, and even the decision to use C# as the editor’s default programming language are all based on what Unity uses. In short, The Endless Mission’s editor is essentially a “shell” around Unity - a Unity editor inside a Unity game.

The end result of all this? We believe The Endless Mission is the perfect on-ramp to learning Unity, as well as other similar professional game engines. Everything in our editor has a direct counterpart in Unity, simply streamlined to function within our game. Whatever lessons and concepts you learn while using our tools will be directly applicable should you choose to move onto Unity. This is called having a transferable skill set, and it’s what sets The Endless Mission apart from the UGC-focused games that came before it: If you can master The Endless Mission at its most complex, you will already have everything you need to master Unity, and the learning skill to pick up other engines.

User Generated Content has come a long, long way since the days of Pinball Construction Set, Lode Runner, and Castle Smurfenstein. What once was just unofficial mods and basic level editors has paved the way to creating full games and other experiences, and it is our hope that The Endless Mission will continue this proud tradition. For us, it’s not just about giving players the power to create whatever they want, but the resources to learn content creation at their own pace and the ability to use that knowledge, both conceptual and technical, outside of the game. We want The Endless Mission to not just be the next generation of UGC-focused games, but the first one to provide a means - not just the desire - for players to turn their creativity into a career, with a community that will help and support them every step of the way.


What will you make in our game? The possibilities are simply... endless (... yes, we’ve been sitting on that pun until just the right moment)

Thank you for joining us on this journey through the history of UGC. We will be starting a closed beta very soon for those of you who signed up for it, and we will officially launch into Early Access not long after. Here’s to the future of User Generated Content, and we hope to see you all soon in The Endless Mission!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/827880/The_Endless_Mission/

Hey there, folks! We’re in the home stretch now! Yes, sadly it’s true: While we’ve all been having fun these past few weeks getting our learn on, next week’s article will be the last in this series. We know, we’re inconsolable, too.


We haven’t been this upset since paying full price for a game right before the Steam Summer Sale

We’ve covered a lot of ground these past weeks looking at the history of UGC. We’ve seen games about making games (and more!). Software that lets you make fully-featured games from the code on up. Fans taking matters into their own hands and modding games that otherwise had no UGC to speak of. What could possibly be left to go over in this penultimate article?

… Oh. Uh… Yeah, there’s that.

To be a bit more specific about it: We’ve been spending most of our time discussing games and software where UGC - specifically, the kind of UGC that involves game making - is the “main” objective. However, there are many, many games out there that have other kinds of UGC as well. Character creators, level editors, simulation games with a “sandbox mode”... Any game with any sort of editor or creation system in place totally counts as UGC! This is especially true in the modern era, where platforms like Steam Workshop allow users to share their creations with players the world over.

Now, it probably goes without saying that we can’t cover every single game with UGC elements like this, and even trimming it down to a “Greatest Hits” selection would still be quite large. Thus, we’ll be going through examples much more quickly here than in previous articles, highlighting what high quality or unique UGC each game brought to the table before moving on. Now hold on tight - the UGC Train has no brakes!


Though maybe it should

Simulation and construction games fill a weird niche in UGC-focused titles: sure, you have a lot of freedom to build stuff, but only if you have the resources to do so and follow the rules. Does this make them “real” UGC games, since you can’t just build whatever you want? If we assume they at least get an honorable mention, then the first game in this genre would be Utopia, released on the Intellivision back in 1982 (yes, even before the first “true” UGC title, Pinball Construction Set). This multiplayer game had two players build up cities on adjacent islands to see who can be more successful.


What do you do when you literally run out of room on the cartridge before implementing any sort of opponent AI? Just claim the game is multiplayer-only! Yes, really.

Released the same year as Pinball Construction Set (and Castle Smurfenstein), this puzzle-platformer game contained 150 levels in addition to a full-blown level editor. While not devoted solely to creation like PCS was, this marked one of the first times a game contained a separate level editor mode.

In this NES classic, players could design their own tracks to race on, making this not only one of the first Nintendo games with UGC (a tradition they’d proudly continue, as we have already seen in previous articles and will continue to see in this one), but also one of the first editors available on a console platform, proving that UGC would not only be a “PC thing.”

Another Nintendo classic, this puzzle game starring Mario also contained a level editor, beating out Super Mario Maker by a whopping 30 years.


Plumber, Doctor, Demolitionist… That deadbeat Mario can’t hold down a job for more than five minutes, can he?

If Utopia was the first construction/simulation game, SimCity is the game that made the genre popular, spawning a metric ton of spin-offs. Like Utopia, there was no “sandbox” mode where you could build whatever you want with no restrictions, but it was still fun seeing what you could create even while following the rules and restrictions the game had in place.

This cult-classic puzzle game tasks you with fixing broken contraptions clearly inspired by the works of cartoonist Rube Goldburg. In addition to the puzzles, there was a “freeform” mode where players could build whatever you wanted, whether they were complete machines or even more puzzles for others to solve.

Given that Lego is all about building things, it’s only natural that numerous Lego video games would have some level of UGC in them. The most famous of these would probably be Lego Racers - in this game, not only was your avatar fully customizable, but you could build your car brick by brick, with unique physics based on how many pieces you used and where they were placed. Just be prepared to have that menu music stuck in your head forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzwV5085Vvo
You’re welcome.

Well, we couldn’t use that gif above and not tip our hat to the game that provided it, now can we? RollerCoaster Tycoon was all about making and managing your own amusement park, with emphasis on the fact that you could lay out the track for certain attractions (like roller coasters, naturally) however you wanted, rather than just plopping down a static building. And yes, this absolutely included just letting your coasters fly off the rails and slam into populated areas. You monster.

Out of all the spin-offs SimCity created, The Sims was far-and-away the most successful. This game essentially “scaled down” the scope of SimCity by having you manage a household of people (called Sims) rather than an entire city. You had lots of control over your Sims’ appearances and how they developed, but if you ever got tired of having them pass out in their own filth taking care of them, you could simply load up an empty lot and build your dream home with unlimited funds instead. You could also take pictures and save them in a family scrapbook, which many players used to tell epic stories about them passing out in their own filth.

Not entirely unlike The Sims mentioned above, this charming little life simulator is all about living in a small town and making friends with all your animal neighbors. The ability to customize both your avatar and your home have existed since the original game, but due to the massive popularity of these elements, they’ve been expanded on in every entry. It’s gotten to the point they’ve even made a spin-off title, Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, that’s all about making your own homes!


We were going to write a hilarious, in-character rant for Mr. Resetti that would be longer than the rest of this article, but then we remembered we aren’t paid by the word for this

Loved building roller coasters in RollerCoaster Tycoon, but hated all that pesky management stuff? Ultimate Ride is the game for you! This Disney(!) game let you build and ride any coaster that you wanted in full 3D (hey, this was impressive back in 2001), with no monetary restrictions. There was a mission mode, but rather than managing funds or keeping parkgoers happy, you were tasked with making coasters that not only met certain requirements, but also remained safe enough that people could actually ride them, using the game’s surprisingly detailed physics simulation system to track G-Forces and the like. This game was a great example of UGC being used for educational purposes - in this case, physics and structural engineering.

Character customization has been a thing in Massively Multiplayer Online games since the very beginning - after all, how else are you going to make your avatar unique compared to everyone else’s? City of Heroes, however, decided to take it one step further and introduced the Mission Architect. This feature allowed you to create custom quests in the game that other players could then play through and even earn EXP and items from. It was pretty ambitious for an MMO… and hey, it beats doing the same “kill 20 sewer rats” mission over and over to level grind.

