So I’m surfing C|Net and come across an article called “Making the virtual world a better place“. Okay. So I’m reading down the page and while scrolling down with the mouse I accidently hit what I initially took to be the visual for an ad (see above image, on the right). Well, it’s not an ad. And it’s not just a visual. It’s an interactive map of links to relevant articles. Yeah, I know, I’ve seen this sort of thing before too… but not one lying in wait in the sidebar (how long have I missed this?). Most of the time they’ve been centerpieces, and for some reason it just felt different. Check it out, and the article too. There’s a couple of interesting bits in it:

With that in mind, Schubert urged those gathered for his talk to focus the design of their virtual worlds around the creation of smaller game zones where players don’t feel alone. He said that would enable them to feel social even when there aren’t a huge number of other players around. The alternative, he said, is large game spaces where players feel lonely unless many others are nearby.

and

A designer at Dragon’s Eye Productions who called himself Dr. Cat for the panel, agreed, noting that while publisher-created content will likely be more polished than that made by users, content created by users–such as clothing, buildings, vehicles, weapons and the like-–can have more value to players because they recognize it was built by people they know.

The first quote is interesting taken relative to some of the comments made by judges for the State of Play architecture competition (see earlier posts here and here). And that second quote brings to mind the presentation made by Will Wright which included similar thoughts of his on user-created content (I think it’s the video link in this earlier entry).