Crowdsourcing Copy

Bond

I think we can all agree that better copy makes better games.

By this I mean the conversation text, item flavor text, misc item text (journals, scrolls, etc.). It’s not a major, overt aspect of gameplay, but it is intrinsic to the “soul” of a game: the undercurrent of character that drags our engagement deeper. Think the Divinity: Original Sin series, Witcher series, Fable series, and so on.

Ashes is lucky in that it has a growing, passionate community that is desperate to do *something* Ashes while it waits. Ashes is also, from the sounds of it, going to be a massive game that errs on the side of greater immersion and RP.

My question is thus: why not leverage this fan base to fill in all the extra flavor, give the community something fun and meaningful to do, and save the studio the time and the expense?

Jahlon

Bond wrote: »

I think we can all agree that better copy makes better games.

By this I mean the conversation text, item flavor text, misc item text (journals, scrolls, etc.). It’s not a major, overt aspect of gameplay, but it is intrinsic to the “soul” of a game: the undercurrent of character that drags our engagement deeper. Think the Divinity: Original Sin series, Witcher series, Fable series, and so on.

Ashes is lucky in that it has a growing, passionate community that is desperate to do *something* Ashes while it waits. Ashes is also, from the sounds of it, going to be a massive game that errs on the side of greater immersion and RP.

My question is thus: why not leverage this fan base to fill in all the extra flavor, give the community something fun and meaningful to do, and save the studio the time and the expense?

When you start getting into situations like this, just because the community does it for you, doesn't mean they do it for free.

It is a giant pain in the ass to get all the legal stuff signed and documented from different people.

Bond

Jahlon wrote: »

It is a giant pain in the ass to get all the legal stuff signed and documented from different people.

“By doing x you agree that y” is sufficient in most cases.

Atama

I’m worried that crowdsourcing this stuff would lead to a major drop in quality.

And if you have QA people/editors checking everything, that probably takes as much if not more work than just composing it. Not to mention continuity concerns, sticking to lore, etc.

There’s a reason nobody does this. It’s not because they never thought of it. It’s because it’s a really bad idea.

Bond

Atama wrote: »

I’m worried that crowdsourcing this stuff would lead to a major drop in quality.

And if you have QA people/editors checking everything, that probably takes as much if not more work than just composing it. Not to mention continuity concerns, sticking to lore, etc.

There’s a reason nobody does this. It’s not because they never thought of it. It’s because it’s a really bad idea.

Yeah, very good point.

Atama

I love the general idea, I volunteered at Wikipedia for years and I’m an Administrator over there, so I’m intimately familiar with how to make crowdsourced content work. I’ve also contributed to online RPGs (a mix of text-based and graphical, similar to advanced MUDs) so I’ve even done this kind of thing before in games. But it won’t improve an MMO.