User created content in Spore
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The core of Spore's game-play revolves around user created content. Players customize almost all aspects of their gaming experience using a series of editors in each of the phases. Users literally create their own content with which to populate their game world.
This was a technique used in The Sims and The Sims 2 by Maxis to allow players to expand on the limited amount of items which were included in the game. The logical progression of this idea is to allow the user to create everything; thus Spore was born. Allowing users to create their own content leads to a vastly increased replay value of the game, with the user able to take a different route every time they play the game.
- "User-created content has two extraordinary benefits. No. 1 is that when somebody makes a piece of content, they are so much more emotionally attached to it. It doesn't even matter if it's good or bad. If they made it, it's really cool, and they're totally interested in what happens to it. No. 2, players love trading and sharing and spreading this stuff around and having it come to them, and building up their worlds.
- So it has a tremendous potential benefit to other players. For the few people that make really good content, if we can distribute that to all the other players, then the players in some sense become part of the game-design team. They are helping us to build the game. I'm trying to figure out, how do we take that cool dynamic and burn it into the game to where it's part of the game's DNA, as opposed to something we taped on later?" - Will Wright, in a 2005 interview with Wired News.
One of the major benefits of incorporating more user created content into a game for the studio is lowered costs. For each piece of content that a user creates, the studio does not have to create that content themselves. This saves on effort, allowing the developers to concentrate on other areas. As a business model, it can therefore save on both time-based costs and staffing costs.