Here’s a weird, not-quite-a-game-exactly entry for ya: when the Nintendo Wii launched, it came with the ability to create system-wide avatars called Miis. What made Miis unique compared to other avatar features in the past is how they interacted with games - many multiplayer games gave you the option to play as your Mii in addition to the usual cast of characters, giving your Mii a lot more prominence and importance than usual for this kind of avatar. Even if playing as your Mii wasn’t an option, there was a good chance that any and all Miis you created on the system would pop up in cameo roles in any given game (usually in crowd shots). This clever integration of UGC into all sorts of games is still used by Nintendo today, and there are even a few games (Tomodachi Life, Miitopia, etc.) that are based entirely on these little guys.

The third entry of this gobsmackingly successful franchise introduced The Forge, a game mode where players could edit multiplayer maps and create custom games. While this mode would be included in many future Halo games as well, this technically isn’t the first time the franchise dipped its toe in the UGC pool - users were already using previous games in the franchise to create machinima, such as the ever-popular Red vs. Blue series that started in 2003 using the original Halo: Combat Evolved.


The office is still taking bets on which will end first: the Halo franchise or Red vs. Blue

Also jokingly referred to as “SimEverything”, Spore was a simulation game about tending to the evolutionary rise of lifeforms on a planet, from primordial ooze to space-traveling races. In addition to having your species evolve naturally through gameplay choices, you could also use the Spore Creature Creator to just jump right in and handcraft the perfect specimen. Additionally, the creatures you created didn’t just change your game - as you traveled to other planets, the creatures you encountered there were ones that other players had brought up, meaning every player’s creation had an impact on the game as a whole.

In addition to finally making the dream fight of Mario vs. Sonic a reality (look, this was a big deal for 90s kids, okay?), Super Smash Bros. Brawl brought a Stage Builder mode to the franchise. The one in Brawl was very basic, but subsequent games would improve on it more and more. Also, those Miis we talked about earlier? Starting in the next game, they’d become playable fighters, too, and both them and stages could be shared with others online. Time to go make a Mii of [YouTube Influencer you disagree with] and beat the stuffing out of them!

Most games that have a built-in editor will let you do things like build levels or customize characters. When Overwatch debuted its Workshop mode, however, it went the extra mile, letting players straight-up write scripts and edit the code directly to create drastically new and different game modes. It can be pretty surreal booting up a team-based FPS and then playing a 2.5D beat-em-up instead, but you do you.


And then someone found a way to recreate Portal in it, because of course they did

Okay, one more roller coaster game for the road: Planet Coaster brings all the best aspects of previous theme park simulators together, having both a robust career mode where you have to manage funds and research as well as a sandbox mode where you can go nuts. It also features full freeform building for all structures, allowing players to create some truly unique designs and setpieces. You can even import your own 3D models into the game if the items that are already there aren’t enough!

Phew! That was a lot of games. They may not have fully embraced UGC as their “main” component (or had it thrust upon them by modders) like some of the games we discussed in previous weeks did, but their impact and influence should not be denied. Any one of these games could be the first step on someone’s journey from player to designer, and indeed, more often than not, it is. After all, someone enjoying a game and then deciding to check out its side-mode devoted to UGC is far more likely than them, say, downloading Garry’s Mod out of the blue and building a new game from scratch.

Be sure to check back next week for the epic series finale of The Endless Mission and the History of UGC! Don’t worry, there won’t be any arbitrary, character-wrecking plot twists that exist solely to “subvert expectations” - instead, we’ll be looking at where we go from here, and what the future of UGC will contain (spoiler alert: the answer may involve The Endless Mission). See you then!

CONTINUE TO PART SEVEN

https://store.steampowered.com/app/827880/The_Endless_Mission/

Image Sources: videoblocks.com, imgur.com, Mattel, Wikipedia, Nintendo, Redbull.com, youtube.com/norlag,

Hi! We're back at it again and this time...it's for real.

We're happy to announce The Endless Mission will soon be entering into a closed beta and we'd like you to be a part of it.

SIGN UP HERE

We want to connect with you and begin testing the various features, tools, stories, and elements throughout the game. Some times we'll ask what you think about certain sections, while other times we'll be looking at the entire game from top to bottom. We'll explain more about that as the process goes on.

For right now, we need to learn a bit more about you so our testing can be as complete as possible. If you've been selected for the first round, you'll be getting more updates from us soon! If you're not, don't worry! We're going to be steadily increasing the size of the closed beta as we get closer and closer to our Early Access Launch (the number of beta participants will be determined by the number of eligible respondents).

Thanks again and we can't wait to share what we've been working on with you!

~ The Endless Mission Team

p.s. We encourage you to share this survey with friends that might be interested as well. You can do so with this link.

• Follow this link to Sign Up
  
• Fill out the Sign Up Form completely and accurately by Thursday, June 27th @ 11:59p PST
  
• If accepted, you'll hear from us with further instructions at the email address you provided during the sign up process

Hey there, creators! Who’s hungry for some Mods?


Our investors didn’t appreciate it when we told them our plan to “get more dough” was to start a pizza business

Wait… That’s not the kind of Mod we’re talking about today? Uh… hold on a sec…

Mod Pizza

MOD Pizza is a fast casual pizza restaurant chain based in the United States. Founded in Seattle, Washington, in 2008, MOD has more than 400 locations in the United States and United Kingdom. MOD is a company that is claimed by its owners to be "more about the people than the pizza" and to focus on paying living wages and providing employees with opportunities to give back to the community.

We’ve been looking at a lot of games (and software) that are entirely focused on letting users create new content, but not every game is like that, of course. Many games are all about playing through a perfectly crafted experience, and thus don’t have room to allow users to create whatever absurd things they can think of. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but it can lead to players wanting… more.

And thus mods are born.


As the old saying goes: Lack of Thomas the Tank Engine in Skyrim is the Mother of Invention

Game mods are any sort of alteration created by users that change how a game plays. As such, game mods can easily be seen as a variation on the more traditional styles of UGC we’ve been discussing in previous weeks. There are many, many different kinds of mods out there, and to try and cover them all would be an exercise in futility. Some merely exist to patch bugs or make gameplay fixes that the original developers did not do. Others add new content to preexisting games, from new weapons and items to entire campaigns. Others still simply replace assets in the game with different ones, either to upgrade the graphics of the game piece by piece or to allow for completely absurd scenarios, like the infamous “Really Useful Dragons” mod pictured above. There are even mods that dig into the game’s code to find and restore content that was removed by the original developers… sometimes for good reason.


Pic Unrelated

Some companies don’t like it when users mod their games - adding a new overpowered weapon that only you have to an online multiplayer game, for instance, is generally frowned upon - but many others, such as Valve and Bethesda, embrace the modding community with open arms. Needless to say, this has resulted in mods becoming an indisputable and massively influential part of the gaming community.

For the purposes of this article, we are only going to look at a handful of examples. There is a large number of massively popular games with equally large modding communities - Grand Theft Auto, The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, etc. - and we simply cannot cover them all. Instead, we’ll be focusing most of our energy on games that had mods that themselves have made a large impact on the industry. But enough talk, let’s get to it!


“This is how a normal person walks, right?” - Castle Wolfenstein’s Cover Artist, presumably

Trivia Time: What is generally accepted as the first video game mod ever created? The original game (as you might have guessed given… ya know… the title of this section) was Castle Wolfenstein, released in 1981, but the first mod created for it wouldn’t come out until two years later in 1983. That’s right, the same year as Pinball Construction Set! Man, 1983 was a big year for UGC of all stripes, wasn’t it?

In any case, back in the early 80s, teenagers Andrew Johnson and Preston Nevins were huge fans of the original Castle Wolfenstein. However, they felt as though the Nazi antagonists weren’t particularly threatening (again: it was the 80s), so they decided to go into the game and replace them with something much more threatening.

Naturally, they choose Smurfs.


