Users Should Be Compensated for Created Content, says American McGee

Speaking to Geek.com, American McGee talked about his recent projects, including the revival of the Alice series with Electronic Arts. When the discussion turned to Grimm and episodic gaming, he had some thoughts on the general digital distribution model.

"The free-to-play inside open worlds with monetization of items and information works well," said McGee. "The free-to-play with the expectation that users might return to pay for linear content they've already accessed (essentially the "TV model") needs refinement, in the content itself and/or the content access mechanism. Audiences will pay to buy content like South Park even after they've seen the episodes 10s of times – passive entertainment requires nothing more than sitting back and watching. Whereas interactive content – if you did purchase it — requires additional effort to extract the value. There's probably a new profit-generating psychological sweet spot in here, but we've not yet found it."

When asked about the new trend of user-generated content on console titles like LittleBigPlanet, McGee had an interesting response. "New trend? I seem to recall this being a 'trend' back in the Doom days," he responded. "The only difference now is that someone is trying to monetize it. That's all fine and good, but I think if game products or publishers are relying on 'outside the box' content created by users to drive interest in their titles – then they should find ways of compensating those users for developing added value. That might even inspire the user content communities to step up their game."