Tomorrow's games, designed by players as they play Options

[Xbox-Scene]

Tomorrow's games, designed by players as they play -- Posted by XanTium on February 3 23:24 EST
J. Allard, Microsoft's Chief XNA Architect, talked about the 'games of tomorrow' on CNet:
[QUOTE]
Game budgets are skyrocketing. Development teams are swelling almost to film studio's proportions. The only way out of this trap is to enlist players to help create their own worlds.

"(Gaming) is the only medium where we yield control of the protagonist. Let's yield control of the director--and the producer," said Allard, a vice president at Microsoft. "We're going to take on the Wikipedia model. We're going to take on...the open-source model, if you will, for gaming."

Players' eagerness to go beyond the conventional boundaries has been seen in almost every online game. In the first major massively multiplayer game, Ultima Online, developers saw their swords-and-sorcery stories expanded by players who opened taverns to host online friends and create theater groups to perform "A Christmas Carol" inside the game.

"If only 1 percent of our audience that plays Halo helped construct the world around Halo, it would be more human beings than work at Microsoft corporation," Allard said. "That's how much human energy we could harness in this medium."
[/QUOTE]

Read More: news.com

[sew3521]

Its called www.halomods.com And who else has a hard time believeing that MS will go to opensource...for any of there products?

[DarkLabel]

MS and Open source? My God I thought I'd never see the day that happen. If they're serious about this, games will have extraordinary replay values. We'll also need bigger Hard Drives. But when he says this, does he mean a simple level creator where everything is pre-made and you just put whatever stuff you want? Or will MS go beyond that and allow us to truly customise every aspect of the level or the entire game? Who knows? But this does sound like the right step MS is going.

[Moleman]

Hmmm, so this is where VelocityGirl has been all this time.

[Mikeizzle]

whoa... deep ............

[nwo504]

i really hope ms is serious about this

[BanjoK]

It seems MS really knows what they are doing. I wouldn't expect anywhere near actual open source but the creation that would be possible from letting the gamer audience have decent access to game creation would be phenominal. This alone could really change the way we play games, even more so than what a different controller(revolution) would. This has huge potential and hopefully this will be executed properly so that all of us gamers will benefit.

[zX_Storm]

I 100% guarentee you that he does not mean REAL open source, and the fact that games will be more customizable. He's just trying to get more hype by using those words. Not to mention he did say "if you will" implying that's not the correct words to he meant.

[ShauntA]

I think that MS is correctly realizing that they will run dry of content once computing power reaches a certain level, since it will be so complicated and time consuming to make games. This move is genius.

[grogger13]

thats all just hype, open source isnt what it would be like at all, its probably at most like creating your own skate park in tony hawk, except now you'll be able to give it to other people and play with them and if you have read some other stuff MS has said things about planning on sell things the users created

[law56ker]

It's just all talk, actions are needed. I doubt we'll ever see it.

This post has been edited by law56ker: Feb 4 2006, 10:07 AM

[mgamer20o0]

sounds like it could be a good idea depending on how open they let it be.

[cornfield]

Being MS, this concept will probably be extremely self serving and watered down. Don't hold your breath guys. What the Industry needs is more console manufactures that will bring more competition. Competition is what the industry needs.

Its a great concept but its MS we're talking about here...

[modthebox.tk]

yeah true.

still cannot believe that they are thinking anywhere along those lines. It is awesome to say the least.

[Cimlite]

... by "Open-source" they apparently mean "Gives us free stuff". Not suprising that MS missinterprets that.

I have no problem at all with people creating stuff for commercial games, as long as it's extra on the side. After reading that text I got the feeling that they meant "instead of us doing it", which sounds much less interessting.

This post has been edited by Cimlite: Feb 4 2006, 02:46 PM