Rumors that Gargamel was their third programming buddy are unconfirmed

Using only a paint program, sector editor, and Muse Software’s “Voice”, Andrew and Preston created Castle Smurfenstein, a full-game conversion of Castle Wolfenstein. All the Nazi guards were replaced with Smurfs, complete with new Smurf audio in place of German. They also created new title and closing screens, and even composed a new opening theme. In doing so, they created what is considered the first game mod, opening the door for all others.

The duo would go on to create another mod in the form of Dino Smurf, a parody of the game Dino Eggs, before college would put an end to their anti-Smurf propaganda days. However, their impact on gaming cannot be overstated, as it is because of them that mods thrive to this very day.


And so do Smurfs. Unfortunately.


It’s been 26 years, and they still haven’t explained what’s up with that second Space Marine in the background

Doom is a game that needs no introduction - it’s theclassic first-person shooter that put the genre on the map. It proved the effectiveness of shareware as a marketing tactic. It crashed university servers across the country due to so many college kids wanting to do multiplayer deathmatches. It generated a firestorm of controversy over its violence and satanic imagery (despite the fact that said violence was directed at said satanic imagery… go figure). But we’re not here to talk about all that; we’re here to talk about the mods.

Doom was created by id Software, and its founders, Tom Hall and John Carmack, recalled how their previous title, Wolfenstein 3D, received a good number of mods from fans (no word on how much Smurf killing was involved this time). Thus, they decided to go out of their way and make sure that Doom would be simple for anyone to go in and mod. All of Doom’s assets, such as maps, sprites, textures, and so forth, were stored in a file completely separate from the game’s engine. This made it a simple affair for novice coders to go in and create their own levels without having to mess with the game’s code directly. By 1994, they would release more user-friendly tools to make modding their game even easier.


Besides custom levels, swapping out art assets was another popular mod choice, facilitating some… pretty surreal crossovers

Doom would mark the first time that the developer of a game would offer so much support for its own modding community, rather than simply leaving them to their own devices. This resulted in the game reaching even further heights in popularity, and the concept of game mods breaking fully into the public conscious of the gaming community. Many a game developer’s career would begin by making Doom mods, including id Software’s very own Tim Willits. If Castle Wolfenstein was the first game to feature mods, Doom was the game that made sure they were here to stay.

The Doom modding community is still alive and well, by the way - not just for later games in the franchise, but for the 1993 classic as well. As recently as last year, one of the original designers on the game, John Romero, released a large level pack for the original game in celebration of its 25th anniversary. This game, it seems, is as unstoppable as Doomguy himself.


We won’t make the easy joke here because 1) It’s not funny, 2) It’s not original, and 3) …

It may have been id Software that was the first to establish a relationship between a developer and the fans who mod their games, but Valve was the one who proved just how successful such a relationship could be. When Half-Life came out in 1998, Valve made the software development kit for the game’s engine, GoldSrc, available for users to mess around in. A year later in 1999, college student Minh Le, with help from his friend Jess Cliffe, released a mod for the game called Counter-Strike. While Half-Life was a single-player experience, Counter-Strike was a team-based multiplayer game where you played as either a terrorist or counter-terrorist while trying to complete various objectives.


Ah, 1999... The Glory Days of the “Real is Brown” mentality in video game graphics

By 2000, the mod had gotten so popular that Valve came to Minh and Jess with an offer - they wanted to not only buy the rights to Counter-Strike, but hire the duo to continue working on updates for the game. They agreed, and Counter-Strike went from fan mod to commercial release to, eventually, a multi-million dollar franchise that has hundreds of thousands of players to this very day.

Counter-Strike was one of the first games to bridge the fan mod to official release gap, and in doing so proved once and for all that mods weren’t just a hobby or even a “stepping stone” to bigger things, but a genuine means of entering the game industry proper. Valve, for their part, would continue this practice of scouting out modders to hire to turn their creations into commercial products, as we will see in the very next entry…


Wanna make a gamer feel old? Act like you’re surprised that Warcraft was anything other than an MMO.

Now, wait a second here: How is Valve associated with Warcraft? That’s a Blizzard game! It says so right there on the box! Well, hunker down, ‘cuz it’s gonna get a little crazy.

Back when Blizzard Entertainment released Warcraft II, they included a free “world editor” in the game that let players create custom scenarios and maps for the game, which could then be shared online (or, if it was a multiplayer set-up, play it with others) via their Battle.net service. Once Warcraft III came out in 2002, it was only natural that they’d bring this feature back and expand on it. Within the year, a guy by the name of Eul (real name: Kyle Sommer), inspired by the custom StarCraft map known as “Aeon of Strife”, would release a brand new scenario called Defense of the Ancients, or DotA.

Yup, that’s right: the entire Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) genre started as a game mod.


MOBAs: Putting a new twist on the phrase “Stay in your Lane”

While Eul wouldn’t continue to update DotA after the original release, several other modders would take over, including Steve “Guinsoo” Feak and IceFrog (real name unknown… yes, really). Now, this is when things start getting wild, so try to keep up: Guinsoo would eventually stop working on DotA and join Riot Games, using his knowledge from working on DotA to help create the MOBA mega-hit, League of Legends. Valve, meanwhile, knowing a good idea when they saw one, swooped in and hired IceFrog to make DotA 2 from the ground up for them as, despite originally being a mod for a Blizzard game, Blizzard did not ever try to claim a copyright on the name or concept. Not to be outdone, Blizzard would respond to this by creating their own MOBA in the form of Heroes of the Storm. So in summary - The original DotA was a mod of a Blizzard game, one dev on that team would go on to help make LoL with Riot Games, Valve would get the rights to make DotA 2 with the help of another dev from the same team, and Blizzard would make HotS all on their own. Got all that?


We’ll take your stunned silence as a “Yes”

DotA perhaps represents the peak of what game mods can do. It was a fan-made mod, made possible by the support of devs for their modding communities, that not only went on to become a commercial success, but in the process create an entire new game genre that would sky-rocket in popularity soon after. If there was ever a question as to whether or not UGC could make a wide-scale impact on the gaming industry, DotA is proof that it absolutely can.

… And if you’re ever getting ticked off over that little brat Teemo ganking you yet again, at least now you know exactly who to blame.


The face of pure, unadulterated evil


Look who’s back, back again…

… Hey, we told you we’d come back around to Minecraft eventually, didn’t we? Just took us like two whole articles to get there.

As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, mods are a very popular feature for many modern games, bolstered no doubt by success stories like those in the previous entries in this article. There’s no way we could possibly cover all of them here, so we figured that singling out one to highlight would suffice. Thus, it’s time to bring back Minecraft!

Modding in Minecraft is almost as old as Minecraft itself, and is indeed one of the major factors in the game’s astronomical success. Mods took off so fast because the original version of Minecraft was programmed using Java, a coding language that’s very easy to pick apart and edit. In fact, even though a new version of Minecraft that is coded in C++ rather than Java was later released by Mojang, they are still keeping the Java version up-to-date alongside the C++ version, specifically because they didn’t want to abandon all the modders who had done their projects in Java. And yes, there have been a number of Minecraft modders who have since been hired by Mojang to work on the game proper as well. Talk about a strong relationship between the developers and the modders, huh?


Bibliocraft is just one of the many, many mods that adds new items for you to build… And is also one of the many, many mods whose name is just [Something]craft. Hey, no one said modders had to be good with titles.

Of course, it’s easy to see why Mojang would want to keep the modders happy, as some of the things they’ve created are insanely impressive. Many mods have added features that would go on to be included in official updates due to their popularity - the Mo’ Creatures mod, for instance, had horses long before they were put in the game proper. Others focus on optimization, UI improvements, or plain making the game prettier. Additionally, since you can host servers in Minecraft that others can join, you and your online buddies can even experience the changes these mods offer together! It was this kind of multiplayer-focused modding that lead to the creation of MinecraftEdu, which some of us here at E-Line had a hand in developing with Mojang’s full support.


