Feldon 
Player-created tubs and water closet items coming soon to EQ2
When the Player Studio forums launched, they were pretty quiet, with minimal developer interaction. Well, what a difference a few months take. Due to the incredible quality of items being submitted by players, and the need for more direct lines of communication between aspiring artists and the “official” game designers, we’ve seen the appointment of a full-time Player Studio artist liaison, and increased involvement of SOE staff.
Further, when the Player Studio forums relaunch next month, we’ll see a totally revamped structure that fosters collaborative feedback between artists, as well as a venue for players to get useful instruction on getting started or polishing up a good item to make it great. It will allow players to really showcase their work and seek input from players on what items they’d like to see next.
I’m a strong believer in getting players involved in contributing to games they are passionate about. The notion that players are unable to grasp the complexity of creating 3D objects, designing a dungeon, or developing a Data-driven fan site have proven to be nonsense. While some hesitation from the artists, designers, animators, and programmers whose careers are built on delivering these things to players is inevitable, as we’veseen with MMOs old and new, there is more than enough work to go around.
The EQ2 team are already nose-to-the-grindstone on the upcoming Game Update 66 and so it’s great that players can chip in and contribute our own bits to the game, and then share in the proceeds. There is no doubt that Player Studio will be a cornerstone of the upcoming EverQuest Next, and goodness knows we’ve heard the “sandbox” buzzword often enough, but how far will they go with player collaboration? Hopefully it’s nothing less than a brave new Norrath.
Any idea when Player Studio will be open for UK and European players?
Soon(tm) (aka in 2 or 3 years with luck *snickers*)
I’ve wondered since the advent of PS if any SoE ‘art developers’ have been let go. Ya’know, gettin 1 upped by freelance volunteering fans must cost a lot of aloe vera.
I don’t think this is a matter of replacing existing art developers so much as giving them back their work time for the art for the game and letting players develop what they’ve been asking for themselves. the Marketplace is a nice little cashcow for sony, but it needs content that does not actually add anything to the game other than pure decoration for the most part. I think this is a very sharp move on Sony’s part.
@Whilhelmina – When I worked for Sony many years ago we used to say that the name “Sony” stood for: Soon, Only Not Yet.
🙂
the big difference between a paid artist working for soe and a player studio artist is time. When you work for the company, they ask for a new cloak and give you a few days to deliver. when you do items for player studio, you have all the time in the world to dedicate to a project. While the end result might be amazing it might not be something that is physically possible for a paid artist to get done in the amount of time they are given for any one project. It is really comparing apples to oranges.
Very true.
I think this applies to a lot of things. Could EQ2U have been developed within SOE under their time constraints and policy requirements?
Then it’s terrible QA/QC enforced by SoE management. Albeit eq2u probably took more than reasonable time to execute than a company would like, the fact remains, pushing sub par quality products gives you a ‘reputation’, doing so for every update/xpac it becomes a ‘label’
I don’t think any of us still playing eq would walk away if they postponed GU66 for a month(2?) if it were for the sake of ‘polishing to the n-th degree’ AND it actually release as such, but, even as you read that you laughed and with gut instinct cackled bullS***; pro reputation pro label.
So while we’re being honest, let’s all admit that deep down, we are optimistic they’ll learn from their past, eventually.