Community Generated Content

[burjeffton]

I read the MLBTS forums religiously, but rarely start threads. Here goes nothing:

Thinking about Sounds of the Show, it has opened up some new thoughts on the game and future feature sets (I'm talking beyond '16). Even though I don't play games like Minecraft and Little Big Planet, I definitely am starting to see how community creation and involvement adds more to games. Honestly, some of my favorite "little things" about The Show have been added by the community. OS rosters, Sounds of the Show music files, even some of the crazy uniform stuff, etc really give the game depth and keep me playing it months later.

So here's my humble suggestion: I know we'll never be able to mod the game, but giving feature sets that allow the community to add and compliment the game can bring in more fans/customers to The Show. Create-a-Stadium, add to a stadium (our own fan signs, stadium signage, etc), allowing access to SOTS again.

A lot of this makes publishers nervous (copyrights, etc) but I'd encourage the guys at SD to consider more creation tools and features. It adds a ton and builds a lot of community around the game, as we've seen evidenced by so many other IP's.

[TheWarmWind]

Re: Community Generated Content

Good idea in theory. The main reason why I'm so into Bethesda games are because of the mods. Like you said though, it's a potential disaster as far as legal rights are concerned.

There are other potential barriers to this happening, like game engine or development resources, but I see the biggest factor preventing this from happening being the MLB themselves. Like it or not, SSD does not exclusively have the right to allow players to manipulate the game. MLB is very protective of its image, and wouldn't even consider allowing people the amount of freedom that mods allowed for fear of tarnishing it's image. Then there is also the MLBPA, who would probably make a stink about player images being messed with and how this breaches the agreement that they have with Sony.

And then there is the rating system. Hard to rate a game as E for everyone when you know the first thing the community is going to do is abuse the freedom the devs have given them.

Sorry man, I really, really like your idea, but I doubt it was ever going to happen. Just look at how pissed MLB got at having a Red Sox uniform modded into Fallout 4:

http://nesn.com/2015/11/mlb-not-happy-about-mutant-killing-david-ortiz-mod-in-fallout-4/

[burjeffton]

Re: Community Generated Content

Yeah, I agree with you - Modding won't ever happen. I guess my hope is the crew at SSD continues to consider ways and feature sets for the community to add to the game in small ways (i.e. SOTS).

As a gamer, I love the customization/changes I can share and use from other designers in games like Forza and Need for Speed. Car companies embrace it, and it only adds to the racing genre and builds the community. At the end of the day, you're right: It's the MLB holding things like this up. I suppose that's going to remain THE roadblock for this game.