A Creeper blew up my--- Wait, we used that joke last time, never mind

However, as much as we’d like to toot our own horn when it comes to multiplayer Minecraft mods, our work isn’t the biggest success story in that regard. That honor would have to go to the Survival Games mod first released in 2012, just three years after Minecraft’s initial release. Inspired by the Hunger Games novels and film adaptations, this mod turns a Minecraft server into a brutal free-for-all where dozens of players must search for resources and battle each other to be the last blocky person standing. The map starts out huge but, as time goes on, it gets smaller and smaller to force confrontations between players. Sound familiar?


… Well, okay, yes, but if you’re citing THIS, you’re an even bigger nerd than we thought

Yup. Much like DotA before it, the Survival Games mod in Minecraft would go on to inspire an entire game genre, in this case Battle Royale. Before Fortnite, before PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, there was this humble Minecraft mod.

Minecraft is perhaps the ultimate summation of all mod-heavy games that came before it. It is a game that thrived as much as it did because of its mod support. The company behind it recognized this, and fostered a healthy relationship with their modding community. And ultimately, the work of these modders would wind up making a huge impact on the gaming industry as a whole. All of this, and even at ten years old, there are no signs of Minecraft slowing down. Who knows what these modders will do next? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.


Until then, there’s always the pig poop mod

Mods may not be a fully-intended feature of all games, but they nonetheless provide an opportunity for some truly unique cases of UGC. They have opened the door for people looking to get into the game industry in a multitude of ways, and in the greatest cases have made an impact on the industry itself. Those of us working on The Endless Mission are well aware of just how powerful and transformative mods can be, and you can rest assured that the game will cater to that in many, many ways. As for next week, we’ll be going through “the rest of the best” when it comes to games with UGC - games that provided plenty of opportunities for users to create even when it wasn’t the focus. See you then!

CONTINUE TO PART SIX

https://store.steampowered.com/app/827880/The_Endless_Mission/

Image Sources:
Mod Pizza, Eurogamer, bhatpsych.com, wikipedia.org, uic.edu, hollywoodreporter.com, id software, polygon.com, techspot.com, youtube.com/ggwp, spauldinggrp.com, mobafire.com, microsoft.com, bibliocraftmod.com, jasonwilmot.com, pcgamesn.com

Still with us? Excellent! That means we still have a job. Over the past couple of weeks have been all about UGC creation tools that can still generally be considered “games,” but that’s all about to change - today’s the day that we start crossing the line from games to software. Hold onto your pocket protectors, it’s about to get nerdy.

… Well, more nerdy than it’s already been, anyway.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve looked at creation tools that can still be very much considered games, from their interfaces to the ability to boot the game up solely to check out what other people have made without doing any creating yourself. Game Making Tools, on the other hand, forgo all the fancy bells and whistles and devote themselves entirely to being a tool for creation. Their UIs have far more in common with editing tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio or Photoshop, and their communities exist online on websites, blogs, and message boards, as opposed to inside the software itself. Likewise, the games that people make with these tools are exported from the software and can be uploaded independently - you don’t even need the software to play their creations. The end result is that users have far more versatility in what they can create using these tools, as being able to manipulate the code itself and use your own custom-built assets are a given. What separates Game Making Tools from straight-up Game Engines like Unreal or Unity is the fact that they usually will be optimized with a specific game genre in mind (RPG, Fighting, etc.). However, that hasn’t stopped some developers from using these tools to create unique experiences as well.


They’ve made a lot of iterations of this particular Game Making Tool… and like any true JRPG, the sequel numbering is completely ridiculous

RPG Maker is a line of software that allows users to - big surprise here - create their own Role-Playing Games. The first one came out in Japan all the way back in 1992, but it was never localized for the US; that wouldn’t officially happen until RPG Maker XP, 13 years later in 2005. Whatever version you get and/or struggle to translate, it usually comes with the same batch of items and tools: A tile set based map editor, a battle editor, and a scripting language (formerly Ruby, but now JavaScript) so you can set up custom events or alter the gameplay entirely. They also come with a large amount of premade assets for you to get started, but you can create and import your own at any time.


Spoony Bards not Included

RPG Maker has always been a popular tool for game making. The way it’s set up makes it easy for anyone to get started, while still being powerful enough to create professional-level games. Once you’re done, it’s easy to package games up and make them available to download and play on computers, smartphones, and other platforms. Additionally, the scripting language is very versatile. Don’t let the name fool you: RPG Maker isn’t good for just making RPGs, but adventure, survival horror, and even action games as well.


Sure, that editor menu looks intimidating, but let’s be honest: The ones you have to browse through while PLAYING an RPG are usually just as bad.

If you want to see some excellent examples of the kinds of games (RPG or otherwise) you can create in RPG Maker, we’d recommend checking out LISA: The Painful RPG, OFF, To the Moon, and Yume Nikki. And when you’re ready to dive in and start using the software itself, you can get it the latest version, RPG Maker MV, on PC now or wait for it to come out on all current-gen consoles later this year.


What’s the coffee cup for? Well, if our knowledge of Adventure Games is any good, probably something really, really convoluted
Do you remember the good ol’ days of Adventure Games? Your Zorks and Space Quests and Monkey Islands? Where quirky characters, absurd storylines, and completely illogical puzzles were king? Well, good news! They never went away, they’re just being made in Adventure Game Studio now!


Now you too can create games like the Sierra and Infocom classics!... Though ideally with less nearly impossible puzzles that can render the game unwinnable without warning? Please?

Created by British programmer Chris Jones in 1997, Adventure Game Studio is a free(!) and open source(!!) software tool that anyone can use to create their own point-and-click Adventure Games. You bring the art and story, and AGS can handle the rest. Creating full animations for characters, making background environments possible to navigate and interact with by the player, custom code scripting, and even debugging and testing can all be handled entirely within the software. Once you’re done, package it up and share it online with the incredibly active AGS community. They even run a “AGS Awards” every year, giving quite a popularity boost to whichever games walk away with honors.


The real puzzle in this game is who built the world’s most structurally inconsistent pillars there

As it is a free and open source software, AGS has been used by many developers to make high-quality titles, both free fangames and commercial releases. Some good examples that are worth playing include the Rob Blanc Trilogy (created by none other than Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw… yes, the Zero Puncuation guy), the Blackwell series, and Gemini Rue. And if you wanna give Adventure Game making a shot yourself, you can download the software on their official website: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/


Super Smash Bros. ain’t got NOTHIN’ on this…

The fighting game genre is no stranger to weird and wild crossovers: You have Marvel vs. Capcom, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, the myriad of guest characters in Soul Calibur, and of course Super Smash Bros. M.U.G.E.N takes this tendency and extrapolates on it to its most extreme conclusion. First released in 1999, M.U.G.E.N (Japanese for “dream”, “fantasy”, and “infinite”, for the nerds in the crowd wondering) is a Game Making Tool for fighting games. There have been a good number of fighting games built from the ground up using M.U.G.E.N, but the main draw is that a prebuilt fighting game framework is already included, with the only thing missing being any fighters. Thus, for budding designers who aren’t ready to tackle a full game, they can instead focus on creating individual fighters and uploading them for others to use.

Needless to say, people leaped at this opportunity.


You need an 8K resolution monitor just to see who the heck you’re about to pick

M.U.G.E.N uses C for all of its scripting, so anyone with the art assets and a little bit of coding knowledge can put whoever they want in the game, complete with their own unique fighting mechanics and gimmicks. People began by recreating characters from all different fighting games and porting them over to M.U.G.E.N so they could all face each other (while keeping whatever mechanics they had from their original games intact) for the first time ever, but why stop there? At this point, virtually every character in pop culture has been recreated as a fighter in M.U.G.E.N, not to mention countless original characters as well. There are multiple databases online where these characters are uploaded, and you can pick and choose which ones you want to download into your own game to play with, resulting in a near-infinite number of possible mashups... Most of them completely ridiculous.


