Twenty five years ago, kids would make their own games and sell them. Many were not successful. Those that were make up many of the game legends of today (such as Richard Garriott or the Oliver Twins).
Today, kids squander their free time to cut and paste parts of an already existing game to make dull, uninspired levels to something they can never sell or copyright.
OMG! The original 1-1 level from NES Super Mario Brothers. Oh, the CREATIVITY! Oh, I have to sit down from all that genius in putting 1-1 NES SMB into the game. No one would have ever thought to have done that before.
And the second level! So inspiring! So shocking! Obviously, that level surpasses anything I have ever seen in any Mario game, or even generic 2d platformer, ever. The sheer genius of re-arranging the block order. Oh. My. God.
Another incredible and awe inspiring level! Nintendo should fire Miyamoto and hire this level creator immediately. Behold how he changes the textures to make a black Yoshi. This is so incredible. I have to sit down, reader. The video makes me weak in the knees.
In all seriousness, this should illustrate why User Generated Content is bad. Aside from the notion that it is garbage, it harms the level maker because they are being leeches on someone else’s work and literally destroying days of their lives to make something they can never copyright or even sell.
The ego of these level tweakers is so over the top they have even made ‘box art’. Yes, box art:
Gaming doesn’t need this crap. What it needs is for people to try making, and selling, smaller games as was done twenty five years ago. If successful, you very well could be making games for your career.
Note how the way current ‘modders’ go is to do something to get someone’s attention in the “Game Industry” so they get hired. I have not seen any good fruit (games) come from this method. It short circuits the “budding young game designer” if that person had any talent to begin with. You need to know the art of selling and product creation on a small scale, and actually be out there selling it, instead of uploading it on the Internet for free and get hired at a big company with a big budget. If you do not know how to make money with a small game and small budget, how can you make money with a big game and a big budget?