The gaming gimmicks of 2008

News
By published

How videogames will grab your attention this year

User-created Content

While the web (and, largely, PC games) have charged ahead with communities and user-created content - Facebook, YouTube and the mod scene, for instance - traditional videogames are only now embracing the idea. We've seen custom decals in Project Gotham, and similar ideas elsewhere, and nowthe first everUnreal Tournament 3 mod on PS3. But there's so much more to community gaming than visual gimmicks or slightly tweaked gameplay, especially when developers can get us gamers to do the work for them.

Spore, for example, uses the ingenuity and creativity of every single gamer with an internet connection who plays the game. Designer Will Wright calls Spore "massively single player", because every lifeform you createis uploaded to a central databaserun by developer Maxis and shared with every other Spore owner. As you explore and evolve your own creature, the world around you is filled by creatures designed by other players, downloaded from the Maxis database.

But Sony probably has the year'smost desirablecommunity-based title in LittleBigPlanet. While it doesn't share Spore's scale, it utterly out-cutes Will Wright's evolution sim.Everythingfrom the sweet (or silly) outfit worn by your sackcloth ragdoll character and their facial expression to the background of the level or the objects that fill the environment can be manipulated, created and messed around with. It's the definition of sandbox gaming.

You create the challenges, or the obstacles, or whatever, then upload them for everyone else. Or, if you're stuck for inspiration, you simply grab some interesting level, object or whathaveyou and jump straight in to play. Better yet, it's multiplayer. Censorship will inevitably become an issue - thoughthere's no official wordon how the gamer content will be policed - but, in theory, if you can imagine it, you can make it. Wow, eh?

Ben_Richardson

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.