Tragedy struck when Ronald McDonald misunderstood what they meant by combos and tried to offer Link a Big Mac with fries and a Coke

M.U.G.E.N is unique among Game Making Tools due the framework it provides - You can go through all the steps of creating a game (design, art, programming, testing, etc.) condensed into a single fighter. This makes the software perfect for people looking for bite-sized design exercises that don’t require a massive commitment of time or resources just to reach a playable state. Unfortunately, while the M.U.G.E.N community is still alive and kicking today, the software itself hasn’t been updated in years, with the original site hosting having gone offline long ago. Thankfully, it’s still possible to download it if you know where to look, so if you ever wanted to finally settle the classic argument of who would win in a fight between Agent Scully and Hermey the Dentist Elf, you know what to do!

… Wait, that’s just us who had that debate? Man, maybe our office culture is weirder than we thought…

Game Making Tools sacrifice a simplified interface in favor of giving users far more control over the details of what they create, often with very impressive results. Whether you’re just tinkering with a personal project or are planning your first commercial release, software like this is the perfect place to start. Come back next week as we shift gears and enter the weird and wild world of mods!

CONTINUE TO PART FIVE

https://store.steampowered.com/app/827880/The_Endless_Mission/

Image Sources: techvalleyspacegame.com, rpgmakermvtutorial.com, rpgmakerweb.com, archive.org, adventuregamestudio.co.uk, wikipedia.org, @ZombieCSSTutorials, forum.blockland.us

It’s that time of the week again, makers! Today, we’ll be looking at another “style” of UGC-Focused game and some examples of it in chronological order. Ready? Then let’s go!

Last week, we looked at software where you created games by using a very game-like interface, with an emphasis on creating your own content and playing through the works of others. Sandbox Creation Games are very much like that, but they take it one step further. You still have gamer-friendly controls and an emphasis on creation as well as sharing, but these games don’t stop at “just” making games. These give you the ability to create anything - sweeping worlds to explore at your own pace, stories that you watch unfurl, communities to mingle in, and so much more. You can still create games, of course, but you are often given much more flexibility in the kinds of interactive experiences that you can create, rather than be limited to a specific type or genre of game. The only limit is your imagination.

And maybe your patience.

Hey, nobody said this would be easy.


Get ready to never be able to take Half-Life’s G-Man seriously ever again. Among many, many other things.

Created by Garry Newman (big surprise there, given the name) in 2004, Garry’s Mod is a sandbox game that runs on the Source game engine - the same engine that Valve uses for their major titles like Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, and more. As such, when playing Garry’s Mod, you will be able to spawn in any asset from a Source game you have installed on your computer (and whatever you download from other folks as well) and play with them as you see fit, messing with their physics, animations, programming, rigging, and whatever else you can think of.

That’s it.

That’s the game.


Just your typical day in the world of GMod.

By default, Garry’s Mod has no rules or objectives, not even a single-player mode to introduce you to how things work. You are truly left to your own devices to decide what you want to do. For many, just goofing around with friends is enough, tossing around random characters and objects and watching the physics do the rest. However, for the more ambitious, GMod’s lack of constraints allow for limitless possibilities. GMod is frequently used as a soundstage for creating movies, also known as “Machinima”. Such movies range from genuinely high quality to exploiting the quirks in Source’s physics engine to create some… truly unique experiences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHxyZaZlaOs
Cinematic. Perfection.

Surreal animations aside, the ability to edit code in GMod also means that creating entire games wholesale is not outside the realm of possibility. In fact, several popular games, such as Prop Hunt and Trouble in Terrorist Town, saw their start on GMod. All of this has made Garry’s Mod a very popular piece of software for PC gamers. While trying to get into the creation side of things may be hard due to lack of direction, it’s always easy to load it up and play a few rounds of Prop Hunt with friends. Or just make random NPCs ragdoll everywhere. That too.


It’s the little things...


Get ready to rock your blox off

Roblox, released in 2005 by the creatively-named Roblox Corporation, is not a video game. Rather, it’s a “technology platform for developers to develop games on,” according to the creators themselves. Schematics aside, Roblox is all about creating your own blocky-looking avatar and exploring the worlds and games that other players have created… or just making your own, of course.


Go ahead, tell the two guys wielding RPGs that their game is just a Lego knock-off. We’ll wait over here. Behind lots of cover.

Roblox actively encourages users to create their own content, up to and including letting players write their own code scripts using the Lua programming language. Not only that, but users are fully allowed to sell their creations to others in-game, either by offering specific cosmetic items or individual toys for sale, or by requiring the purchase of a game pass in order to access their game or world. The Roblox developers get a cut, but the rest of the proceeds from the sale go directly to the user who created it. As many Roblox players skew towards the younger side, this can easily be a child’s introduction not only to the concept of UGC, but the ability to make an income from it as well.


And without any awkward questions from the FDA about what’s actually in what you’re selling, to boot!

Roblox is still going strong today, boasting over 90 million active users monthly. It is also unique among the software we’ve covered in that it has a heavy massively-multiplayer component to it - all of the most popular worlds and games are multiplayer-focused, and you’ll spend lots of time interacting with other users in the community directly like an MMO, rather than simply through comments or reviews. This can make creating and sharing UGC on the platform an intimidating prospect for some, but if you can handle the digital stage fright, you’ll have a very large audience who can give you direct and immediate feedback (and maybe even a few bucks) for whatever you create… So long as you can find a way to stand out and get peoples’ attention, of course.


The game that launched a thousand YouTube accounts

… Okay, seriously, does this game even need an introduction? It’s Minecraft!

*sigh* Fine, fine, but only because we like you.

Originally inspired by another indie title called Infiniminer, Minecraft is the game that put the “sandbox survival” genre on the map. You are dropped in a massive procedurally generated world with nothing but the clothes on your back and the ability to break down the blocks that make up the world and use them as you see fit. What do you do next? That’s entirely up to you. Go diving into caves to fight monsters and mine resources. Build a glorious castle. Use the mysterious Redstone to create complex machines. Invite your friends to explore the world together. The power is yours.

Of course, you probably knew all that already. After all, Minecraft has sold over 100 million copies, and is the best selling PC game of all time (and second best-selling game of all time period, behind only that other blocky classic, Tetris). It’s been released on nearly every platform known to man, woman, and Creeper. It managed to popularize not one, but two major game genres - Sandbox Survival and Battle Royale (a popular type of multiplayer server for Minecraft, Hunger Games, was a Battle Royale-style game before the likes of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds or Fortnite hit the scene). In other words, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t know what Minecraft is.


And even fewer people who don’t have a primal fear of THIS little jerk

What Minecraft brings to the table when it comes to sandbox creation is also something that needs little introduction. If you’re playing the game in the default mode, Survival, the creation process has the interesting quirk that you can only build with what you’re able to find or craft. Having to go through the process of earning the building blocks for your creation certainly isn’t the most efficient method, but it’s all the more satisfying when you finish your project. Play in Creative mode, however, where you have infinite resources, and nothing is off-limits. There’s always the classic “build gigantic structures that others can gawk at in amazement,” of course, but for those looking for something even nerdier, there’s Redstone and Command Blocks. These can be used to build and code complex machinery, up to and including full-blown computers. And that’s not even getting into the topic of how mod-friendly Minecraft is, allowing players to create unique experiences like the aforementioned Hunger Games mod (don’t worry, we’ll be covering Minecraft mods in more detail in a later article).


