The over-arching theme this year at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco is the democratization of game development. i can’t escape it. At least two sessions a day feature companies opening up their software and platforms to the unwashed masses so that they can create their own games. Here are the examples i’ve spotted. i’m sure there are scads more:

Microsoft’s XNA Framework for XBox 360

The not-so-big news at the Microsoft keynote on Wednesday (aside from the Gears of War 2 announcement - whatta shocker!) was the removal of the membership wall to their XNA Game Creators Club. You’ll still have to be a Club member to push your game from your PC to your XBox 360. But now, once the Club members have vetted your creation (handily removing the burden of policing content from Microsoft’s plate), XBox owners at large will be able to play your game.

i say that this is not-so-big news because it falls in with the likely “what if” scenarios that Microsoft has been discussing for its XNA project all along. The next step, predictably, will be the integration of the Creators Club games into the marketplace, so that XBox 360 owners will be able to buy the indie games with their Billy Bucks, with Microsoft naturally taking a cut.

Kongregate

i caught a small panel with a Kongregate member early this week, having attended a much higher-profile talk by site head Jim Greer at last year’s conference. Kongregate is a site where Flash designers can upload their games and get a cut of ad revenues based on the popularity of their creations. Kongregate also funds developers a lot of money in limited doses to create products that integrate with their multiplayer API.

Sims Carnival

The people behind the outlandishly successful and ubiquitous Sims series have released a series of tools enabling players to build their own games and upload them to the Sims Carnival site. The complexity of their tools ranges from prefabricated formats where you choose a game genre and adjust variables to change gameplay - gravity, number of enemies, etc - to a much more complex tool that uses hierarchical nodes to manage gameplay elements.

Metaplace

This is the flagship product from Raph Koster’s Areae startup. i don’t know anything about it. Wikipedia says, cryptically, that worlds and games created with (in?) Metaplace will be accessible by any device that connects to the web.

Multiverse

One of many create-your-own-MMO tools, Multiverse is a mediocre-looking tool with very a permissive rights structure that enables you to create your own virtual world. The 3D worlds that have been created with the tool range in utility, from a straight-up shooter MMO to a virtual office simulation for new hires and a game that teaches astrophysics to graduate students in Florida.

The artwork in most of these projects rivals mediocre-looking 3D games from 2002, which is more than a little disappointing. Sulka Haro of Habbo Hotel fame always extols the virtues of his project’s retro-pixel art style by arguing that time is not kind to 3D artwork. i’m with him all the way on that. 3D does not age well. 2D has far longer legs.

Whirled

Puzzle Pirates microtransaction millionaire and all-around crazyperson Daniel James apologized that his newest project, which he announced last year, was still in closed alpha. Whirled is a very post-modern approach to virtual worlds, enabling participants to tool up basically anything in Flash to integrate in a visual space that includes mermaids, moustaches, mech suits and talking jars of marmalade. i can’t see it appealing to all tastes, and i’ll be interested to see if “design cliques” form, where fans of the medieval content band together, while the furries stick to their own corner of the virtual space (as furries most definitely should).

Like Kongregate and Sims Carnival, Whirled team Three Rings is hammering out revenue-share model for its creators.

Everything Else

That’s to say nothing of all the games that support player-created content, including but by no means limited to

Lego Universe
IMVU
Lord of the Rings Online
Second Life
Little Big Planet
APB

Admittedly, that’s not much of a list. The point is that there are many, many games doing this. i can’t seem to remember them all. After four days at GDC, i think my brain is full.

Game Creation Tools Even Mom Can Use

The key tip i’ve heard for creating tools that anyone can use is to build them with simple interfaces like household appliances. In other words, building an object should be as easy and straight-forward as making toast.

While it takes a lot more time to build a creation tool like a level builder that’s friendly and intuitive enough for all the toast-adept out there, it’s well worth the effort. Suddenly, you have a community of people willing to do the heavy-lifting of content creation for you. i can’t be bothered creating the game - here, YOU create the game. Sounds alright to me.

i wish other jobs were perceived to be as enjoyable as game design. Cab drivers could sit in the back seat while their fares drove themselves around. Students would throw themselves into their studies while their teachers kicked back in the staff room. Dogs would scoop their own poo into little baggies. What a utopia.