Can’t wait until we can honestly say that you can play Minecraft inside Minecraft

Another benefit that Minecraft can claim over other Sandbox Creation games is how popular it’s become in the classroom. Teachers have realized the educational opportunities that Minecraft can provide, from History (recreating ancient cities for your students to explore) to Math (“You have 15 iron and 10 sticks, how many pickaxes can you create?”) to Economics (setting up a barter system for materials) to Engineering (Redstone, just… Redstone), and have capitalized on using Minecraft in a learning context in their schools. As a matter of fact, the fine folks here at E-Line Media actually collaborated with teachers in the past to create a special version of Minecraft exclusively for the classroom, called MinecraftEdu!


“A Creeper blew up my homework!”

Microsoft would later follow this up with their own take on the concept in the form of Minecraft: Education Edition, while the things we learned while creating MinecraftEdu proved to be invaluable when working on The Endless Mission. All in all, not bad for a game that was made by one guy came from space!


All those floating islands, and not a single railing in sight - OSHA would be displeased

Released in 2014, Project Spark was Microsoft’s answer to the Sony-Exclusive LittleBigPlanet (which we discussed in detail last week). It sought to one-up LBP in several ways, from allowing for fully-fledged 3D games (LBP games by default are primarily top-down or sidescroller games) to having incredibly detailed control when modifying the terrain and individual assets. It also put much more emphasis on the creation portion, with all the base game assets available from the start without having to play through Story Mode to unlock them, and heavy emphasis and support on using the software to create things other than games as well, such as art and movies. It even made some really clever use of the Kinect: You could give your characters custom animations by acting said animations out in front of the Kinect camera, for instance.


You could also custom edit the AI for all assets as well, for all you code junkies out there.

The game was free-to-play, but with very limited assets available at the start. You had to pay real money to get each of the many DLC packs available before you could start building the really creative stuff, a design decision that proved to be very polarizing. Eventually, Microsoft decided to make all the DLC available for free, but it did little to encourage people to try it out.

Project Spark also found itself at the center of a bit of a controversy surrounding the “return” of Conker, an older IP that people had been clamoring for a sequel for quite some time. When the highly-anticipated return was revealed to simply be the Conker’s Big Return DLC pack in Project Spark rather than an actual game, it left a bad taste in a lot of folks’ mouths. Exacerbating matters further was the fact that Project Spark was primarily billed as a family-friendly game while the Conker franchise… isn’t.


Not Pictured: All the profanity, gore, and offensive jokes that people actually think of when they think Conker.

Ultimately, though, the biggest hurdle for Project Spark was that it just plain never caught on. Project Spark only saw middling sales and community even though it was on three different platforms (Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC). When Microsoft announced that they would not be releasing any more assets and would instead be relying on “the community” to create new content, pretty much everyone saw the writing on the wall. Several months later, the Project Spark servers were shut down completely - the game can no longer be downloaded, and even if you do already have it, there is no longer any way to share what you create with the world.

Project Spark is a case study in why nurturing a healthy community for your UGC-focused game is critically important. UGC only thrives when there are many different users all creating and sharing their creations with each other. If you make decisions that alienate your playerbase, or if the software is unable to gain traction in the first place, your game may be very short-lived indeed. Rest assured, maintaining an active and engaged community in The Endless Mission is a major priority for us!


This game reminds us of the time our lead designer dreamt he was eating a five pound marshmallow, and when he woke up his pillow was missing…

Okay, now we’re on the real cutting edge of sandbox creation games… This game’s so new, it technically isn’t even out yet! Dreams is the next game by Media Molecule, the same guys responsible for LittleBigPlanet. Unlike that game, Dreams makes it clear that it’s about all kinds of creations, not just games. Want to craft a sculpture? Paint a masterpiece? Film an epic movie? Dreams gives you the tools to do all of this, and leaves the rest up to you.


Dreams: It’s for the birds

At the moment, Dreams is only available in Early Access, meaning that nothing is quite finalized yet and they’re still receiving suggestions and feedback from thousands of users. Even while it’s still in Beta, however, the things people have put together are nothing short of stunning: Immaculate recreations of classic games, interactive art exhibits, haunting and atmospheric musical compositions, and so much more.

Additionally, Dreams puts a heavy emphasis on the community sharing their creations and building each other up. When exploring other people’s work, there’s an “Autosurf” option that’ll shuffle up a random selection of content that you then experience in rapid-fire fashion. This helps to show off the sheer breadth of what can be created, and gives players the chance to discover something brand new that they might not have found otherwise. And if you find something that you love so much you want to use in your own creations? You can just download it, and Dreams will handle giving the proper credit for the components you used automatically when people check out your completed project. It’s the “Works Cited” page your high school lit teacher wishes they had.


The first person who makes Yakety Sax in this thing is gonna get ALL the Likes

While there are some areas that they are still actively collecting feedback on and working to improve - the beauty of Early Access! - there is no denying the amount of freedom Dreams offers, nor the kind of helpful, engaging community it’s fostering. We can’t wait to see more of Dreams in the future, as it’s looking to be an excellent companion piece for The Endless Mission.

Sandbox creation games have really taken off in recent years, as technology makes it easier and easier to use a game-like interface to just make… well… anything! But we’re not done yet: Tune in next time as to see what happens when you decide to strip away the gamer-friendly interface and get into the real nitty-gritty of making games!

CONTINUE TO PART FOUR

https://store.steampowered.com/app/827880/The_Endless_Mission/

Image Sources: Steam, KnowYourMeme, GIPHY, Roblox, Joann.com, Minecraft, @Legomasta99, nathannagele.com, Micrososft, WindowsCentral.com, Destructoid, Playstation, RoadtoVR.com, Kotaku.

Welcome back! Last week, we did a quick overview of what User Generated Content is, the many forms it can come in, and some tips on how to start making your own. Since you’re all still here (and didn’t run away screaming), that means it’s time to dive in and start looking at the history of UGC - where it came from, where it is now, and where it’s heading in the future. For this discussion we’ll be examining different types of “UGC-focused” games one at a time, looking at examples in rough chronological order. Ready? Let’s begin!

First up, there are Games about Making Games. The term may sound a bit... recursive, but the distinguishing aspect of these games is that the presentation still feels very game-like: The interface is streamlined for ease-of-use, usually for creating a specific type of game (and frequently it will explicitly be games or levels that you are creating). Assets are predefined or created using an in-game drawing tool rather than imported, and often based on some pre-established theme or style. While the ability to do some amount of coding or scripting may be included, it will be totally optional and players can create fully-detailed UGC without touching a line of code. Finally, the ability to share your creations with others will be one of the major selling-points, to the extent that playing other peoples’ creations will be given equal focus to making your own.

Pinball Construction Set (1983)

PCS got re-released a couple of times - this version had a particularly trippy cover

We talked about this game a bit last week, but it’s time to give it a proper introduction - Pinball Construction Set, created by Bill Budge in 1983, is considered one of the first games to put an emphasis on UGC in the form of creating your own pinball tables. In addition to having a full suite of pinball features you could drag and drop onto the table, the physics of the table, such as gravity or friction, could be adjusted as well.


From humble beginnings…

Despite being pretty darn primitive by today’s standards, PCS was absolutely revolutionary at the time it came out, earning massive sales, glowing reviews, and numerous awards. The publisher, Electronic Arts, would go on to create numerous pseudo-sequels from different authors, including Music Construction Set, Adventure Construction Set, and Racing Destruction Set. Even as recently as 2008, the game received honors at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for the influence it had on gaming. Best of all, Budge himself shared the source code for the game on GitHub, allowing a whole new generation of gamers to experience a real classic. Check it out.

LittleBigPlanet (2008)

If you’ve played this game before, you’re already hearing Stephen Fry’s soothing voice

Despite the impact that PCS made upon release, it wouldn’t be until a quarter century later that the next major “game about making games” would be released, courtesy of Media Molecule. LittleBigPlanet puts you in the role of an adorable (and customizable!) little Sackboy or Sackgirl as they explore their creativity-fueled world in a sidescrolling platforming adventure. As you play, you collect various bits and bobs that you can then use for the game’s big draw - creating your own massive levels that you can share online.


See that menu? Yeah, that’s just the customization options for ONE asset. LBP is complex, yo.

LittleBigPlanet did a lot to bring back games of this ilk in a huge way after their extended absence, and it received high acclaim from both fans and critics alike. The game would have numerous DLC packs and sequels, introducing new, even more detailed editing tools and features. While the first game you were more or less confined to making platformers, the sequels would make it easy to create games in a massive array of genres, not to mention a surprisingly detailed scripting engine for programming AI characters.


if(ReaderUnderstandsTheNonsenseAbove == True) {output (“You are a huge nerd.”);}

LittleBigPlanet was not without its flaws, even after the vast improvements its sequels brought - the real-time physics engine made it very hard to create games that required precision, as you were never quite sure if whatever crazy contraption you built would work properly every time, and the “Sackperson” aesthetic meant that every game had a cutesy homemade look to it, even if you were trying to make, say, a sci-fi or horror game. Even so, the creations made in this game were nothing short of incredible. Media Molecule would go on to set their sights even higher with their next game, Dreams… which we will go into in next week’s article.

WarioWare D.I.Y. (2009)

The box explains the intent of the game with all the subtlety you’d expect from Wario

With LittleBigPlanet jumpstarting interest in UGC on a game-sized scale once more, it wasn’t long until other companies started getting in on the action. Nintendo was one of the first to introduce their own take on the concept, creating a UGC-focused version of their very popular and very weird WarioWare franchise.


Pictured: A WarioWare game tasking you with picking a nose in under five seconds. Liberties taken with the context of this gif: None.

Trying to explain WarioWare to someone who’s never heard of it can be downright surreal, but let’s try it anyway: The ever-greedy Wario has decided to give up on his wild graverobbing “archeology” adventures and instead earn tons of cash by starting his own video game company. However, he’s taken the mentality of “quantity over quality” to its (il)logical extreme, as each game is only five seconds long. As such, the player is tasked with playing anywhere between 10 to 25 of these “microgames” in a row, having only scads of time to figure out what you’re supposed to do in each game (jump over a car, eat a hot dog, escape a rolling boulder, etc.) and then do it. As of D.I.Y., many of Wario’s employees from the previous games have left him due to… well… him being Wario, so now he has turned to you to help him make more microgames.

Due to the brevity of the microgames, D.I.Y. was able to give players a lot of control over the details of what they create. Players could create their own sprites and artwork, as well as compose completely original music for their microgames. The fact that the game was available on the Nintendo DS also meant that a lot of the more intricate work could be done using a stylus and touch screen, as opposed to relying on a controller like in LBP. However, the most unexpected addition was a very in-depth scripting system for coding your microgames. Not only was it surprisingly versatile while never being hard to use, the game even included a separate mode called the Dojo where you did exercises and solved puzzles involving the scripting system. That’s right: They turned writing the code itself into a game! How meta.


Admit it, you know you want to have the sound effect for popping the balloon be “Voice > Blood-Curdling Scream”. We won’t tell.

Unfortunately, while the game was well-received, it never got anywhere near the sales or popularity that LittleBigPlanet did. Being strictly limited to just five-second microgames put a serious hamper on what kind of stuff you could create. While more WarioWare games would be released, none of them would include the UGC that D.I.Y. introduced. Don’t worry, though, Nintendo wouldn’t give up on this concept entirely, as we’ll see in… oh… about three minutes from now.

Gamestar Mechanic (2010)

We totally have no idea who made this game, but we’re sure their Community Managers must be incredibly funny, intelligent, and handsome

Alright, shameless plug incoming in 3… 2… 1… Did you know that The Endless Mission is not our first foray into game creation software? Back in 2010, E-Line Media teamed up with Institute of Play to create Gamestar Mechanic: A browser-based webgame about turning game players into game makers. Players would take on the role of Addison - a newcomer to the world of Factory 7 who wishes to climb the ranks and become a Master Mechanic. However, a rival mechanic has gone rogue, and it’s up to Addison to team up with other Master Mechanics to put a stop to it and save Factory 7. Along the way, Addison learns about the key elements of game design that are needed to create an enjoyable experience, and the player earns sprites that they can then use when creating their own sidescroller or top-down games. Created games can be published on the website for other users to play and leave comments and reviews on.


We were… not subtle about the educational component for this game, no.

GSM differentiated itself from other games of its ilk by us choosing to focus on the educational side of game-making. The Quest mode where you earned sprites was very upfront about making each game you played through an opportunity to learn something about good game design, and while the program is available to everyone, it was created with the help of teachers with the specific intent to be used in classrooms around the world. Even the choice of platform for the game was deliberate - by making it a browser-based game, all one needs to play is a computer with an internet connection and Flash installed, something that any school computer lab can manage.


GSM’s level editor is entirely drag-and-drop. Game design has never been easier!... Or more shades of yellow, apparently.

However, the same things that make the game accessible to the largest audience possible also limited the complexity in what we could do and what games we could allow users to make, and with Flash slowly getting phased out completely, Gamestar Mechanic will have to evolve in order to stay alive. Still, the game is Free-to-Start, and we’re always looking for new members in the community, so if you’d like a (very) small taste of what to expect from us in The Endless Mission, feel free to check out Gamestar Mechanic at https://gamestarmechanic.com/!

… Okay, shameless plug over. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

Super Mario Maker (2015)

You Freakin’ Make It Then, If You’re So Gosh Darn Smart

Hey, we said we’d get back to Nintendo soon enough.

Nintendo would return to the world of UGC in 2015 with the release of Super Mario Maker. As the name implies, Super Mario Maker was all about creating and sharing levels based on the Super Mario Bros. franchise of games. Four different games from the Mario franchise were available for you to create levels in, and you could switch between the four styles on the fly. Ever wanted to see what Wiggler, who wouldn’t appear until Super Mario World, would look like in the original Super Mario Bros. style? Now you can!


Not Pictured: The salty tears of the hundreds of players who are unable to defeat your brutally hard monstrosity of a level

Dozens of unofficial Mario level editors can be found online if you know where to look, but Nintendo cutting out the middle-man resulted in a game with far more versatility and possibilities than any of the unofficial editors could offer, not to mention a thriving community where you could share your creations and get feedback. Plus, as a Wii U title, the Tablet Controller’s touch screen made placing a multitude of sprites a snap. Sure, you may have been limited to “only” creating Mario levels, but Mario platformers are popular for a reason, and the amount of creativity that users displayed despite these limitations were nothing short of amazing.

Of course, astute readers who know their gaming history may have caught what the game’s biggest roadblock was in that last paragraph: It was a Wii U title. Even though Super Mario Maker got glowing reviews and sold millions of copies, the Wii U’s audience was not large enough for it to make a bigger impact. Thankfully, Nintendo knew a good idea when they saw one, and a sequel, Super Mario Maker 2, is due out on the much more successful Nintendo Switch this June. Feel free to play that game on your TV while you’re playing The Endless Mission on your computer!

That about wraps things up for the history of Games about Making Games. Check back next week as we look at games that set their sights a bit higher and consider making games to be just the tip of the iceberg!

CONTINUE TO PART THREE

https://store.steampowered.com/app/827880/The_Endless_Mission/

Image Sources:
Wikipedia, Engadget, xgn.nl, Simone Di Giorgi, MarioWiki, Kotaku, VistaPointe, Vice

Greetings, everyone! In the weeks leading up to the release of The Endless Mission, we’re going to spend some time on this blog talking about the history of User Generated Content, or UGC for short. UGC is the lifeblood of The Endless Mission, so it probably goes without saying that understanding the history of what came before was quite important to us. Before we dive in, however, there are a few questions that need answering first, which we’ll spend the rest of this post covering. Pay attention now - there’ll be a test later.*

*No there won’t.

User Generated Content is any content that is generated by users.


Yup.

Wait, you’re still here? Dang, so much for this blog writing thing being an easy gig…

In regards to video games, User Generated Content is what happens when a game provides the player the means to create their own content that they can then use in the game. Character creators, level editors, and mods are all examples of this kind of content creation. The means that the game provides to do this is generally referred to as a “Content Creation Platform” or something similar, but the stuff that players then create in it is what is given the name UGC. Nowadays, virtually every game that allows you to create UGC also provides you with a way of sharing your stuff with other players over the internet. After all, feedback is important if you want to make your creations even better!

We’ll be going into more detail about this later, but the first commercially released video game that allowed for UGC was Pinball Construction Set, created by Bill Budge all the way back in 1983.


A game so old, it remembers the Reagan Administration

This was quickly followed by the level editors featured in Excitebike in 1984 and Wrecking Crew in 1985, proving that UGC was possible not only on computers, but consoles as well. Things would only get bigger from here, but these games were the first.

There are lots of ways for a game to allow for the creation of UGC. Some common examples, in roughly increasing order of complexity, include:

• Customizing the appearance of your player character
  
• Importing images from your computer to use as icons, banners, sprays, etc. in-game
  
• Building objects in-game such as vehicles or houses that you can then show off to others
  
• Level Editors that allow you to create maps/stages/tracks for others to play and compete on
  
• Scripting engines that let you program basic behaviors, allowing for the creation of AIs or more complex game modes
  
• Full access to the code of the game itself, so that users can create mods for the game

For the record, our goal with The Endless Mission is to allow our users to do all of the above-listed things. We’re nothing if not ambitious!... And maybe a little crazy. That too.

While the definition of a “Game Mod” can vary depending on who you ask, in general, a mod is any sort of file or program that a user creates and then adds into the game itself, altering the content of the game drastically. Some mods will change the gameplay, while others will replace character models with something entirely different. The one thing that ties them together is that the mod is usually created outside of the game and then added in by the player later, which is what makes them different from most instances of UGC that are created via in-game editors and the like. That, and they have a tendency to get kind of… weird.


We all remember that part in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where Goku fought Shrek while using Spongebob Squarepants as a shield, right? No? Just us?

As mods are clearly content that is created by the player, they can easily be seen as UGC. However, unlike most UGC, how accepted they are by the company that made the game can vary. After all, creating mods requires tearing the game apart and messing around with the code, something that some companies aren’t fond of. Some games, like Half-Life and Skyrim, thrive on their Mod Communities supported by the developers themselves, while other companies will ignore mods or even actively try to shut them down. Finally, note that mods are usually reserved for games that have limited means of UGC in the first place - if a game is already a very flexible Content Creation Platform (such as, say, The Endless Mission), then mods of this sort are pretty much wholly unnecessary. After all, anything you’d normally need a mod to do, we already plan on letting you do in-game already!

Questions like this are hard to answer, as they can be very subjective. What is enjoyable and considered “good” UGC can vary greatly from person to person. That said, there are still some general ideas and good practices you should try to employ when creating UGC, such as…

• Know the Rules - Any game where you can share content you created with others online will have rules about what is and isn’t okay to share. Follow them. Nothing ends a career in UGC creation faster than getting perma-banned for uploading inappropriate or offensive content. Don’t be that guy.

Pictured: That Guy (note his avatar’s name in the upper-left)

• See What Others Have Created - This doesn’t mean “blatantly rip-off others’ ideas,” obviously, but browsing through the UGC made by other players can help provide inspiration for your own stuff. Maybe there’s a popular kind of character people keep making that you’d love to do your own spin on. Maybe someone’s level uses a cool mechanic that you want to see more of. No one creates in a vacuum, and using the creations of others as a launching point for your own content is a completely valid approach, so long as you put the effort into making it uniquely yours.
  
• Share Early, Share Often - Feedback from others is critical in the creation process. Having many pairs of eyes looking over your stuff can go a long way towards making it accessible and enjoyable by all. For instance, one of the biggest pitfalls budding game designers fall into is creating levels that are notoriously difficult because it’s easy for them, which is only the case because they’re the ones making it. Having folks who aren’t familiar with your work experience it can give you the perspective you need to make it better.
  
• Iterate, Iterate, Iterate - Just because you’ve posted your UGC online for all to see doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be done with it. Based on the feedback you receive (see above), there is nothing wrong with going back in and making changes. Your creations are always a work-in-progress, and coming back to a project later once you’ve learned more can help breathe new life into it.
  
• Don’t Stop Creating - World-class animator Chuck Jones once said “Every artist has thousands of bad drawings in them and the only way to get rid of them is to draw them out.” Don’t get discouraged if the content you create doesn’t feel up to snuff compared to others - just keep at it. The more you create, the better you’ll get at creating. Everyone has to start somewhere, and as long as you keep trying and keep improving, the UGC you make can end up amazing. Who knows? With the practice you get creating UGC, it’s possible to turn your creativity into a professional career!

From goofy webcomic to official publication - Yes, this is the same artist

Content Creation Platforms and User Generated Content are incredible features that allow players to become designers. Many folks in the game industry got their start messing around in level editors growing up, a tradition we are excited to continue in The Endless Mission. Be sure to check back next week as we dive into the history of UGC, starting with games that put creation at the forefront of their design!

CONTINUE TO PART TWO

https://store.steampowered.com/app/827880/The_Endless_Mission/

Image Sources:
GIPHY, The Strong National Museum of Play, @goku, The Amazing World of Gumball, Tyson Hesse/IDW

Hellooooo!

We had so much fun at PAX East and EGX Rezzed -- from players to the press, we met some amazing people and the response was incredible! We've put together a few highlights below for you to enjoy.

We also want to give you a quick update on the state of the project -- we're getting close to our launch of Early Access! We haven't announced an exact launch date, but it will be in the next few months, so get ready.

As always, thanks for the support and we can't wait for you to get your hands on The Endless Mission very soon!

Best,
The Endless Mission Team

p.s. We've got some exciting stuff planned for E3... Details on what/where/when to follow ;)

https://youtu.be/FrJt1YtHVSc
"No offence meant to any of the wonderful #indiegames and #indiedev we interviewed at #egxrezzed but The Endless Mission by @ELineMedia completely blew Badger's mind. In his own words 'This takes Rezzed for me'"
Stoffel Presents
--
Booth 15110 for the most chill deep dive experience of your life on one half and possibly the coolest game ever on the other @endless_mission.
Alekazam
--
Started day 3 with a cool game where you build a game while you play a game. Hot damn talk about meta. Welcome to The Endless Mission.
Mad-Eye Yokai
--
Saw your game at EGX rezzed in london, looking awesome guys. Gonna love supporting your project!
Danduw

Spring has officially sprung and you know what that means: time for PAX East and EGX Rezzed!

The team's got our bags packed for the trip to Boston and London and we're bringing a brand new demo with us featuring the very first look at one of our Adventure Worlds! Below you'll find a sneak peek at what's in store.

Here's where you'll find us on the show floors:

PAX East: Booth #15110
EGX Rezzed: Great Gallery

Oh! Be sure to join our Discord server right here -- if you're going to the shows, we created PAX East and EGX Rezzed channels for you to chat with us and other attendees about your experience.

See you soon!

~ The Endless Mission Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/827880/The_Endless_Mission/